Our league at Wonko’s in North Austin has turned into a smashing success. The league is now full with 20 players, and everyone has been having a great time.
Current score results for round 1 are…
| Name | Score | Rank |
| Peter H | 400 | A |
| Daniel S | 400 | B |
| Carl D | 400 | B |
| Andrew H | 350 | C |
| Travis H | 350 | C |
| Hunter G | 300 | B |
| Kevin S | 250 | C |
| Joel C | 250 | C |
| Chris P | 250 | C |
| Matt S | 200 | C |
| Mario L | 200 | C |
| Chris J | 200 | C |
| Julie P | 200 | D |
| Eric D | 150 | B |
| Matt J | 150 | C |
| Felix F | 100 | D |
| Wyatt F | 100 | E |
We are having so much fun with our puny little 4-man board game tournament that we want to expand a little. We have had some new players interested in joining in on game night, but we just didn’t have the room. We solved that problem…
The Geek Game Night League of Ultimate Combat Except Instead of Ultimate Combat We Play Board Games!
For our next tournament season, starting 8/12, we are opening up our board game league to 20 players. Eric, the owner of Wonko’s Toys & Games in Austin, was nice enough to offer to extend his store hours and host our game league.
The schedule
Preliminary, no points recorded – 8/12 7pm – 10pm
Round 1 – 8/26 7pm – 10pm
Round 2 – 9/9 7pm – 10pm
Round 3 – 9/23 7pm – 10pm
Round 4 – 10/7 7pm – 10pm
Round 5 – 10/21 7pm – 10pm
It’s $10 to join for the season, and the first 20 players get in so head over to Wonko’s (I mean in real life, not their website) and sign up!
If you have any questions, either contact us on twitter or e-mail me at: 
The game of choice for this week was another Steve Jackson game, Frag. It’s what you would get if you mixed Quake 3 with Clue.
Session Report: Frag
I think the best way to sum up frag is a quote straight from the Steve Jackson Frag website…
Game starts. Enemy in sight . . . Frag him! Grab his stuff! Run! Get a bigger gun! Grab some armor! There he is again! Frag him! Run . . . you’re hit! You’re down. Respawn! Grab a weapon! Start again!
You run around shooting people, grabbing weapons and gadgets along the way. When you die, you respawn in a random location and do it all over again. First person to a set number of kills wins.
When you begin the game, each character allocates 7 points between their stats (health, speed, and accuracy). Each stat basically affects what you would think. Each player is randomly dealt one gadget, one weapon, and one special card. Special cards are quite powerful and only obtained at the start of the game and when you frag someone. Each player then places their characters on one of the respawn tiles and you are ready to frag!
During a player’s turn, they may (in any order) move, shoot, use equipment, pick up new equipment, or play specials. As for moving, you roll a d6 for every point of speed your character has. If your speed is 2, roll 2d6, then move that many tiles. As far as shooting goes, roll a d6 for each point you have in accuracy, and that’s how far you can shoot. If it falls short of an enemy, it’s a miss. If it’s a hit, then it’s time to roll for damage. Each weapon has different damage mechanics. Typically, you will roll a certain number of d6, and your opponent will roll a d6 for each health point he has. Do a little math, and the damage is decided.
For our first game, we played to three frags. Kevin got off to a nice start by fragging Matt. After Matt respawned in my vicinity, he attempted to frag me. Once he scored a hit on me, I played the “No Carrier” card on him which instantly fragged him instead. Didn’t I say the special cards were powerful? A bit later, Andrew attempted to torch Kevin with the flamethrower, but Kevin played the “Auto Miss” card. Near the end of the game, Andrew picked up the portable nuke weapon, and we all gazed in horror. However, before he managed to use it, Kevin snagged his final frag to win. Kevin was the only player to get any frags in the game.
For our second and final game, we played to five frags. The game got off to an interesting start as Matt played the “Magic Bullet” card (which allowed him to shoot at multiple targets) and launched a portable nuke at Kevin and Dan. Dan was fragged many times over, but Kevin survived and only took 2 damage. The flamethrower was a very hot commodity in this game. My shining moment was when I linked an assault cannon with a flamethrower for 11d6 damage to Kevin, thus fragging him. My victory was short lived as I was fragged soon after by Andrew (with the help of Kevin), and I continued to bounce around spawning points getting fragged until the match was over. Near the end of the match, Dan and Matt were geared to the teeth, making them quite difficult to approach and expect to succeed. I got a few final shots off at Dan in an attempt to win the game, but it was completely futile. Kevin ended up fragging Andrew for the win in the this match as well.
Game two looked something like this:
| Player | K | D |
| Kevin | 5 | 3 |
| Matt | 4 | 2 |
| Andrew | 4 | 6 |
| Hunter | 4 | 6 |
| Dan | 1 | 1 |
Frag was great. At times, it’s a little unforgiving as getting fragged late in the game can set you back quite a bit. Since our second game was so long and produced some incredibly powerful players later in the game, I would recommend sticking to the normal 3 frags to win games and just play several of those. Those matches seem to last between 15 and 30 minutes, and there are some extra tournament rules in the game that allow winners to add an extra point to their stats.
Overall score for the night
1st (300 points): Kevin
2nd (66 points): Matt
2nd (66 points): Andrew
2nd (66 points): Hunter
5th (0 points): Dan
With Matt gone, it made a lot of sense to try out Pandemic, a four-player cooperative board game.
In Pandemic, you play a member of the CDC combating disease outbreaks throughout the world. The world is on the edge of a biological disaster, and it’s up to your team to keep the viruses at bay.
Session Report: Pandemic
The game plays in a very interesting way. Like any other board game, you take turns doing your actions and moving your piece, but this one is a little different. Since there is a major group effort underway, there is always a discussion regarding what the next course of action will be. Even though you have the final say on where your piece moves, every turn is more of a group effort. Everyone will typically be throwing out their thoughts on what the best course of action for the team as a whole should be.
There are five roles total, and each player has his own specific skill that the rest of the players lack. The researcher can give cards to other players easily, the dispatcher can move players around the board, the scientist can cure diseases more easily, the medic is the best at fighting outbreaks, and the operations expert can build research stations easily. Since there are five roles and only four players, one role is always left out. That means one important part of the team is always missing which will have a major effect on your overall strategy. Each player can still perform the duties of the other roles; it’s just at a higher cost. Think of the roles as specialists.
At thirty to forty-five minutes, the game plays rather fast, and setup is simple. A turn consists of a player taking up to four actions, drawing 2 cards from the player deck, and then drawing from the infection deck. The infection deck determines where the viruses are spreading. If too many viruses (over 3) occupy any one city, an outbreak occurs, and the disease begins to spread to other cities. This can sometimes cause a chain reaction where one outbreak will trigger another outbreak.
The goal of the game is to come up with a cure for each of the four viruses on the board. You do this by utilizing your cards effectively.
This game is all about coming up with the best solutions as a group. You will find yourselves having to adapt to new situations very often. After your own turn, you will have already formulated your next course of action in your head. However, by the time your turn makes it back around, new disasters even more urgent than your previous plans have probably cropped up.
The first two games we played, we did rather poorly. We lost due to massive outbreaks in Asia and the Middle East. It was time for us to go home and call it a night, but we were having such a good time with this game we didn’t want to stop. We wanted to win!
Our third game went much better. The world was being devoured by disease, but we always managed to stomp out the hot-spots right at the last possible moment. We were set to win the game in two more turns, but we lost when someone drew an epidemic card and ushered in a new wave of new outbreaks.
