April 30th, 2005 |
We made it over to Dan's for a few games Saturday night, just before a hail filled May Day. Scott, who had blunted his senses on Absinthe the night before, made it despite only 4 hours of sleep.
| Betrayal at House on the Hill |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | Immortal, Opened the Gates to Hell | 1 | |
| Scott | Died when Gates Opened | 2 (Tie) | * |
| Dan | Died when Gates Opened | 2 (Tie) | |
| Karla | Sacrificed to Open Gates | 2 (Tie) | |
| Annie | Died when forced to give up Amulet | 2 (Tie) | |
Notes: We journeyed to the mysterious mansion at the top of the hill and walked around for a while. Annie managed to find a magic amulet, which boosted all her stats by one. Then Ox (Mike) found some nasty dirt, and after miserably failing his Might roll (despite rolling 5 dice, I still managed a 0), he started choking on the nasty stuff. Jasper (Dan) found the library, the Father (Scott) found the Mystic Elevator and ended up in the basement. Heather (Annie) stumbled through the Junk Room and found the Cathedral, boosting her sanity. Then, after a failed attempt to free Jasper from some spider webs, Madame Zostra (Karla) triggered the Haunt on only the 6th Omen.
It was to be...HAUNT 42, and Ox (Mike) was the traitor!
The house immediately made the dirt fade away, and Ox felt invigorated. He plucked an axe from the hands of a nearby suit of armor and made to accomplish his goal: to open the gates of hell by sacrificing an enemy! There was some sort of statue nearby, but it hardly looked dangerous.
Ox was immediately and critically helped by Madame Zostra (Karla), who flipped over an event card that made someone have to give up an item to some woman in a mirror. Since no one had an item except for Heather (Annie), she gave up her amulet, which had two very bad repercussions for the "good guys." (1) Losing the amulet cost Annie 3 of each trait, killing her, and (2) the amulet was needed to trigger the statue, which was the only hope for defeating the now immortal Ox, who was a veritable killing machine, with his 6 might and the axe.
Things went from bad to worse for the non-traitors, as the Father (Scott) happened upon the Chasm, one of the three chambers Ox needed in which he could throw his sacrifice (the others being the Catacombs and the Pentagram chamber). Now Ox just needed to kill somebody and drag his or her corpse down to the basement.
Ox quickly tracked down Madame Zostra (Karla) and killed her. As he announced that he would be taking her corpse, Jasper said, "Hey, whatever floats your boat." Still, he needed to find a way to the basement, as the only way down there was through the mystic elevator, which was still in the basement with the Father. Jasper and the Father searched frantically for the triggering devices, and Ox, in the very next room, found the Collapsed Floor, and stumbled down into the basement. He was now mere moments away from his sacrifice.
The Father panicked and abandoned the basement via the Mystic Elevator, leaving Ox to perform his evil deed in peace. It took four tries before his invocation finally unlocked the gates of damnation, and the Father's Spirit Board, despite giving him a view of the next room in the house, though helpful, didn't guarantee the arrival of one of the trigger items, which, as I recall, were the candle, the axe (which they could have taken from me if they had gotten incredibly lucky), the amulet (which was gone forever to the mirror woman), and the book. The candle and the book were actually omen cards.
The game was (again) a bit hindered by the fact that the Haunt started too quickly. The house was only a little bit explored (maybe 10 or 12 rooms) before the Haunt began. The Statue was the key, and would have slowly destroyed Ox, as it lowered all stats by one for him every time it spent a round in the same room. Given Ox's poor understanding of supernatural rituals, the long time it took him to actually accomplish the ceremony quite likely would have given the statue enough time to do him in. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, the group lost their triggering device and lost to the treacherous Ox.
| Amun-Re |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 44 | 1 | |
| Annie | 34 | 2 | |
| Karla | 30 | 3 | |
| Mike | 29 | 4 (Tie) | |
| Scott | 29 | 4 (Tie) | * |
Notes: Scott was game enough to try another one he hadn't played before, and pretty much kept up for a while, though he abandoned the pyramid strategy in the second round.
Everything started off pretty much okay for me, as my first two provinces were very useful and I was able to get a good deal of cash. In the third round I went for a pretty cruddy province (Mendes, which only has 6 slots for farmers and absolutely nothing else) just to get the 3 VP bonus card. I did manage to get the 2 temple province as well. The harvest never netted more the 2 points all game, so despite all my farmers I never did have an overweening amount of cash. Annie went crazy in Memphis and built three pyramids there, and then Dan went crazy in Berenike and built 3 pyramids there. Rather than waste my money on pyramids, I tried to save it up. Karla had a pretty non-descript Old Kingdom, and Annie undermined hers a bit by not getting a complete set of pyramids despite having the most pyramids on the one side of the Nile.
After the first round, the scores were: Dan 14, Mike 12, Scott 10, Annie 9, Karla 9.
