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At one point it looked like we would have a mega-meetup, but then everyday life intervened. A christening, a birthday party, a busy work schedule. In the end we were only at most six around the table. No matter, the peeps of Aftersweat were gathered and we were going to have fun. Brother Jens and better half Linda offered their table to host, and veteran Jan, Linda’s kid brother Fred and newcomer Matias showed up, as did I.

Before Jan made it through the snow, the remaining five of us set up and played a session of Pandemic, more specifically the recently acquired expansion pack On the Brink. The only part of the expansion we actually used were some new role cards, so I won’t pass judgement on OtB as a whole. The new roles were interesting, but I still think I prefer the original roles. They feel more meaningful and balanced somehow. I really look forward to trying out the other variations, like the bio-terrorist role and mutations. Pandemic remains the best by far co-operative game I’ve experienced.

Jan showed up just in (“the Brink of“) time to see us run out of time and losing the battle against disease. He was quick to proclaim himself as the winner of the game, as the king of ze Germs. Next up a six player game of Citadels. This is a classic game I enjoy every time I play it. The past few times we play it to one less (7) district than the rules state (that would be 8, for the mathematically challenged), which in my opinion makes for a better and faster game. The version we have of the game comes with The Dark City-expansion in it, but here too I think the original roles are more interesting than the new ones. The game, however, was just as fun as it always is. We always do it with a whole lot of role-playing and poorly executed funny accents, which leads to hilarity and adds to the experience.

Next up was a quick game of the Cheapass-classic Kill Doctor Lucky. As I have the Director’s Cut-edition of the game, we played with the two-story house and the optional spite-rule, where you gain a spite-token for every botched murder-attempt. These tokens add to future attempts, and can also be used as failure-points. These modifications make it a faster game, and let’s face it – the game is both smart and the humor is spot-on (which is a feat extremely few boardgames pull off successfully!) – but it can drag out to be a bit too long as standard. As the good (?) doctor, having survived numerous assassination attempts, finally met his demise from a Civil War Cannon, in the White Room, at the hands of Jan.

We had time for a quick game before Matias had to be on his way, and as I was eager to try out TransEuropa with the Vexation-expansion, that was next on the table. Vexation doesn’t add anything other than colored tracks that can’t be used by other players, a total of three tracks per player. But it changes the game, even makes the game. Previously, playing TransEuropa I always felt a bit let down, as if it wasn’t really a complete game I was playing. I think it’s a good thing that new copies of the game (at least the Finnish version “TransEuropa+”) come with the “expansion” included. I don’t see why I would ever play it without the colored tracks again.

One man down Jan expressed an interest to try out the classical (lots of classics this time!) racing game Formula D, and especially Jens is an eager fan of the game, but we were all quick to accept the challenge. Jens owns both the old version (Formula Dé) and the new (Formula D) as well as the mini (Formula Dé Mini) but we played a single lap race of the Chicago-track with standard Formula D-rules. I still like the game a lot even after a handful of races, but I still haven’t found any track that even comes close to the Monaco-track and this one didn’t change that. There’s nothing like a good three-stop turn or a two stop-curve immediately after a long straight.

Being on a racing vibe we continued with Snow Tails, which is a lot more of a brain-burner than Formula D, yet still having that proper racing-feeling. Jan, Jens and I went down the slopes while Linda and Fred played Warhammer: Invasion on another table. As that game seemed to be a bit longer than our dog-sled ride we had a quick session of Jens’ newly acquired Monkey Lab as well. Monkey Lab didn’t really inspire me personally. Sure it was smart, but I didn’t really have much fun playing it. In my opinion it was about twice as long as it should have been. Especially the two final cages dragged on unnecessarily. I had grabbed some high scoring cages early on and though I had a good grasp of the lead (which I had) so I spent some cards, exhausting the deck before the final cages were claimed and won. A typical “meh“-game in my book.

Time for the one “big” game of the evening, as Jan had brought his copy of Container. This is a game I’ve considered buying ever since Valley Games even announced they were doing it, but for some reason or other it has always remained on the store shelves when I’ve visited. Container is a really simple (where’s that sarcasm/irony-punctuation symbol when you need it?!) economics game. (1) You build factories to produce goods. (2) You buy goods that other players have produced in their factories. (3) You sell these goods in warehouses in your harbor. (4) You send your containership to other players’ harbors to buy goods from their warehouses. (5) You ship those goods to a central island where you’ll auction these off to other players, hoping to win some auctions as well, (6) all the time making more profit than the other players in all the aforementioned steps. In the end, the goods you’ve acquired on the central island is worth different amounts of money to all players, values that are kept secret until the bitter end. To further spin things around, in case you hadn’t lost consciousness already, the type of goods (out of five different) you have acquired the most of, you get nothing. So you want to get the most of the type of good which to you is worth the least, and second most of the type of good which to you is worth the most. Confused?

At least I was as we set off playing the game. Factories and warehouses cost a set amount to build, becoming more expensive the more you have, and actually producing from your factories costs a single currency unit, but payed to the player on your right (union fees). But once you’ve produced your goods, you set the price. Set it too high and others won’t buy, set it too low and you’ll lose money. After you’ve bought goods, you again set the price at which you’ll sell it to containerships. This being our first playing (only Jan had played once before) it was difficult to know what price to set. You are just constantly looking what the others are selling the same goods at, trying to be cheaper than them. As a loaded containership finally reaches the central island there is an auction among the other players for the entire load. The auction is blind, which means everybody simultaneously selects the price at which they are willing to pay for the shipment. Whoever offers the most can pay that money to the seller, who also gets an equal amount from the bank. If the seller feels the price was too low, he can buy the shipment himself, paying an amount equal to the winning bid to the bank.

The game is smart on a ridiculous level. I didn’t even dare to try to figure out the mathematics behind it, playing mostly on gut feeling the entire game. Jan tried a very different strategy to the rest of us, having only a single factory throughout the game. He seemed to concentrate on the central island, buying crazy amounts of containers. Jens seemed to have the most action from start to finish, producing and selling more goods than anybody else – or at least this is my perception. I thought I was doing horribly. I failed miserably in the auctions and couldn’t secure very many containers at all on my spot on the central island, but during the last couple of turns I made crazy money selling goods off my containership. Your final score is your value of the containers you’ve bought on the central island, plus the money on your hand, plus lesser amounts for containers you have on your ship or on your harbor. The money I had on my hand alone was more than some other players’ final total score. This secured the victory for me.

I really like the game. No. I really want to like the game. No. I really really do like the game. But. But there is a big part of it I hate. I simply despise blind auctions. In every game. And every time I play a game with significant blind auctions, I hate it more. For a really deep and intricate economical game it really bugs me greatly that the final (and arguably the most important single) step of the game comes down to guessing. I know this is a personal issue, and that there are people (freaks) who actually like blind auctions but I think that they are particularly misplaced in this game. With a standard auctioning system instead of the blind bidding this would be a fantastic game in my book. Now it’s not. And it makes me sad.

But the evening was a success. Even though I didn’t love every single game played, I had a great time throughout the day. Until the next time.