Gaming has taken a back-seat to real life lately, though I did manage to get in a couple of games over the weekend.  Brandon and Joe came over Saturday afternoon and I finally managed to get in my first play of the Cities and Knights expansion to Settlers.  After hundreds of plays of the base game, this was the first of the expansions that I’ve played.  I enjoyed the way it changed the strategy of playing Settlers, while keeping the major mechanics.  Some of the rules felt a bit “tacked-on”, but for the most part it was cleaner than I expected.  Unfortunately, we had bad luck with the barbarian attack, rolling several black ships early.  I was never able to get a sheep card, nor enough of any resource to trade for one.  The turn I was able to produce a sheep was the same turn in which the barbarians attacked.  Left without a knight, my first city was demoted to a settlement.  For the rest of the game, I was playing catch-up, and was never able to overcome the loss.  Still, I enjoyed the different game-play and would love to try it again.

After Cities and Knights, we waffled on what to play, and decided to try a game of Anno 1503.  Brandon and I had played this with Jay a couple of weekends ago, and it was Joe’s first time to play.  I love the rules in this game.  They are unambiguous and easy to explain.  Brandon and Joe chose to try a building strategy, which gave Brandon an eventual victory point for having four public buildings.  I played mean, and wound up building Joe’s fourth public building, even though it did nothing for me.  That would prove to be a big mistake, as I was already a bit behind Brandon.  Had I used those resources to further my own goals instead of hamper Joe, I might have been closer to winning.  It was evident a couple of turns before the end of the game that Brandon would win.  He snatched his second victory point for having four outposts, and since he had two public buildings that gave him a bonus for selling resources, all he had to do was sell off any resource he got.  I did well, snatching up three trade agreements and improving 3 of my colonists to their maximum value.  All I needed was a fourth outpost, but Brandon was able to get 30 gold for his third victory point before my ship could make it to an unexplored island tile.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures over the weekend, so this will have to be a text-only session report.  Tonight is the Dallas Gamers weekly Borders event, but I think I am going to have to skip this week.  I have a lot of things to do this week.  I’m taking off work on Friday to drive up to Stillwater, OK.  I went to school at Oklahoma State, and my uncle who lives there is going to be moving to Tampa next week.  My uncle is the man who introduced me to gaming all those many years ago.  He made me cut my teeth on games like Star Fleet Battles, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, Car Wars, Talisman, and other old-school games, some of which I can’t even remember.  It’s going to be sad to see him leave Stillwater, but rest assured we’ve already scouted out all the good game stores and player groups in the Tampa area.  Between all the packing and cleaning, I’m sure we’ll get in a few games this weekend.