More Board Games

Folks were in town this weekend, so many games were played.  I probably don't remember them all, but here are some that I do:

• Pandemic: We played with three normal players and a malicious bioterrorist player.  I drew the Generalist for my role, and quite liked it.  We did pretty well, with cures for two normal diseases and the bioterrorists's disease, and another cure forthcoming, but ultimately lost as usual by running out of cubes during the last epidemic.  The bioterrorist made the game take longer, but all involved remarked that it was somewhat more satisfying to lose to a human than to the unyielding and impassive system.
• Bang: I do not make a very convincing deputy, especially when I am actually the deputy.
• Flashpoint: We actually saved almost everyone before the building collapsed, despite drawing through all the dummy markers / not-people tokens.  My first successful game of Flashpoint, though I did get blown up by explosions three or four times.  I continue to like the Generalist.
• Hanabi: One perfect game with four? players.  Then we decided to quit, because we weren't going to be able to outdo ourselves.
• War on Terror: Not a great simulation, and not a very playable game, but sort of amusing.  General consensus was "would not play again."
• Tsuro: New to me.  We played one regular game and one game with the optional dragons-who-eat-everything.  The more players are still in the game, the more disruptive the dragons get, leading to a chaotic early game and a relatively sedate endgame.
• Sentinels: Played one game as Knyfe, in which I was killed but we ultimately won, and one as Ra, in which we won fairly handily.  I rather liked both Knyfe and Ra; direct damage is pleasingly direct.
• Race for the Galaxy: We played much faster than I'm used to; I failed to track what other people were doing and take advantage by leeching actions.  Had a decent military start with New Sparta, Mercenary Fleet, and Imperium Troops but failed to turn it into points very well.  Did poorly as a result.
• Power Grid: Managed second place of six by pushing for endgame a turn earlier than most other players were prepared for, despite it being my first game and competing in close proximity with another player during the early game.  Might shouldn't've stockpiled as many resources as I did; I tended to keep a turn's worth of resources in reserve, by buying when they were cheap, but probably could've just kept one or two resources available to reduce the cost of resource price spikes and then reinvested the rest.  The resource market presented a very intuitive and playable model of supply and demand; well done.
• King of Tokyo + Expansion(s): I sat this one out, but the evolutions from the expansion made it look like something I might enjoy slightly more.