April 16th, 2005 |
After a picnic and barbecue, I invited everyone who was in town to come by to play some games. Rakesh had to watch Arman, though, and Sam and Jill were moving stuff to Kenosha. Scott didn't make it, but Jamie, Dan and birthday girl Annie came by, though, and we had good fun for awhile (until things got bitter playing Killer Bunnies).
| Settlers of the Stone Age |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 10 | 1 | |
| Jamie | 7 | 2 | * |
| Annie | 6 | 3 | |
| Mike | 5 | 4 | |
Notes: It was Jamie's first time ever playing a settlers type game, and he really liked the resource distribution. The game started out very even, with everyone getting out of Africa at a pretty good clip, and the deserts tended to affect Annie and Jamie more than Dan or myself. In fact, my resources in Africa were so good that I had to stop building new camps so that I could keep them around.
Jamie managed to get the 2 point exploration tile first, but eventually lost it to Dan, who also managed to get into America first and followed quickly after Annie. Dan was getting more goods than everyone else, mostly because his Africa areas were productive until late in the game and he took the best campsites. There were three factors that helped him do this: 1) Jamie was unfamiliar with the game and didn't grab the best places early on - though he did grab some much better campsites later (Jamie's always a very quick study), 2) I was low on meat early and couldn't get camps built very early, and 3) Annie built campsites indiscriminately. In fact, she built the very first extra-Africa campsite in a spot that only produced bones on rolls of 2 and 4. It was essentially a waste of a resources to build it. She would have been much better off upgrading her scout speed and grabbing a good flint campsite, which was nearby.
So, Dan managed to get huge heaps of cards. So did Jamie, though Jamie was hit with the dreaded "7" roll a couple times. I made one big move in mid-game, but a couple of rounds of very little production slowed my progress. Though I was always just one behind Dan in the exploration tiles and had the quickest scouts, I never did upgrade my construction or clothing enough to get enough good tiles. Plus, I was short on meat for some reason late. Another problem was that I was scared not to build new campsites. My Africa sites were still productive, but I felt I was only a turn away from having them turned into deserts - it never happened. So I usually ended up using resources to build new campsites which were less productive than the Africa ones they replaced. (Dan had taken the best spots in Asia and Australia before I could muster the meat or construction capacity to visit them.)
In the end, Dan had a ton of cards and never lost them, and though Jamie was close on his heals and, if given one extra turn, might have taken the Exploration card from him, Dan managed to build a camp for his 8th point. This wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't already had a caucasian, asian, and australian chip. The Native American chip made him the first to all four races, and he zipped to 10 points and the victory.
There were hardly any "7"s rolled all game. Had it come up a bit more often, it would have kept Dan in check down the stretch a bit and given Annie and myself more of a chance. Though I felt I was in the odd Catch-22 of needing to build camps to gain more points but at the expense of resources. There was also more trading in this game. We'll have to play it with four people more often.
| For Sale |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | $72,000 | 1 | |
| Karla | $56,000 | 2 | |
| Dan | $47,000 | 3 | * |
| Jamie | $46,000 | 4 | |
| Annie | $41,000 | 5 | * |
Notes: Next we played the quick as a whistle For Sale, and I absolutely dusted everybody. I didn't really have the greatest cards, but I avoided paying full price for any of the properties, and I manipulated the cardplay to almost perfection. I took 2nd twice when I wanted second, won first 3 times when I probably had no right to, and on the one tile that I knew I'd get low, I still managed about $5000.
My checks were incredible: $15,000, $14,000, $14,000, $12,000, $9000, $5000. Everyone was shocked. Karla said, "I thought you were totally sucking!"
| Ra |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 43 | 1 | |
| Dan | 29 | 2 | |
| Annie | 27 | 3 | |
| Karla | 23 | 4 (Tie) | |
| Jamie | 23 | 4 (Tie) | |
Notes: After my glorious For Sale victory, redemption was mine after a game of Ra. We played the correct way, which is a once-around bidding process, rather than a "last man standing" process. I felt that the game was pretty much the same, though it did force some tougher decisions. Annie, who always overpays for stuff, really overpaid when we played the right way, almost always to Dan's detriment. If you'll look at some previous reports of our plays of Ra, I tend to complain that I had things set up nicely, only to have my plans crushed by a silly play. Well, this time, Dan was the one hosed by panic play, as his very careful moves were destroyed by Annie. (To his credit, he still managed 2nd place!)
The first round was pretty even. I managed a Civ tile, and I just barely managed to tie Dan for the lead in pharaohs. Jamie managed a lot of monuments and had a couple rivers. Annie finished just barely in second in pharaohs, and Dan also netted a couple extra points from a god tile. No one really had any monuments though except for Jamie and Karla. Karla had the fewest pharaohs. I liked what I did that round, but was frustrated that Dan also did so well.
In the second round, Dan had weaker tiles, so he invoked Ra frequently. Annie, out of panic and a desire for a Civ tile, bid her 16 chip on a grand total of TWO tiles. It looked like Dan was going to get two critical tiles (a pharaoh and a Civ) for one (as I only had a 10 left and was unsure whether I should bid on it) and Jamie only had his 11, Karla a 12 and a 15. But Annie inexplicably took it, crushing Dan's hopes. I managed a very nice set of monuments and a couple pharaohs when a drought chip came up, scaring off Jamie and Karla (who had about 5 or 6 river tiles apiece). I only had one river tile, so I didn't really care. I needed to keep the pharaoh lead, and the monuments boosted my total up to 6 (I had only 1 from the first round and had scooped up a couple more in the second). Still, Dan, despite his weak bidding chips, managed to get a god, civ, and gold. Still, he was weak in rivers and monuments, and though he was still close, he didn't lost his tie on the pharaoh lead with me. Annie managed it though and got the 5 points. Jamie was in last and lost 2. He and Karla were both in the same boat: rivers and monuments.
