Two Days at Water Street Games and Hobby

Day One
On Saturday I headed north to Dunkirk for an evening with Ron and the guys at Water Street Games and Hobby. If you are in the Dunkirk area, stop by and check out Ron's store. Great gaming and the inventory grows a bit each and every month.

(Old Shop) Different Digs, Same Great Fun!

Unfortunately, I don't have pics of his new place. I will make sure to post some updates ASAP. This picture is from a little over a year ago...

While at Ron's, we played three games of Pompeii. The game is set in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii just before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. In the first phase of the game, players add people to the city. The second phase of the game commences when the volcano erupts, and players now must get their people out of the doomed city. The player who leads the most people to safety wins. Now, to make things more challenging and fun, players can send opponents people into the volcano! This is usually followed with "aaaaaahhhhhhh, tssssss." In case of a tie, the player with the least people in the volcano is the winner. Pompeii is a light strategy board game that is fun for the entire family. I especially love the theme, having studied Latin and Roman Culture in high school and a little in college. (And throwing people in the volcano is pretty cool also.)

After Pompeii, I joined in an 8-player Magic: The Gathering booster draft. Magic is a collectible card game (CCG) created by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards Of The Coast. It is a "duel" between spell-casters, who draw upon the energy of the earth to summon creatures, cast spells and conjure enchantments to reign supreme.

In a booster draft, eight players sift through a pack of fifteen cards, choosing one and passing the rest of the pack either left or right. This continues until each player has fifteen cards from the first pack. Two more packs are opened and passing the cards alternates between passing to the left and right players. When players finish "drafting," they build a playable deck of at least forty cards.

After constructing their decks, players compete in a single-elimination tournament. Each match is decided by the winner of two out of three games. I hadn't played Magic in over a year, I enjoyed playing and meeting a few new people, but I don't envision getting back into the collectible card tournament scene.

We closed the evening playing a 5-player game of Constantinopolis. I covered Constantinopolis in a previous post. I absolutely love this game, it is a complex resource management game that changes every time you play.

Day Two

Today, I was able to get together with Ron and JD for a game of Le Havre today. Le Havre is a complex resource management and shipping game by Uwe Rosenberg (creator of the amazing game Agricola.) In Le Havre, players collect goods and resources, build buildings and ships, and export goods. Each round, players must feed their workers, and the food cost increases almost every round.








Stay tuned for an update early next week! We are getting together for a day of gaming in honor of JD's birthday on Saturday, November 27th. We picked up a new game this week, Sid Meier's: Civilization. JD and I were lucky enough to meet the designer (Kevin Wilson) and preview the game at Gen Con. I will let you know next week how it goes!