Game Night: 12/05/08; Dominion

Last Friday, our gaming group met as usual to play board games. As I have a friend in my other gaming group that posts the results of his sessions, I thought it might be a fun thing to do, just for kicks and some geek pride for the winners.

We had a short crowd Friday. Tim and Rob made it over, and the 11-year-old (David) sat in. Lee was flamencoing (or ball-rooming, or tangoing with his wife), Ben was Volitioning (he works a LOT of hours during crunch times at Volition, the local makers of several neat video games including Saint's Row and Red Faction II), and Dave was vomiting (his blog entry title for last Friday was: Number of Days Since I Last Threw Up:, and the one-word blog was: Zero).

I received my copies from ThoughtHammer of Pandemic (which has already sold out over there and is on Backorder), Power Grid: China/Korea maps, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm, and Dominion, a game my friend Dave L. told me about.

So in sum, here is how the evening transpired:

Game 1: Dominion
Players: Brian, Tim, David, Rob
Winner: David
This was our first try at Dominion. The rules and game play are well done, so we jumped right in, using the suggestion for a first-game Kingdom Card array. David went the Topher route and started buying up a disproportionate number of Militias. This in and of itself did not win the game for him, as the rest of us started buying Moats to fend off the Militia attacks. David did, however, see the endgame coming quicker than we did. When he started buying Duchys and Provinces, we took notice, and saw 3 of the Supply stacks had grown short. By the time we realized that David was actually playing the game well, it was too late. So the 11-year-old soundly defeats the Institutional Research Analyst with the B.S., the WILL (local PBS affiliate that Barfing Dave also works at) IT guy with the Masters, and the Assisstant Head of the English Department at U of I with the Ph.D. Go David!

Game 2: Dominion
Players: Brian, Tim, David, Rob
Winner: Brian
After seeing the really neat play Dominion offers, we had to play again. This time we went with 10 random Kingdom cards. And we could tell, this was going to be harsh. There were no protective cards like the Moats, and there were 3 attack cards - The Witch, the Thief, and, I believe one other I cannot remember (edit: Tim reminded me we also had the Bureaucrat in play; can't remember if it's an Attack card proper or not, but he's right) . David started Tophering again and went for cornering the Witch market. We did have Cathedrals though, so I suppose there was a protective factor there. Rob bought a large chunk of these. David kept hitting us with the Witches, and at some point, Tim said what we all expect him to say about every game he plays: "I *hate* this game!" I saw the combo of Thief/Moneychanger/Cathedral to thin out the deck (even trashing some 1-point Victory cards), and saw the beauty of the Gardens, which led me to a victory.

At that point, it was a bit late to start a game of Pandemic, so we called it a bit early, but a fun evening. My friend Dave L. thought I would like this game, and he was wrong - I love it. After 2 plays, I see why people like this game so much: easy rules and simple gameplay execution, but the variety of combining the 25 Kingdom cards into a whole lot of variations leads to very high replayability. Trying to figure out what combos work well together for the 10 that get selected for a game is great, great fun to me. I want to play again.

Wii Little Hitler

Wii have discovered the silly fun of the Mii Channel for the Wii. When David got a Wii for his birthday from my mom and sister (mom is trying to get into heaven now), we created Miis for all 6 of us. It was pretty fun in and of itself.

A few weeks later, the kids and I go to the Mii Plaza to look at what other people have created. To my amusement, my friend Dave had a Hitler on his Wii, as well as Jackie Chan and other celebs. I looked for a Hitler, and the offerings were, in a word, disappointing.

Now I get tired of people's negativity at times, in terms of nitpicky criticisms that just make people sound bitter and angry. It's tiresome. And yes, I am being a bit of a hypocrite here, as I have a few buttons (religion, egocentrism and others). But astill, I thought, this is the best people have done? Granted, creating Miis is not intended to be Poser/Maya realistic, but how hard could this be?

Well, a bit harder than I anticipated. You only have so many eye/head/hair shapes to work with. I did my best and uploaded the thing, as I didn't think it was bad. It is our most popularly DLed Mii that we have made.

However, my friend Ben was over and observed the Hitler Mii I created and said it looked much more like John Hillerman of Magnum PI fame (he played Higgins/Masters; pictured above). OK, then. I had fun creating it though. The Hitler in the graphic above is not mine, btw. I just don't know how to grab my Hitler off the Wii and post, and even if I could, it's not worth the effort.

I must admit I find it incredibly amusing to see our various Miis stuck in crowds or part of teams while playing games on the Wii. I was almost cackling when Hitler was pitching to Jesus in baseball during the same game where Napolean Dynamite made a great outfield catch and a scary Jack Black hit the game winning homer...off of...Jesus. I am far too easily amused by such things.