July 7th, 2005 |
Game Night started by about 7 tonight, as Jim was first to arrive and told us the sad news about his 15-year old cat, Klaxo. It was a sad story and Karla and I wish for Klaxo's last days to be happy ones, so give your hopes and prayers for Klaxo's chemotherapy to do the trick.
| Boomtown |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Jim | 119 | 1 | * |
| Mike | 101 | 2 | |
| Karla | 68 | 3 | |
Notes: I wanted to play Boomtown correctly, so I pulled it out and we went gold-hunting in the old west. Dan and Annie were coming soon, so I pulled out 15 cards to shorten the game.
I quickly became the mayor of Cold Mountain, and Karla eventually got Cactus Junction as she passed me. She was also grabbing just enough Cold Mountain cards to give me (as mayor of Cold Mountain) more and more cash.
Jim slowly grabbed Coyote City and San Narciso cards, and Karla kept yelling at me for saying "Nar-seeso" (It's Nar-chee-so!) until Jim sided with me. I was usually winning the auctions I wanted, and Karla rarely bid more than 3 chips on anything. At one point I made a perfect buy. I had a Danger! mine, and I picked up the Telegraph. I immediately rolled snake eyes, meaning that my mine would collapse, so I used the telegraph to save my mine and used the roll to instead get more money! That was pretty opportune.
I was the definite early and mid-round leader: I had plenty of cash and lots of very productive mines. I was also producing pretty frequently. I was taking about half the auctions, with Jim and Karla getting their cards and mines for very very cheap. Karla did manage to get the mayorship Dry Gulch.
Towards the end, the deck was stacked in Jim's favor. He, as mayor of Coyote City and San Narciso, had increasing stacks of mines, which grew from 3 to 4 to 5, and Karla and I were either stuck taking crappy mines (with 1 to 3 gold chips on them) or bidding like mad to take the action cards, which consisted of a Stagecoach Robbery, a Card Shark, and a Hold up. I managed the hold up (against Jim, choosing 7 and missing) and the card shark, but Jim raised the bid ridiculously on the stagecoach so I ducked out of it. Karla and I kept forking over money to Jim.
Karla was really hurt by the mayors. She paid me for Cold Mountain several times (and called me a dick and a jerk at least three times when I took her money) and only managed a little cash from her mayorship of Cactus Junction. There were hardly any Dry Gulch cards drawn.
In the end, we added up our mines. I had high point mines, as did Karla, but Jim had a tremendous stack of chips. In the end, his chips beat out my mines - I also had 1 mayor to his 2.
| Player | Chips | Mine Gold | Mayor Points | Total |
| Jim | 70 | 39 | 10 | 119 |
| Mike | 48 | 48 | 5 | 101 |
| Karla | 12 | 46 | 10 | 68 |
I tried to think of what I did to fail. For one, I missed with my hold up, which would have changed the score to 112 to 108. Other than that, perhaps I should not have bid so much for things, as my money would usually go to Jim. Still, Jim really had the market cornered near the end, where he could bid up the auctions and profit mightily as Karla and I tried to avoid bad things.
Of the 15 cards I discarded, both saloons and the dancing girls were gone! So we never got to use them.
| Shadows Over Camelot |
| Results | ||||
| Player | Character | Role | Result | First Time? |
| Jim | King Arthur | Loyal | Won, Alive | * |
| Dan | Sir Tristan | Loyal | Won, Alive | |
| Karla | Sir Percival | Loyal | Won, Alive | |
| Mike | Sir Kay | Loyal | Won, Alive | |
| Annie | Sir Gawain | Loyal | Won, Alive | |
Notes: Karla really wanted to try this again (as did Dan. "I was secretly hoping we'd play it again."), so I explained the rules to Jim over a boisterous conversation about War of the Worlds.
I started the game by warning everybody about the siege engines. We played pretty well, but I think we were a little too
loose with our discussions. I'll lay out a few ground rules here about card discussion:
- No mentioning card numbers or types.
>
- No saying, "It's high" or "low" or "midddle."
- No saying, "I'll need help later, but noot now."
- You can say what you intend to do and giive advice on where to go next. E.g. "I'm going to fight the siege engines!"
That's about it. Jim only broke the first rule once (at the beginning), but we did break the other two a couple times.
Also, we are a bit loose with Arthur. Usually he asks, "Can someone help me?" and someone volunteers, and they make a
trade. This seems fair to me, but some people on boardgamegeek.com think this is bogus. I'll look into it.
Karla begged us to play without the traitor, which seemed a good idea, since Jim was new and we lost the last time. Anyway, we remembered to exchange cards at the beginning and Sir Kay grabbed a couple grails. King Arthur took some numbered cards and Sir Percival took a special card. Then the knights split up. King Arthur left to fight the Picts while everyone else collected cards, with Gawain reveling in his extra card. Fear of the siege engines led to many lives being lost and many black cards being played, but the damage was spread pretty evenly.
