Meetup Recap Series (#2): July 30, 2015

Another solid turn out this week, and a few more new faces, which is awesome to see. The night started with the typical mulling around. As per norm, a good 10 minutes of standing around to assess options, but there's nothing like a good Kennerspiel des Jahres winner to pique interests and break the standoff; Rob with Broom Service to the rescue for the second week in a row. I was quick to follow suit with Terra Mystica to offer up, as Eric expressed interest in the forums. So we started a game with Eric, Jen, Frank, Myself, and Patrick who came just in time for rules. 

Frank had played once prior, but we had 3 of the 5 players new to the game. It's been awhile since I've done a 5p game of Terra Mystica, and it turned into a bit of a 4 hr monstrosity. Nonetheless, it was still good fun as the game was quite tight for most of it. Pat struggle a bit early as the Giant's limitation of two-shovel terraforms can be unwieldy, but he made a valiant late game surge, only to be heartlessly denied, by Jen, from obtaining the bridge that would connect his towns. It was my first time playing the Engineers, and would definitely have played it differently a second time, but still managed to steadily grind out VPs and maintain a lead through most of the game, but Jen kept pace and eventually surged ahead to a convincing win in end game scoring.

Many of the other tables were smaller 3p groups. Some of the games I saw hit the tables included Lewis & Clark, Cinque Terre, Istanbul, Splendor, Alhambra, and Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game.