May 21st, 2005 |
Sam had stated on Thursday that he wanted to host a Game Night at his house on Saturday, so we met and devoured most of the BBQ chicken he had cooked. We eventually sat down to play Munchkin.
| Munchkin |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Scott | 10 | 1 (Tie) | * |
| Karla | 10 | 1 (Tie) | |
| Annie | 9 | 3 | |
| Sam & Jill | 8 | 4 | * |
| Dan | 6 | 5 | |
| Mike | 5 | 6 | |
Notes: Munchkin, like most (all?) Steve Jackson Games, is entertaining in concept but lacking in gameplay. It's a clever satire on the RPG genre, but (again) takes a bit too long, and has some rules and flow that aren't inherently intuitive. I'd played twice before and kept getting corrected by Scott (whose copy this was). About 8 times he said we could or couldn't do things I thought it was okay to do, and the whole thing was herky-jerky. To be fair, a lot of these issues can be cleared up with experience, but a 6-player learning game...I'd not recommend it.
Annie and I got off to incredibly slow starts, as we were stuck on the 1st level for the first few rounds. Scott took off into Level 6 really quickly, and Karla caught up, as both of them were elves and enticed the lower level players (like Sam & Jill and Annie) into letting them help in such a way that they didn't get treasure. Everyone wanted treasure, so they frequently asked Scott and Karla (and later, Annie) to help them out.
I eventually caught up, getting a couple easy kills and some treasure, and Scott was knocked from level 8 to level 6 by Annie. (In between we had several discussions about when to play items, when you can take a card from the dungeon pile, when you can play another monster on somebody, and what you can do with face up and face down curse cards.) I was about to make a late run (by this point Annie was level 8, and Karla and Scott were level 9). I set myself up to fight two very weak monsters at once, which would have boosted me to level 7 and made my loss look worse.
Dan squelched this pathetic goal of mine and stole the monsters to fight for himself, so I hosed him back by disallowing him to fight the monsters, though he did get 2 treasure. Dan and I grumbled at each other, and his level 6 looked hardly better than my level 5.
Annie progressed to level 9, and it was the ultimate turn for Scott. He gave himself an incredibly weak monster to fight and Sam made the fight...easier for him. At this point I realized that people wanted the game to end, and I tried to find whether Karla could win the game at the same time as Scott (for she offered help and Scott accepted it). At this point, everyone wanted the game over (especially Sam & Jill, Dan, and myself) and I announced, "Let's just end it. Scott wins."
This, surprisingly, upset Karla (who is usually the first one to beg the game to end). Eventually I found the spot in the rules that says that 2 people CAN win at once, and I said, "Okay, Karla and Scott are both winners." Karla then was mad at me for trying to hose the game because I was in last.
What people don't understand is that, no matter what place I'm in, if people aren't having fun I want the game over as quickly as possible.
| Ticket to Ride |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla | 113 | 1 | |
| Dan | 110 | 2 | |
| Annie | 104 | 3 (Tie) | |
| Sam | 104 | 3 (Tie) | * |
| Scott | 71 | 5 | * |
Notes: Jill elected to watch Mad TV, so there were six of us. As I had only one 6-player game present, I'm the Boss!, an excellent game that gets a bad rap among our group, Karla bitched and moaned about it and no one else was very enthused. I grumpily put it away and took out Ticket to Ride.
Ticket to Ride is only 5 player. This means that someone had to sit out. I volunteered to sit out, because Annie loves the game, and I wanted Sam and Scott to play it. Karla insisted that I should play and I said no.
I had everyone play with the Ticket to Ride Europe variant, in which I divided the long routes from the small routes and gave everyone one chance to get a long route. Scott elected not to take his long route, but everyone else did. The game went pretty normally, with Sam focusing on the east coast and everyone else starting out west. Karla quickly broke up her track and was no longer going for the longest route. Scott, Annie, and Dan really butted heads out west and in the Rockies.
Sam had a nice string of trains going, though he was diverted from Kansas City by a predictable play by Dan, which he cursed over. Scott was last to get going and it ended up costing him a route. So he focused from about mid-game on big chunks of tracks (hopefully) connected to his established tracks. He managed a couple 6-train routes, but never did make a run at longest route.
Dan selected tickets a couple times and made them all. When the game ended (at the whim of Annie), Karla and Scott were vying for first place at around 71 points, with Annie, Sam, then Dan. Scott revealed that his two tickets canceled each other out (both were 13, and he only made one). He said the fact that he was blocked off from Santa Fe so quickly scared him from taking more tickets. Dan made all 5 of his tickets, and Karla made 3 tickets, Sam 2, Annie 3. There was close competition for longest route, and Sam took it, 39 to Annie's 35 to Scott's 34 to Dan's 33 to Karla's 28. This bumped him into a tie for 3rd.
After Ticket to Ride, it was midnight, we were all tired, and we went home.