On Friday, November 4, the Southern Appalachian Gamers Association subgroup of the East Tennessee Gamers had a great night of gaming at the Smiths’. In attendance were Zach and Andrea Smith, Charlie and Sheila Davis, and Terry Bailey. First we played Dice Town with the new expansion. This was the first time anyone had played with the expansion, and it was well received. Some of the players who thought Dice Town was too luck driven viewed the expansion as bringing more strategy and mitigating some of the luck since there are now second place rewards for each location. Zach came out victorious due to his fertile land cards and a prize pony!
Next we played Deadwood, a new eurogame from Fantasy Flight. It was a short (3o minute) worker placement game in which the workers are cowboys who can shoot and kill one another. While all the other cowboys exchanged plenty of gunfire, Andrea avoided violence and worked the town locations to her benefit, amassing a large pile of money and winning the game. Everyone liked the art but found the font hard to read at times. There were mixed feeling about the gameplay.
We ended the night with a hard fought game of Cosmic Encounter. As always with Cosmic, there was lots of laughter, lots of diplomatic haggling, and lots of rules discussion over the alien powers. Terry and Charlie shared the victory. Charlie’s alien (Reincarnation) was especially interesting – anytime he lost an encounter, he drew a new alien and assumed it power. This led to constantly shifting strategies from all the players.
East Tennessee Gamers 
I liked the expansion to Dice Town. It added a minor amount of length but otherwise helped the game. Deadwood needs to be played a couple of times to see what strategies can be used with different buildings. Andrea used the get in the lead and build the railroad fast to end the game. We should have stopped her but we didn’t. Cosmic Encounter was normal in that it is different every game. My power to reincarnate as another alien was fun since I have not played much. I got to read a bunch of alien powers. Most never got used because I lost and started over all the time. Good gaming session.
By: wkusau on November 6, 2011
at 1:04 pm