This past Saturday Evan and Kat made their vows to each other, witnessed and supported by family and friends and it was beautiful. Thanks for letting us be a part of it, you two and I hope you are enjoying a wonderful honeymoon.

Geek that I am, a nice wedding and getting caught in torrential rain while walking home did not deter me from having the traditional Saturday session of board games and tomfoolery. Turnout was decent, with about 10 people in total. Sadly, I forgot to take photos this week.

Eminent Domain

The first game of the evening was Eminent Domain. It’s another deck building game, but does not follow the tried and tired mechanic of having resource cards and building and efficient point grabbing machine using those cards. Instead, I found it more similar to Glory to Rome in that the cards represented Roles which you could Lead. Other players could then Follow the role that you Lead and piggyback on your choice or Dissent and just draw a card. Obviously, Leading the role has it’s own extra benefits as well as adding a card of that role to your deck which makes you more efficient when executing that role in the future as you can boost the actions of a role when you Lead it. That’s the main mechanic of the game, and it’s and interesting one that I am keen to play more of to develop my opinion of the game. Prateek won this first game by one point, with a heavy Survey and Colonize strategy. I came in second, and was also pretty much the only person who lead Warfare in the game ever. Initial impression is quite good and I am intrigued and would love to play more.

After finishing Eminent Domain, more people arrived and we decided to split into two groups. One group played Innovation and the other went for King of Tokyo. I joined the group with the giant monsters, obviously. Don’t get me wrong, I love Innovation too but I think others wanted to play it more so I taught the other group probably the best dice fest game to come out in a while.

King of Tokyo

RAAAWRR! Time for some dice rolling, face smashing, child having, fire breathing action! King of Tokyo is a ridiculously fun dice game from the creator of Magic: the Gathering, Richard Garfield. In it, you  control a B-movie monster and roll dice to either get points, get energy, heal yourself or dish out handy microwave ready packets of whup ass. Energy can then be used to buy power up cards which give you permanent extra abilities or provide immediate boosts. When you attack, you attack all other players not in the same place as you. There are only two places: you’re either in Tokyo or out of it. Thus, whoever is in Tokyo will be ganged up upon by everyone else at the table but can also attack everyone else at the same time. You win when you get to 20 points or when you have laid waste to all the other monsters and become King of Tokyo!

We managed to finish two games. The first game went really quickly as we were dishing out heaps of damage everywhere and did not get many heals. While in Tokyo Bay my Kraken dished out 5 points of damage in one go and knocked out everyone except myself and Daniel, who then proceeded to kick my ass and claim victory. NOOOOOOO!! That darn weasel waited for me to do all the work and struck while I was gloating over the crushed husks of my enemies. Curse you Gigazaur!

The next game was a more drawn out affair. Allen bought “It Has A Child!” as soon as it came up (otherwise known as Giant Monster Life Insurance) since he was the first person eliminated in the previous game. There was a lot more to and fro, as less damage was being rolled and people were a little more cautious about holding on to Tokyo. Dani made it all the way up to 18 points before he was set upon by Ken, who spent all his Smoke Screen tokens to roll the required claw dice to kill him. Ken managed to get lots of energy and also heal himself to full health before claiming Tokyo and was finally victorious.

Carrom

After King of Tokyo, Allen and Su Ann left, which left myself, Heng Lin, Ken and Dani to play a round of Carrom while we waited for the Innovation group to finish up. I really need to fix up the board on some level supports. The striker kept sliding around when we placed it. All of us were pretty tired by then and our shots were all pretty haphazard. Also, we had forgotten most of the rules since it had been a while since we played. Dani and I won, but it was mostly fluke shots on my part and Dani cleaning up.

Overall, I had a great time with Eminent Domain and King of Tokyo and I am going to miss the weekly board game sessions while I am back home on holiday. On the other hand, it may give me time to write up some board game and comic book reviews.