30 in 45 – We’re at it again!

We were recently re-reading our old blog post from our last adventure into the 30 in 45, and thought we were incredibly entertaining and wanted to do it again. We started into it on September 6th. We are due to finish on Sunday, October 21st.

The challenge I see us having this time is there are more things we are wanting to do at night rather than just watch TV. I am currently indexing about 20 names a night and trying to exercise at least 4 nights a week. (For more information on what indexing is click HERE) and Adam has some new computer games that are vying for his attention as well. We’ve already missed some nights, but here’s what we have so far.

September 6th – Dungeon Lords
Session Results:
Jessica: 6
Adam: 4

Report:
We were testing out this game again. We hadn’t played it for a while, and someone had offered to trade Adam for another game. He wanted to make sure we didn’t like it anymore by playing it a few times in quick succession (for the record, we like it.) We started playing a little late since the boys got to bad a little late, and Matthew was having a little bit of a rough night.

We only played the first year of our dungeon building. And I can’t really remember much about it after that. In the end, I was able to dig more tunnels and get more imps which gave me more unshared titles than Adam, and I was able to win by a couple. The lesson we walked away with: Always be able to pay your taxes! It will get you in the end if you don’t.

September 7th – Dungeon Lords
Results:
Jessica: 24
Adam: 16

Report:
We got it set up and playing a lot faster. We went through the first year a lot faster than the night before. Jessica dug a lot of tunnels and had a lot more rooms working for her than Adam. When the adventurers braved our dungeons, they were able to conquer all of Adam’s 3 tunnels and one room before one escaped by the skin of his teeth. Jessica’s dungeon faired better, and she had 1 tunnel conquered and no adventurers ever saw the light of another day.

The second year, we realized why the game was going so easily for us, and why we were getting more monsters than we remembered. Apparently, you’re supposed to pay the monster upon hiring them, NOT just on pay day. This really cut down on our hiring of monsters and made us use our resources a little better.

When the adventurers made it in, Adam’s dungeon faired MUCH better than the year before and better than Jessica’s this year. He was able to defeat all the adventurers quickly. Jessica took a couple more rounds, but was able to defeat them all too. In the end, it was that first year that really took it’s toll on Adam’s score, and Jessica pulled out the win.

Adam’s notes:  Jessica really knows how to be an evil dungeon lord!  I don’t know how she does it, but every time I turned around she was one-upping me.  This game seems to be growing on us.  I nearly traded it away, but right now I’m glad I did not.

September 8th – Thurn and Taxis
Results:
Jessica: 7
Adam: 31 <-Win

Report:
This was not Jessica’s night. Adam put together an absolutely BEAUTIFUL route of 10 cities that got him into nearly every province very early in the game. Jessica lost a route since she took a gamble and it bit her in the keister. Adam got a lot more of the bonuses and got rid of all his houses before Jessica was even close. As a result, she lost about half her points.  Adam’s notes: This always seems to be a game I can do really well at.  I think it is just because you don’t have much to keep track of, but either way, I find it a joy to play.

September 9th – Small World
Results:
Jessica: 77
Adam: 92

Report:
With this game, Adam observed some trends that seem to happen quite frequently. The berserker race power isn’t as cool as you initially think it will be, and it ends up with trolls a lot more often than not. The biggest realization we had was that we’d been playing it wrong for quite some time.

Apparently, when one of your areas is conquered, you don’t lose all your pieces. You only lose ONE of the pieces that was defending your area. We’d been losing all our pieces, and as a result Adam COMPLETELY pummeled Jessica’s trolls and drove them to decline after one turn!! It was kind of a turning point for the game, but it was still fun.

September 12th – Pandemic
A & J: WIN!
Disease: conquered

Report:
When we started, the set up looked pretty good. Only one of the four diseases was really going rampant, things didn’t look so good for Asia. We kept trying to get things under control, and just as we would get close the city we were almost ready to treat would come up again and we’d have a major out break on our hands. That happened about 6 or 7 times, and just before the world was about to succumb to disease and explode, we were able to cure all the diseases. Thus, we saved the world last night. You’re welcome world! 🙂

September 14th – Race for the Galaxy
Results
J: 58 <– Win
A: 48

Report from Adam:
This was a really lucky game of drawing for Jessica. She pursed the alien technologies, and she drew card after card of alien cards. In the end, she was able to draw a 6 cost development that SERIOUSLY capitalized all her alien cards, and she pulled out a pretty handy win.

I was pretty frustrated with her win since the last time we played Jessica won with fewer points than I lost by this time.  She did seem pretty pleased with herself as she did a victory dance.  I  even got some great synergy going, but Jessica managed to play the right cards.

September 16th – Endeavor
Results:
J: 67
A: 69

Report:
This game is an interesting game. You can’t ever really know how you’re doing (unless you’re THAT obsessive about keeping track of points in your head) until the very end. Although Adam won, Jessica was not that far behind. She was bumming about halfway through the game when she saw that Adam was REALLY working up his point tracks.

In wise move of drawing buildings, she grabbed a card that allowed her to draw 2 cards on her turn. So, she drew cards that really upped her point tracks and put her in a position to win. But alas, Adam had managed to pull out the win.

The strange thing about this game, we didn’t put ourselves in a position to attack the other or the neutral player ever. We also had every space on the board occupied. We’ve never done that before either. All around, we had a great game.

Days Left: 35   Games Played: 7