7 Wonders - Cities

Our latest expansion (there is a newer one out there we haven't purchased yet) for the most played games in our collection arrived a couple of weeks ago; 7 Wonders - Cities.

I was so excited about this expansion that I spent time ahead of our first game going through the components, sleeving the cards and reading the rules (again as I had read them online prior to buying it).  One odd thing I found is that I received two less -1 debt tokens than it stated in the rules, and instead got two -1 conflict tokens it didn't mention; maybe just an edition thing?  Anyways, in all the games I have played so far we have never come close to needing all the debt tokens it comes with.  Every thing fit perfectly into the organizer (see post on it here), with still lots of room left.

My wife and I played a game not long after that, with just the base game + cities, with the two new wonders, just to get a feel for it.  I ended up with Petra, while my wife played with Byzantium.  One of the first things I noticed is that my focus on the coins grew very quickly; many of the black cards cost coins, my second wonder stage cost 9 coins, and I was paranoid about the debt cards.  It also didn't help that before we started playing with cities I often found myself with very few coins (something about my playing style, still haven't exactly pinpointed why).  I enjoyed the new flavor that the black cards added, and I appreciated the fact that they added without really changing the game too much.

Our first Cities game (from my wife's side of the board)

Recent Gaming - Dominion: Cornucopiua, Suburbia, Ticket to Ride: Europe and 7 Wonders

After a period of very little gaming (sometimes life just gets busy) we have had an opportunity to play a few games lately.

I received Dominion's Cornucopia expansion as a gift, and over the last couple of weeks we have been playing through the recommended card sets found in it's rules.  These are sets that pair with the original Dominion and the Intrigue set.  I recall seeing recommended sets in the rulebooks for some of the later expansions for pairing with Cornucopia, but I am not sure if we will play them.  With only 13 new kingdom cards, and each recommended set having 5 of them, I feel that we have had ample opportunity to see how they work.  Next is probably back to random sets, with the new cards included.

One of the recommended kingdom card sets from Cornucopia

Getting Familiar with New Games - Suburbia and Stone Age

Last week (I am a little behind on my posts) my wife and I played a few more rounds of a couple of our newer games, Suburbia and Stone Age.  We are getting to the point where we are starting to understand some of the potential strategies and tactics and try some different ones out.

We played Suburbia on a couple of different evenings.  In the first game my wife got the PR firm early in the 'C' pile, and proceeded to destroy me.  In the process she also scored the highest either of us have so far, 188 points.  I tried to make my plan around the waterfront realty; I find that it definitely gives an early boost in cash to help get key tiles.  I am finding though that later in the game turning 'B' and 'C' tiles into lakes often puts a dent in the final run-up on the score.

My 'city' in our first game