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Subject: Fort Worth Gamers: gaming session 12/12/17
From: Michael Ward <mward258@gmail.com>
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Tuesday, 12/12/17 6 to 9 PM at the Hulen Mall food court, at 4800 South
Hulen Street, in southwest Fort Worth, TX.

We had four gamers at one table this quite cool and windy evening.

First up, my Evolution: The Beginning, which was new to my opponents. The play order was: Connor, Michael W, Duane, then Michael L. Connor did what he does in
most games; he fixated on one strategy or element of a game. This time it was playing defensively. By his second turn he'd beefed up his two species with three defensive traits each, making both invulnerable to any carnivore attacks.
That's all well and good, but it didn't yield him very many points.

I was the first to play a carnivore, on turn two, and immediately decimated Duane's critters. On turn three I went to town on Michael L's herds, eliminating one species. My next turn I hit Duane and Michael L's herds about equally with my rampaging carnivore. By that time Michael L got his own carnivore down and began counter-attacking me, yet not as hard as I was hitting
him. However he did have a point generator I didn't, a scavenger. So he managed to almost keep abreast of the VPs I was generating with this one-two punch.

For most of the game Duane and Connor were wondering where the rest of the 16 carnivore cards were! Michael L admitted he'd used several as population cards.
I did that once. I can only assume the rest were used involuntarily as population when each player drew one new species card at the beginning of their
turns.

I had told the others we'd probably run out of food tokens near the end. As I had in my previous brace of three-player games. Not today in this four-player affair! We still had half a bag of excess food when the draw deck ran out.

Scores: Michael W 44, Michael L 40, Duane 34, Connor 26. Duration: 37 minutes. I think everyone enjoyed the game. I had assumed before we counted our tokens I'd end up waaaay ahead. Yet in the final analysis it appears Michael L and Duane did a lot of catching up in their last turn or two. Poor Connor lagged in
VPs due to his rigid strategy, while the rest of us did better by being adaptive and flexible.



Next up, my Meuterer, which was new to Michael L and Duane. Connor had played twice before. Our four player game would last eight rounds. Michael L began as Captain. On round one I mutinied and took the captaincy from him. Yet the island I steered us to only gave me two points. I managed to remain Captain for
rounds 2 and 3 (by paying Duane a point each turn as Mate "protection money").
Yet I sold no goods in the first three rounds. So was a very poor captain! Michael L mutinied in round four, taking the Captaincy. He then held it through
round six. Well, that was OK with me, for I was cleaning up in selling goods while he steered the ship. In round seven Duane became Captain.

At the end of round seven I lead with 27 points, but my hand for round eight was lousy. So I feared Michael L with 20 points might overtake me in the last round. I knew I'd make nothing selling goods, so I mutinied and wrested the Captaincy away, with no help required (as I'd played 3 conflict cards). Yet that only gave me 3 more points for the island I steered us to. Would my score be overtaken by those selling goods? Connor and Duane made 5 points each selling goods. But they were far enough behind that was of no consequence to me. Could Michael L exceed in commerce to win? Nope! For he only added 2 points
as Ships Boy, helping me mutiny, even though I didn't need it with those three
conflict cards I'd plopped down.

Final scores: Michael W 30, Duane 23, Michael L 22, Connor 20. Duration: one hour. As usual Connor had fixated on one strategy, taking the trader (Handler) or Load Master (Lademeister) almost every round. Once in a while that helped, but mostly it retarded his scoring due to his inflexibility. I *think* everyone
liked the game.



Out last game was Duane's Oz Fluxx, which was new to me. My opponent's knew I'd
never played any flavor of the multitude of Fluxx games. But were surprised by
my admission I'd never seen the Wizard of Oz movie, nor read the book.

Duane said Fluxx games can often end in under 5 minutes. Not this time! For this outing just went on and on. So we ended it at the stroke of 9 o'clock with
an even number of turns, with no resolution. The game has no score per se. Someone merely wins by completing one of the victory condition cards. As we had
to stop early that did not happen. We had played for 19 minutes when we called
it quits.

My opinion of Oz Fluxx was mildly favorable. For a newbie like me there was an awful lot of reading to do with every hand of cards. (Whereas the old hands pretty much knew at a glance what each card did and how best to use it..) Therefore I was basically playing blind. The card art was amusing but not silly. The card text was clear; yet there was just too much of it for me to absorb enough of to form a viable strategy as a new player. I was given the impression the multitude of other Fluxx incarnations varied only in theme. In summary, Oz Fluxx was not as bad as I'd feared. I rated it a "5" on BGG. I'd play it again, but not too often.



See BoardgameGeek http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ for more information on the games mentioned above. And if you're in the area on a Tuesday night feel
free to join us for a game.

--
Michael Ward
Fort Worth Gamers
And check out our MeetUp page http://www.meetup.com/FortWorthGamers/ .
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