Hope your summer is going great and I will see some of you in less then a month.

Take care,

Mr. Matera

Click here to view the embedded video.

You play Pandemic!!

Pandemic is an awesome game (one of my favorites), and is an exciting, fast paced game that requires an intelligent mind, quick thinking, a ton of strategy, and luck.  Did I mention luck?  In Pandemic, players work with each other against the board, like castle panic.  The gameplay is also a bit like castle panic, where you try to defend a certain cause against outside forces that the game creates.  There are four difficulties to play on, making the game available for all skill levels.  The first one is easy.  Easy provides a light challenge that is not particularly hard to succeed in, but still provides great gameplay, and a lot of fun.  The second mode is medium.  Medium is fairly challenging (despite the name), but not so much that the game becomes annoying or boring.  This level is recommended by myself.  The third mode is hard.  Hard is very hard (hence the name) and is only recommended for talented gamers who can figure out a lot of strategy and fine logical solutions to beat the odds.  You will need a pile of luck to come out on top for this one.  The final level to play on is extreme.  I have never played this mode before, but I have played hard, and if this is any more difficult than that, then it is NOT RECOMMENDED.  This mode may become boring or annoying due to massive hardness, and even the most SKILLED players will need all the luck they can get to defeat the sickness.  Maybe the more daring could try this mode out.  Back to the game though.  As you can see, the many modes of difficulty can make this game very flexible, suited for almost any gamer.  The gameplay makes this one of my most loved games, too!  First, lets explain the game board.  The game board is basically the map of the world, with major cities marked with various colors and blue lines connecting some to others.  In the bottom left corner there is a meter labelled “outbreaks”.  If the meter ever reaches the bottom to where the skull is, you lose.  In the bottom center there is a small diagram with different colors.  This determines which sicknesses you have cured, which you have not, and which you have eliminated.  Next to this is the draw pile and the discard pile of cards.  At the top right there is another draw pile and discard pile, but this time for infection cards.  Below that is a meter showing the rate at which the sickness spreads.  To start the game, each player will randomly pick a role card from the selection.  There are five roles, and each one has a different ability, which is stated on the card.  The roles are medic, scientist, researcher, etc, whatever has to do with disease and all that. (I find the medic particularly useful).  After you have picked the roles, you will start the sickness (awww!!).  To start, you will draw cards from the infection card pile.  For the first 3 or 4, you must place 3 cubes (these will come with the game) of the same color as the city on that city.  For the next 3 or 4, you will place only two cubes.  For the final 3 or 4, you will place one cube.  These cubes represent the sickness.  There are 4 sicknesses.  The black, the Yellow, The blue, and the red.  Each one is in a different area of the board.  If a city EVER reaches four cubes, then you keep 3 cubes on the city, but place a cube on every city around it.  This is an outbreak!  Move your chip on the outbreak meter one down (remember, too many outbreaks, world goes bye-bye).  Not only do these make you lose, they lessen your performance with more cubes on the outer areas.  (Note:  These can cause chain reactions).  There are ways to remove cubes though, which will be covered soon.  The second thing that needs to be covered is research centers.  You start the game with one, placed right where all players begin the game, in the blue area.  Research centers are areas to perform many different actions with better results.  You can move to a research station by discarding a card with an action, and you can also cure diseases at centers.  They are very useful (there is a role that has the ability to build other research centers too!).  Now, this is all fine and dandy, but how do you win?  To win Pandemic, you have to cure every color of disease.  To cure a disease, you must go to a research center and discard five cards of the same color.  That disease will then be cured. (with the exception of the scientist, who only needs 4 cards).  Now we move on to the actions, and what you do on your turn.  There are many different methods of moving around, that use action points and cards.  The first phase of a turn is the action phase, where you do everything.  You get four action points to spend.  This means, in theory, that you can do 4 things per turn.  Moving will cost 1 action point, no matter what you do.  The first and easiest method of moving is you can move your pawn along the blue lines from city to city.  Each city you pass is one action point.  You may also discard a card to move directly to that area for 1 action point.  You can discard a card to move to any research center on the board, too!  Remember you can move from the left side to the right side going off the board, and vice versa.  (there is one role that allows you to use actions to move somebody else’s pawn instead of yours).  But with action points you can do much more than move.  You can also do the following.  If you are at a research center, you may cure a disease for one action.  Also, the most important action, you may remove cubes.  If you are at a city with cubes on it, you may remove 1 per action point.  (the medic however can remove all cubes with one action point).  This is useful in keeping the sickness at a minimal spread.  Many of the roles can do other things for action points, and there are a few other less important actions that can be made, which are explained on the actions description card that comes with the game.  there are many actions to be done, and you only get 4 points.  Spend them wisely!!!  But after the action phase, your turn is far from over.  After actions, you draw two cards from the regular draw pile, and take them into your hand.  Then, you draw a number of infection cards (the number listed below the infection draw pile).  You must put 1 cube on each city you draw.  Now we move on to explain the REGULAR card deck.  First and foremost, if a player is EVER unable to draw enough cards for their turn (i.e. the deck runs out), then you immediately lose the game.  Harsh right?  Also, city cards aren’t the only ones in the deck.  There are also helpful special event cards to be drawn.  When these are activated, they help you in some way, depending on what the card is.  Then, there are the deadly EPIDEMIC CARDS!!!!  These fatal cards are how the game bites back, striking when you least expect it!  For every epidemic card, you must do the following.  You must (this is the worst) take the discard pile, shuffle it, and plop it on top of the infection deck.  This results in multiple of the same card, and more outbreaks!  The next thing you do is move the rate of infection counter up one on the track.  The higher it goes, the more infection cards you draw!  The third and final thing you do is take the three bottom cards from the infection deck, and infect each of the cities listed with THREE cubes, and then put the cards back in the deck.  These are all of the rules of Pandemic, it is a very exciting game with a lot of depth and content, and much strategy involved.  I hope I didn’t bore you do death (this review was particularly long) and I hope I inspired you to play Pandemic!  It is a sweet game, definately worth a try!  Happy gaming everyone!

