Wednesday Night Gaming - Egizia

 
We had four players tonight for gaming and pulled out my brand new copy of Egizia by Rio Grande Games.  Jeff and I had played before but Nick and Rosie had not so we began by taking a few minutes to go over the rules.  The game involves the players running work crews who work on various monuments along the Nile River valley.  Mechanics-wise Egizia is a worker placement game and resource management game that includes a neat mechanic wherein you place worker boats as you move down the Nile but cannot (unless you have a special card) place a boat upriver of your previously placed boats.

The game runs for five turns and the mechanics are learned by the time the second turn begins.  Everyone really enjoyed the game.  I won followed by Nick, Jeff, and Rosie though the scores were close for everyone.  This is one of my top two games from Charcon.

Carcassonne - 7 July

Our normal Magic the Gathering/Never Winter Nights Wednesday gaming session played out a little differently this week.  Chief card flopper and Magic aficionado Harold was away on vacation so Jeff, Nick, Rosie and I instead tried out another new game from Origins, Carcassonne by Rio Grande Games.  Carcassonne is a tile laying game where you place tiles building roads, cities, cloisters, and fields.  You claim these features using one of your miniature people or Meeples as they are known.  More points are scored for longer roads and larger cities.  It is a very simple but elegant game that is always different due to the various ways that the tiles are placed.  It is also a beautiful game as the tiles and meeples are very nicely produced.

We played the first game without the included river expansion.  Nick won this game.  The second game we added the rivers expansion which adds further constraints to how the tiles are laid.  After a tight game where we experienced our first "Cloister F$@*" (nearly all of the cloisters clustered together) Nick and Jeff ended up tied at the end.  Everyone really enjoyed the game.  We all look forward to adding on the various expansions that are available.

On a related note, there is an iPhone app available for Carcassonne that is quite good.  I have been playing with it for a while and it does an excellent job of translating the game to a handheld device.