Lee's an amazing woman who has tried a vast number of the boardgames and card games in my collection. Recently we've been getting some gaming on Wednesday evenings up at the church while the girls are in free child care. In the last 3 weeks, we've played as follows:
San Juan - an old standby for us. We can burn through a game quickly and easily and still have a conversation during play. At the same time, we're still enjoying it. If a fire destroyed my game collection today, I'd buy a replacement copy of San Juan tomorrow.
Pandemic - Lee hadn't tried this one yet, and I've been working toward getting this on the table for about 2 months. We played the introductory scenario with open hands using the Dispatcher and Researcher roles, and won quite easily. The whole thing didn't gel as a game experience for her. My rating for Pandemic is dropping as it is starting to feel a little scripted; it also doesn't help that I keep being the most experienced player at a table of newbies. I am going to put my copy in a Math Trade on BGG and see what happens - if it trades for something I really want, fine, if not, no loss.
Race For The Galaxy - I recently acquired this and the expansion in a trade brokered through Boardgamegeek, which was a big score for me. I'm a huge Tom Lehmann fan (and since he co-designed San Juan, Lee's sort of one as well) and have enjoyed RftG on 2 other occasions. This was a no-brainer to pick up; the fact that I got the expansion in the trade as well was an awesome bonus. For those of you wondering, I traded off Cuba, which I bought from RJ for $5. Even figuring in postage, this was a definite win.
In any case, Lee did a great job learning the game, which definitely is two levels more complex than San Juan. I had the most trouble with explaining the Consume power, because Lee's tableau was such that we didn't pick the role until both of us had 2 planets with Consume powers, and when we did fire it, we picked Consume-Trade and Consume-x2 VP at the same time. She did have a handle on it by the end of the game, and even won. She said she wasn't sure if the extra complexity was worth it, but would play again. Overall, it was a lot of fun.
BONUS ADDITIONAL CONTENT: Wow, there is a lot of air inside the admittedly-already-small Race for the Galaxy:The Gathering Storm expansion box. It's got two special dice, a double-sided placard used for different things, some cardboard victory point squares, and a small deck of cards. Oh, and the rules. Glad I got this in a trade or I'm uncertain I would have gone for it. Guess it would depend on how much Racing for that particular Galaxy we had already been doing. I also haven't cracked open the deck of cards yet to see what awesomeness lies within. I may throw this into the Math Trade on BGG as well and see if I can trade up with it.