In the third round, I again had decent bidding chips, though Dan again made a run after my pharaoh lead. Still, in one bid I managed to pick up a god tile and my seventh monument, and in another bid, I scooped up my eighth monument. I also had decent bidding chips, so I was sure to avoid the -5 bid chip penalty. I soon used my god tile to grab a civ tile, and I was done for the round, pleased but worried. Annie didn't have good collection of stuff, and Karla's monuments had faded though she avoided civ and pharaoh penalties. Jamie had monuments and rivers, but he ended up with a lot of penalties all game, mostly in pharaohs and, in the last round, a civ.
So I still felt Dan could beat me. He had managed to tie me in pharaohs and was trying to get a three of a kind in two different monuments. In fact, at one point, he could have grabbed a three of a kind, but it would have been at the expense of two other monuments. He was the only one left in at this point, and chose to push his luck, or "greed it up." There were 2 ra tiles left in the stacks, though, and only 6 or 7 tiles total, so his chance at getting a pharaoh before a Ra tile appeared was slim to none. Make it none. Dan got nothing in greed - he drew a useless monument, a Ra tile, and the last Ra tile to end the game. In addition, Dan didn't manage a civ in the 3rd round. It was refreshing to see Dan sink to my level of ineffectiveness at "greeding."
So, my three time pharaoh lead and my huge monument bonuses, plus not once getting penalized, rocketed me to a 14 point victory. It was a glorious win.
| Killer Bunnies |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Jamie | Magic Carrot | 1 | |
| Mike | 1 Carrot | 2 | |
| Dan | No Bunnies | 3 (Tie) | |
| Annie | No Bunnies | 3 (Tie) | |
Notes: We were all pretty tanked, so we played some Killer Bunnies to finish off the night. It was a gruesome game. There were a few main themes:
1) Jamie had the Heavenly Halo all game
2) Dan and I were even-keeled and tried to help each other all game
3) Annie kept getting hit with bad stuff and was angry all game
Jamie was even-keeled, too, but that's because he had an bunny that couldn't get killed. There was a lot of death and destruction, mostly aimed at Annie and Dan. I managed to buy a bunch of Defense cards early on and that deterred a lot of weapons from coming after me. Then the Weapon shop closed down and I couldn't buy any more.
Annie managed to acquire about 6 carrots, and I had 4. Jamie had 4, too, and Dan had three. Then Jamie played the Carrot Thief card, rolled #16, which I had, and I had to return the rest of my carrots to Kaballa. I never acquired any money after that and had to sell a bunny to Dan just so that I'd have one carrot for the end game.
Other major things that happened...
-Dan took a carrot, but grabbed the top carrd from the "magic carrot" deck, revealing Abu. He had Abu, so his punishment was to lose the carrot rather than re-shuffle the whole magic carrot deck.
- Jamie played the F-14 hornet and his bunnnies traveled around the circle, managing to wipe out all my bunnies (including a triple specialty bunny!). My defense cards totaled to 17 and the hornet had a strength of...18! When the hornet killed Dan's bunny, the aliens came and abducted Jamie's other new bunny, replacing Dan's three abducted bunnies in the mothership, so Dan endedup getting all his bunnies back.
- Though I would have liked to have bought a new bunny, Jamie had closed the pawn shop (I hate it when people close the pawn shop!)
- Dan used two supplies surprise cards twicce in a row (each!) after I traded the blue pawn to him for some cash. This got him a few more Dollas.
- Annie lost bunny after bunny, then, when Jamie flipped over a weapon card or feed the bunny card, she said, "Kill Mike! Kill Mike!" She would also interchange, "Kill Dan! Kill Dan!"
Finally, at the end of the game, we flipped over the zodiac card, and it turned out to be one of the cards that Jamie had. This meant he got to move a bunny around the circle. Dan and I had one bunny each, but whereas I had 1 carrot, Dan had about 5 or 6. (Annie was already bunny-less) So Jamie took Dan's bunny. The carrots of Dan and Annie (totaling about 10 or 11) were now up for the person with the most Kaballas, and Jamie had one to my zero. Jamie had an 18 out of 19 chance of winning. (See above for why not 19 out of 20).
Annie insisted on flipping the carrots one at a time, but my lone carrot appeared on the second flip. Zoink! The remaining 17 cards now all belonged to Jamie. You can imagine my chagrin when it was revealed that the bottom card was the Pirate, the very card Jamie received when he played the Carrot Thief card.
Dan spent the rest of the night before leaving trying to calm Annie down in a goofy way. What added to Annie's frustration was that even when something went wrong for me or Dan, we shrugged it off without getting upset. To be fair, Annie's bunnies really didn't last very long. At least Dan and I would get to make a couple turns for a while. Annie would get a bunny and it would frequently die before she could Choose a Carrot. It also hurts Annie that she won't trade. I was offering to give her a bunny for very cheap, and she kept refusing simply out of spite - or perhaps because she had a soon to be killed bunny coming through her Run cards.
I still enjoy this silly game.