Sunday, November 22, 2015

Playing new board games

I got to try playing a few new table top games with my friend Mike and some of his other friends. I initially wanted to play some games that I was already familiar with like The Village, 7 Wonders or even the very complex Agricola (which I haven't played in many years) but Mike learned a few new games recently and he said we should try those. As such, I got to try three new games: Istanbul, Fresco, and The Gallerist.

The Gallerist, Istanbul, and Fresco

We started with Istanbul. The objective of this game is to be the first person to collect five rubies. There are a variety of ways to collect rubies and I actually ended up winning the first game, although I think I may have forgotten to reduce my resources in one round and that may have resulted in me winning by mistake. Nevertheless, it was my first time playing and my mistake was unintentional so the other kinda forgave me for it. :) We played another round before switching to our second game, Fresco. The objective of this game is to earn the most points, which you can get by either painting part of a fresco, painting the altar, or by earning money. I made a couple of big mistakes early in the game and I couldn't really rebound from those so while I make big leaps towards the end up the game, I was already so far behind that I finished in last place. We played only one round of this because Mike wanted us to play what seems to be his current favorite game, The Gallerist. The objective of this game is to end up with the most money, mainly through selling art of displaying them in your gallery, Obviously, the more valuable the art, the better. I did quite well for a first-timer but I realized that unlike other games, there is a clear strategy to win in this game: you need to have more workers. I also didn't realize until we were adding points at the end that paintings displayed in the gallery actually allowed you to earn money as well.

The Gallerist during game play

Obviously, as I had just tried Fresco and The Gallerist one time that evening, I wanted another go at them to test my new understanding of the strategies needed to do well. However, as this was a learning day for most of us, we took really long to complete our games. We started at around 3pm and we finished at around 1am. Talk about being addicted LOL.I asked Mike when we would play next and we immediately organized another game day. Hopefully, I do much better then. :)

2 comments:

Joan Jordan said...

Looks interesting! I really love board games and how it brings people together. I can't stress this enough. Games can be fun and exciting, but it's the people really make those experiences lasting and memorable. Recently, I've bonded with my family over a game of Lagim Card. It's based on Filipino folklore. You can check their Facebook page or website for more info.

Xtn said...

I've collected a few local board/card games since I posted this but I haven't heard of Lagim yet. Will check it out. Thanks for the tip.