-Max L

Thanks again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I am very excited to bring some new games to the club through this order. This order also fills out our collection by adding some titles we already have. This will allow more players and the ability to rent some of these games now that we have multiple copies. The games have all been selected for a reason. A few games fit nicely into a game club night. Some have been chosen for their topics that they cover. We can use them here in school to help students get a feel for what is being studied. Others have been chosen for their game mechanics. These new mechanics will keep you game club members thinking for along time. Learning new and exciting strategies as you play these games over and over to master them is quite fun. I know it is close to the end of the year and I hope many of you will continue to grow in your skills though the next few years of Middle school. Keep coming to the clubs & the camps.

Here is a list of the games we have ordered.

Players: 2-5 Time: 120 min

Players: 2-6 Time: 60 min

Players: 3-5 Time: 90 min

Players: 2-5 Time: 90 min

Players: 2-4 Time: 60 min

Players: 3-5 Time: 90 min

Players: 3-5 Time: 90 min

Players: 3-8 Time: 60 min

Players: 2-4 Time: 45 min

Players: 2-5 Time: 60 min

Players: 1-5 Time: 45 min

Players: 3-10 Time: 45 min

Players: 2-6 Time: 120 min

Expansion to Power Grid

Players: 3-5 Time: 90 min

Players: 2-6 Time: 120 min

Expansion to Railways of the World

Players: 2-8 Time: 120 min

Players: 3-7 Time: 90 min

Players: 2-4 Time: 60 min

Players: 2-5 Time: 60 min

Players: 2-5 Time: 60 min

Players: 2-2 Time: 180 min

Players: 2-4 Time: 240 min

Players: 3-6 Time: 120 min

For the game Wings of War. 60 min play time

Players: 2-4 Time: 60 min

]]> http://thirdfloorgamers.com/2010/04/28/biggest-order-ever/feed/ 10 http://thirdfloorgamers.com/2010/04/27/bohnaza-video-review/ http://thirdfloorgamers.com/2010/04/27/bohnaza-video-review/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:17:40 +0000 Minhal :) http://thirdfloorgamers.com/?p=1332 Bonanza is a good medium weight card game. It plays in 45 minutes to an hour. You can have two to seven players.  This is Minhal’s first solo video review. I think she did a great job. Thanks for all your hard work.