The second round was odd. The first few provinces flipped over were all cruddy for first rounders. None of them had slots for more than 2 farmers, and three of them were the camel provinces. Dan managed to get Berenike again, which gave him the lead in pyramids on that side once more, and his province wasn't reliant on camels for trade, it simply netted 8.
In the next phase, the much desired Memphis came up for auction. As it had 3 pyramids already and two bricks to the buyer, everyone wanted it. Karla bid 6 and put the space blocker card on it, but Dan bid 15 anyway, scaring everyone off. I went for some cheaper spot that fulfilled my power card (All on one side of the nile). Scott bid 21 for the double temple province, scaring Karla off from that. I now felt that Dan was going to kill us, as he already had 2 provinces with 3 pyramids each, and though he wasn't going to kill us with cash, he had enough of it. Plus, I was getting crappy provinces that weren't getting me any money. I also was forsaking giving money to the harvest because I had a very important camel province, and without that income I'd be really in the hole. If it hadn't been for the bonus income cards I was netting (the +1 per farmer and the 8 gold), I'd have really been bad. I also foolishly bid three on Thebes, which was the one province from the first half of the game that didn't have any pyramids. So I had to spend just to get it up to one complete set!
In the final auction, Dan managed (again!) to get the province with the most pyramids, Amarna, which I had given 2 + 1 brick in the Old Kingdom. (To add insult to injury, it also has a temple.) Dan wagered 10 for it and put down his blocking card, and no one wanted it for 21. I went (again) for nigh-worthless Mendes, which at least had a farmer in it. I also thought I'd get enough cash to get a few VPs for cash at the end of the game, but I was fooled. Scott, who hadn't spent a dime on pyramids in the second half, managed a bunch of temples in the second round (I believe he had 3 of them), but he also kept using the -3 card, even on the last turn when he could have (and should have tried) to boost his temple point total.
In fact, Karla and Scott used the -3 every time, which isn't a good idea. It's okay to use once or twice, but it's a bad every turn strategy, as it allows your opponents to get 1, 2, or 3 goodies for nothing (which was the case for me in the Old Kingdom and Dan in the New Kingdom). Plus, Scott had all those temples, so he should have been boosting it anyway. The final craziness (as I haplessly watched Dan create 4(!) sets of pyramids across his three provinces) was when the money was revealed (and Dan had a huge lead) to show that Karla had 61 gold coins! That could have created probably a whole set of pyramids, but Karla hardly had any. My 31 gold at the end of the game was useless, as Scott and Annie each had 39.
I get a pardon, because I earned 30 of my 31 on my last turn, but no one else netted more than 25 or 26. Why didn't they spend it on catching up with Dan? I'll never know. Kudos to Dan, though, for playing brilliantly. He didn't fall into my two traps: (1) buying worthless provinces by over-focusing on the bonus cards and (2) using the -3 card too much. (As a meta-game note, Dan really hates the -3 card, and he hates that it can be re-used.)
Dan really bid well on the provinces and followed a simple plan (get lots of pyramids in the New Kingdom) to victory. I was too concerned with my power cards and forgot the damned pyramids at one point, but the lack of money in the first round of the New Kingdom was odd and also knocked me for a loop. No one else played particularly well, so Dan smooshed us.
Both Dan and Annie stated that we should play this game a lot more. (Probably because I never win.)
There is a really funny session report at the 'geek everyone in the world should read. It's by Joe Gola, who devotes more time to his reports than I do.
| Bohnanza |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 18 | 1 | |
| Scott | 16 | 2 | |
| Karla | 14 | 3 | |
| Annie | 13 | 4 | |
| Dan | 12 | 5 | |
Notes: We played Dan's copy of Bohnanza and I won. Karla was hosed at one point when she was forced to create a 3rd bean field just to plant a garden bean, as the other 5 Garden Bean cards were all buried in Scott's and my own piles. No one else built a third field, and everyone was incredibly generous to one another, as we made donation after donation. Dan would use early donations as leverage in later deals. For instance, he once gave Annie two stink beans for free, and when she wanted to trade a wax for a blue bean later, Dan said, "C'mon, I GAVE you two stink beans," and she felt pressured into giving him 2 wax.
I also was the beneficiary of a lot of donating and I capitalized. One thing that happened was I cleared out a row of my beans to plant the first one in my hand, but I forgot to plant it and drew my two cards, one of which happened to be a green bean. As the card I was supposed to have planted was a green bean, I drew the card from my hand and planted it. This shocked everyone, as one cannot plant a bean from one's hand after flipping the two cards, so I had to meticulously explain and the re-do my move in slow motion to explain how it worked. Dan still called it cheating after I had (pretty much) mollified everyone's horror.
I simply had better beans all game. Whereas everyone was trading wax, blue, and chili, I was getting red, cocoa, green, and garden beans for lesser beans.