Braveheart Game Night

On the heels of our off site work event yesterday, tonight several of us at work had plans to stay late to play some board games.

Timo brought in some games, and the one he set up for us was called 7 Wonders. It’s a civilization building game, the progresses over three rounds or “Eras.”

While there were a lot of cards and coins, the overall rules weren’t overly complicated. At its heart, this felt like a resource management game. One part managing your inventory, and one part technology tree.

In addition to Timo, it was Mark, Megan, Steven (Lee) and me playing. We played until about 7:00 PM or so, and Mark ultimately won out.

The game was interesting, but I had a harder time feeling out how my strategy was working out. There was a final tally at the end, but for me the game felt like a large question mark up until the final scoring when the game ended. The suspense wasn’t really there for me, as it felt like everyone worked on their own approach… and then we found out whose approach worked best.

Mark headed out after his victory, and Meg had to leave a bit earlier to catch her train. But Timo, Steven and I decided to stick around for another game (and were lated joined by Yibo, who stopped back in to visit). We found Azul, and this game I definitely got more into.

There are a lot of tiles in the middle of the table, and each turn you have to grab a certain amount from the “pot” in the middle.

The goal is to fill the rows on the left with the same tile design, and at the end of each turn… you get to move one tile over if the left row is complete.

If there’s an overflow of tiles during the round, you have to put them at the bottom of your board (and are penalized points). At the end of each round, tiles are moved and points tallied up.

Despite the assortment of tiles and colors, the rules weren’t too bad once you started playing. I really liked the strategy of this game, as you can see your own board as well as everyone else’s. And for each turn, you can somewhat predict what tiles others may need, and act accordingly.

Granted, I may be biased because I won when we played this game. But I really enjoyed it!

All told, I think we packed up and said our goodbyes around 8:30PM or so. Much like yesterday, it was really fun to interact with coworkers outside of work (even though we technically were still at work).

Next time: I gotta convince some folks to play a little poker.

Related:
Brief Game Night
Friday Games
Poker Night at the Nerdery
Post-Work Poker, and a New Lord and Master