To pack in even more gaming into our holiday time, Lisa and I were lucky enough to get invited over to a neighbor’s house for dinner (an awesome lamb stew) and some light gaming. They’d recently purchased 7 Wonders and GUBS so we were primed and ready to help them get them to the table. But first things first…lamb stew and some Malbec!
After dinner, we pulled out GUBS. I’d read through the rules quickly earlier in the day and had a vague idea of what to expect. The game is basically structured chaos. Players draw a card, play multiple cards, and discard down to eight if you manage to get that many. You try to play the GUB cards in front of you and protect them with various Barricade cards but everybody else is playing cards on your GUBs that trap them, lure them away, kill them, etc. There are even cards that make you pass your hand left or right, destroy everybody’s unprotected GUBs, etc. You can’t expect to win on any real tactical approach as you’re at the total mercy of what cards people draw. To make it even more “fun”, three cards with the letters “G”, “U”, and “B” are randomly shuffled in the deck and when the last one comes out the game ends immediately. If you go into it with the right expectation, though, it can be a fun activity.
Next up, I introduced them to Kingdom Builder. I’ve played enough games now to feel like there are some games that due to no fault of your own, you may get locked into forced plays for much of the game and there is little you can do to work your way out of it. Other games you seem to get that lucky break here and there but when you’re locked into playing in non-point earning areas and you can’t get any more special tokens…it sucks (sorry Lisa)!
To close, they pulled out 7 Wonders and since they’d played several times before we quickly got down to business. I’ve played 7 Wonders a dozen or more times and have never gone for the green strategy so I figured, what the heck, so I went for it. As luck would have it, I got a few resources that managed to cover half of my Wonder builds, a 5-coin yellow card which bulked up my coffers a bit, and with the “build a free card each age” as my second Wonder I charge forward on my green strategy paying very close attention to the laddering affect of building cards for free with the right pre-requisites. In the end I pulled out a win by four points but I felt like it could go either way for a long time. I have to chalk it up to luck though as I sent an 8 point blue card to my left opting for another green and it made it all the way back around to me for my free build in the age.
Lisa and I had a great time and, as always, look forward to good food, with good friends, and some good games for dessert.