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Finally had people over for a group day last Sunday. Unfortunately, that was also a drama-filled day, so it was just me, Mark and Jason active for gaming.

We started off with Too Many Kobolds, a small game I just got for Christmas. It’s purely a card placement game, as you have a 3×5 grid as your “cave”, and you place kobolds so that they are happy (requiring a combination of resources from other kobolds). As such, the game will last exactly fourteen turns, as you always place one kobold per turn, and you start with a dragon to work off of. It didn’t take long for all of us to realize just how challenging things were going to be, though Jason managed to flip a couple cards early on. Once I got going, I did very well, eventually getting most of my kobolds happy, using all three one-use special powers along the way. All three of us ended with the chromatic bonus (all seven colors, seems likely), while Jason and Mark both had bonuses for having three of the same kind of thing, but the final scores were still me 46, Jason 35, and Mark -17.

After that, we did a round of Settlers. I got off to a fairly good start, but that faded over time as I got stuck without resources for a while. Mark ended up taking longest road, and generating a very long road. Between that, a couple VPs from development cards, and a fairly steady flow of resources all game, he did well, hitting 10 VP while I was still at 6 and Jason was still at 3.

Finally, we did a round of Wiz-War. This went longer than initially expected, as we finally had a game that didn’t immediately collapse one player’s position. I mean, I did collapse, but it took longer. I took damage from both Jason and Mark, while they first went for re-positioning their own treasures, and then went after others. Both of mine ended up going, but by that point I was dead. The initial encounter with Jason went poorly, with him absorbing life points to get up to 20. The encounter with Mark went longer and did even more damage, and should have ended with me as his Buddy.

But, I kept pointing out that this is not an attack, and washed him a square away with Water Wall, and then Destroyed Wall next to him. I still ended up trapped in part of his sector with a Thornbush, Granite Cube, and a Fire Wall blocking the exits. I got out to continue bugging them, taking more damage, Mark Teleported Other on me to put me back in the same corner. Thankfully, I drew Passwall after a turn, and died to Jason (I forget what he used, but I was down to 2 life points) after some (inadequate) petty revenge with a Sudden Death for 10 points.

Shortly after that Mark made it back to his base with the second treasure for the win.