Have fun watching and even more fun playing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In my game there were five competitors: Max L, Minhal, Josh, Julian, and myself. Minhal got an early lead but Max and I were able to control our sleds and caught up to here in the final stretch. In fact I took the lead in the second to last round. Then I came across the finish-line with one extra move left. Next player up Minhal, with here banged up sled, lays down a card that evens out here dogs. Giving her a bonus which puts her one space ahead of me crossing the finish-line. Snatching victory right from my fingers. It was a great game and one I will not soon forget. I really enjoyed playing this one for the first time with these racers. We all had good laughs and a great time. I think I would like to have another race night one of these nights. I will have to see what you guys think.

For the Formula D races there were two winners. On one track it was Michael, Julia, Karlie, and Max H. In this race Karlie got off to a bad start, as it turns out she has a lead foot, she crashed through the first few turns, utterly destroying her car. It was a good race and I think all had fun who played. I was excited to hear that Julia, a fast and ferocious driver pulled in the victory on that track. As for the other Formula D players there was Brandon, Philip, Mark, and Chad. Philip’s car seemed to be held together by tape by the end of the race but he did finish. I was excited to see Brandon do as well as he did as it was his first time behind the wheel of a fast beast of a car like these. Philip’s amazing taped together car was the one who crossed the finish line first. Nice work!

No matter what racing game you took part in I think it is safe to say all had a good time. After the racing games were done people pulled out some filler games, Loopen Louie, Fantasy, and a new game we are testing called the Resistance. It was a good time and we all had some great laughs. Thanks for coming and having a great time at Game Club. I am still working on making this the best that USM has to offer. Lets keep working to make that true.

********** Braking News ****************

Snow Tails gets an award from Mr. Matera. I would like to honor this game and the designers with the award for the best new game piece of the year. The Big Paw! This game piece rules! I think we should use it in every game we play. It has no impact on the game, while at the same time having the most profound impact on the game. It is given to a player who is taking to long on there turn. They can’t pass it on until someone else takes longer then they did to play. Simply beautiful. I try to teach the game club member that it is important to plan your turn out a head of time. So that the game can move fast. However some students still take a considerable amount of time. This “Big Paw” is simply great!

We had J Hood, Isa, Minhal and myself playing. The first game of Court the King was a rousing game where J Hood took and early dice lead. This helped him pull out the victory in the end. In the last round Isa scored 6, ones. Then it was Minhal’s turn. She rolled and got 7, sixes. On her last die she said something that made it to our quote board, so check it out! This put me away cause the best I could have done was tie her. Then it was Julian’s (J Hood) turn. He had 10 dice to work with. He rolled them all and through his good cards and massive amounts of dice he received 10, fours. It was a great game.

The next game was Bohnanza. It is a great card game. You are trying to become the riches bean farmer.  You have two fields at the start of the game to plant your beans in. We all got busy planting our beans. It was a great time. In no time at all we had amassed a fortune. Some of us bought an extra third field, while others (me) did not. The game is funny with all sorts of pictures on the beans. Example: black bean has boxing gloves on and has a big black eye.

In the end there could only be one master bean farmer. I had 21 gold at the end. Isa had 19 gold, Minhal had 17 gold (I think) and J Hood had only 16 gold (I think). It was a close and fun game for all involved. We will have to teach the others in the club about this great game.

After that Minhal had to leave and it was down to just the three of us for the last 15 minutes. We took out one of Zach’s favorate games to play. It was Isa’s fist time on Pillage and Plunder. This is a fun stacking game where you are trying to get the most barrals stacked up on the ship. We were working as a team to see just how many we could stack up. In our first game we reached 10. It took us along time to get back to ten. We kept loosing due to my crazy placements. I would try to put them on the ends. Then we all (mainly me) tried harder. We made it up to 15! Yeah us. Then in the last round we played just to see who would win between us a knock out round. If you were the one who tips it over your out and the remaining two keep playing to see who wins. It was down to Isa and myself. She was a strong competitor but turns out no match for me.

Thanks for playing. I had a great night guys. One of my favs this year. Lots of laughs and good times with good people.

Take care,

Mr. Matera