Renegade Win & Jaipur First Impressions

I got into an 8 player game of Bang! this weekend.  In general, I think the Sheriff/Deputies win about 70% of the time, with the Outlaws winning about 30%.  I've never seen the Renegade win ... until last Friday. 

Using Indians, a Gatling, a Howitzer, and few other cards, the Renegade took down almost every other player in one turn.  A few dynamites that exploded on the sheriff later and the first ever Renegade victory took place.  Anyone else have Renegade wins? 

Also, I got my copy of Jaipur in the mail.  I'm always on the lookout for good 2 player games.  Games designed for two players are often sub-par and games that are designed for multiple players but can be played with two are usually less than stellar as well. 

My wife and I played two games this weekend.  It's a bit early for me to do a full review of this game, but I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  There's a nice tension between taking something from the market or choosing to sell instead and thus leaving goods available for the opponent.  The same with taking camels.  While they allow you to take more goods later, the market will be replaced with random cards and that means your opponent gets first pick.  It's also relatively simple to learn and play. 

So far, it gets a thumbs up, and I'm looking forward to future plays. 

It even got me to bring out Lost Cities.  But LC is a miserable game in comparison and it just made me enjoy Jaipur more. 


Jaipur is available from BoardsandBits and FunAgain.

Weekend Recap: Gaming with non-Gamers

Three of my friends combined birthday parties this weekend, so it was off to Dave & Busters rather than play any board games on Friday. 

Saturday found my Left 4 Dead 2 buddy coming over to my place.  It had been a while and you know those zombies just pile up if they aren't kept in check.  So we spent most of the day killing zombies followed up by a Kung Fu movie.  Their Kung Fu was strong.

So, it looked like I would be without any board-gamey goodness this week.  But my wife and I were invited for dinner to our church friends' house.  They are older than us and have lots of kids (aged 13 to 19 present), so I decided to bring some games along.  Since they aren't gamers at all, I elected to bring Bang!, Nodwick, and Carcassonne.  I think they enjoyed each one, but we found the most success with Nodwick.

Nodwick is very simple and incredibly hectic.  Since there are no turns, everyone just started shouting and building and putting their henchmen back together.  We played two rounds and they really got into the second round of it.  I'll make sure to add Nodwick to my stable of card games that non-gamers enjoy. 

Emporio!

            Apparently it ditched the rustic look...

I traveled to San Francisco today for work.  I have a meeting in the morning and came up the night before so that I'd be sure to make it on time.  But that's boring work stuff, the exciting part was what I saw at the Airport.  Emporio!

For those of you with the good fortune to have played, you know that Bang! is a fun little game themed on spaghetti westerns where you can pretend to learn Italian while saying, "I bang you!" in a totally legitimate context.   All of the cards are in Italian with English translations (for the most part).  But one of the funner (yes, there it is again, funner) cards is the General Store which deals a card for every player and then the players get to pick from the cards in turn order.  As a result, everyone is happy when the general store comes to town.

And that card, in Italian is:

Thus, my delight at seeing the above sign at SFO.  I hatched a few plans to take each of their wares and pass them around to those sitting nearby, but my guess is that the employees and security guards are not as big a fan of Bang! as I am.  Spoilsports.

Anyone have a similar tale of geekery?