Heng’s Gaming Blog

Date: 9-1-06 Monday Hari Raya Haji eve’s gaming session:-

Session length: 11.00pm - 6.30am (7.5 hours)

Gamerz: Heng, Ivan, Jun Hao, Edward, Soon Tiong

Games: Monsters Menace America, Twilight Imperium 3, Puerto Rico

The great marathon continues on Hari Raya Haji’s eve… . Tis the season to ‘korban’, and in this case, we ‘korban’ our sleep for a night full of gaming goodness. We started late this night as there were a number of people working on the day.

We started with Monsters Menace America. This light game was fun, it’s a dice fest and in this game, I was the Godzilla lookalike, Tomonagi, Ivan was the giant Mantis, Edward was Lobsterman and Jun Hao was King Kong. The monsters went stompping round America and the turning point came when a nuclear missile from the Navy missed and causes giant Mantis to mutate! This gives giant mantis an additional ability, healing, which will proof decisive in the final showdown. Mantis first finish off Tomonagi with his fame tokens and then proceed to challenge Lobsterman. Lobsterman fell to Mantis’ superior dice-chucking skills and finally it’s down to Mantis and Kong. They both wear each other’s hit points down until both were at 3 hit points, requiring a hit to die. Ivan activated the healing mutation and brought his Mantis out of the danger zone! Really really game breaking ability as Kong went down. Winner: Ivan, with his Monster Mantis with a mutated tentacle and healing.

Next we start another session of Twilight Imperium 3! (Intergalactic Space Mega Battle) The setup’s faster this time round and Edward got Soon Tiong up to speed on the game rules while the others setup. Still did not play to the finish for this game as there were newbies around. However, this game someone was totally destroyed! Who was the newbie, unfortunately… hopefully he’ll still join us next time!

As Edward and Soon Tiong bid a good evening at 4am (or good morning, depending on how you look at it), it was down to three of us to continue the marathon. We chose to close the session with Puerto Rico. We played two games and both games were close. The first game was a three way tie, with me going for the builder strategy while Ivan and Jun Hao went shipping. I used an unorthodox strategy in this game in that I built all the large production buildings and went for the Guild Hall. My strategy paid off in a rather unusual way as my empty large production buildings forced a game ending through colonist depletion. At that time, Ivan and Jun Hao were building up a massive planting extravaganza through their haciendas while I was going the diversity and factory route. Their shipping was peaking at an extraordinary rate as they were crafting and captaining each other off while I was struggling to trade and build by my lonesome. Fortunately, I was able to force a game end by mayoring away the last of the colonists. The game end? A three way tie on thirty-odd points each, with me winning the tie breaker with one indigo left while others have no goods nor doubloons. Phew!

The second game was also close as Ivan tried for the builder route while Jun Hao and I went the shipping path. Ivan got his strategies confused for the second game as he was very much used to shipping. He tried to build with no tobacco or coffee plantations. Jun Hao and I tied for this game again and Jun Hao won the tie breaker by having more goods and doubloons than I have. Close game!

What I learn from these two games is that I always get a good start but always fail to sustain the momentum and let everyone else catch up. Or maybe Ivan played badly and let Jun Hao caught up to me. Maybe I should sit left of Ivan and check out if I win or not next time Also, Puerto Rico is not a game for finishing gaming sessions as it is a brain burner. And you really need to trash talk and play with the minds of other players, influencing their role choices to have a fun game of Puerto Rico. So next time, it’s early Puerto Rico game or it’s no go.