Three new board games

Today I tried something new by attending the Southern California Games Day, a board game extravaganza held every 2-3 months. I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, or who would be there, but I ended up staying for seven hours and playing three new games. I learned to play:

  • Glory to Rome! : A role-based building game like Puerto Rico in which you attempt to rebuild Rome.
  • St. Petersburg : A phase-based building game with little connection to Russia, as far as I could tell.
  • Leonardo da Vinci : A building game in which the goal is to be the first to build Leonardo’s inventions!

These were all fun, although the last game stretched out because no one at my table had played it before and we had to work through the rules before we could play. However, I’d picked that game — with a name/thesis like that, how could I resist? I came in 3rd, 4th, and 2nd in these games — 4th in St. Petersburg despite being in the lead for the majority of the game! The victory point multipliers at the end snatched the lead away from me and awarded it to my opponents. I would have come in first in the Leonardo game if I hadn’t mistakenly read one of the resources needed to build one particular invention. (My single complaint about that game is that the cards are somewhat hard to read.)

All in all, it was a fun day with lots of new people, rules, strategies, and gotchas.

1 Comment

  1. jim said,

    January 14, 2007 at 9:43 am

    You’re so competitive :-) Try “Caves and Claws” sometime.

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