Arthur began the fight against the Picts and Sir Percival joined him. Sirs Kay and Gawain headed for the Grail while Sir Tristan remained at Camelot, hoarding cards like a crazy person. Sir Percival soon realized that he was useless against the Picts and returned to Camelot to gather more cards. Sirs Kay succeeded on his Grail Quest for as long as he could to establish a solid presence there as Sir Gawain returned to Camelot.
Sir Percival went on the quest for Excalibur and Sir Tristan left to find Lancelot's Armor. Sir Kay returned to Camelot and began to fret over the amount of siege engines gathering there, but he was short on lives and wanted to succeed on a quest before devoting his deeds to fighting the siege engines, so he joined Percival on the Excalibur quest after gathering some cards. Gawain headed to fight the Saxons.
At this point, Arthur defeated the Picts, on whom Sir Percival had played a Heroism card, netting us an extra white sword. He then dashed over to Excalibur, and the three of us - Sirs Percival and Kay plus the King - made quick work of the Quest, with the King (rightfully) claiming the sword. That same turn, we lost a quest for the Black Knight, Sir Tristan completed the quest for Lancelot's Armor (despite having to sacrifice 3 cards to Morgan La Fay), and Sir Gawain got a bit stuck in his battles against he Saxons. We stood at 5 white vs. 1 black sword.
Sir Kay then devoted himself to warding off all attackers from Camelot and managed to gather a great many cards, due partly to collecting them at Camelot and partly to special card play. Sir Tristan left the siege engines to Kay and assailed the Picts just as Sir Gawain finished off the Saxons, barely defeating them before the fourth one was drawn. Sir Percival made some card collections and play from camelot as King Arthur headed off to find the grail.
Sir Kay was the glue that held everything together, fighting off siege engines and playing cards that helped the group as they completed the last few quests. Sir Tristan quickly defeated the Picts without aid, and Percival and Gawin quickly rushed off to help Arthur, who traded cards furiously with Sirs Kay and Percival to wonderful effect. The Grail seemed to be within reach.
But not without some difficulties. With siege engines piling up, Morgan La Fay appeared and placed two more out there, then Mordred appeared, ensuring that a quest against the Saxons would be far too difficult to win. Then we lost another battle against the Black Knight, and the Dragon's Quest failed. Still, we were ahead in swords 7 to 4.
The questers were running low on grail cards, though, and we got a little cheaty in the last turn. Sir Kay was having no trouble fending off the siege engines, as he was rolling well and not using too many cards. King Arthur, Sir Tristan, Sir Percival and Sir Gawain all teamed up in a crazy rigamarole of card exchanges and playings to finish off the quest, and we the game ended with 14 swords, 10 white, 4 black. Camelot was saved.
The last round was probably a bit against the rules, but we probably would have won anyway. The siege engines had pretty much stabilized at about 8, we had Lancelot's Armor to ward off some really bad things, we had ample life, and by the end we had Sir Percival losing his even more ample lives rather than drawing the "nice" black cards. I finally convinced a reluctant Karla to tend to leave the easy black cards for me, as she had a lot of lives to expend.
It was fun, and very cool to win. I announced that the next time we played we'd include the traitor card.
| For Sale |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | $61,000 | 1 | |
| Karla | $60,000 | 2 | |
| Jim | $55,000 | 3 | |
| Annie | $41,000 | 4 | |
| Dan | $31,000 | 5 | |
Notes: We had 15 minutes of game night left (Shadows ended up taking about 75 minutes after the rules were explained and everyone had an alcoholic or non-alcoholic smoothie). I said, "Let's play For Sale!" and Dan groaned, Karla was cool with it, and Jim was excited.
I ended up expending every last dime I had in the auctioning, something I had never done before. I thought perhaps I paid too much for the 29 in the first round (7) but then Jim paid 7 in the next round for a 24, so I felt better (despite ending up with the sewer). The rest of the rounds came out pretty nicely for me, as Dan or Annie often took a really low card the very round when I was unable to raise my bid. Their largesse helped me get pretty nice cards as a group.
Still, in the check round I was stuck with a Void check in the first round as Dan used his Space Station (the 30) to grab a $12,000 check rather than chance the VOID or get lower than $8000. After that round, I did great, snagging one of each type of card from $12,000 to $15,000 and adding a $7000. Knowing that the 30 was gone really helped, as I had both the 29 and the 28 (and my only really low card was gone).
Karla and Jim looked to be doing well, though, and I knew both had some bidding money left. I thought that my lack of bidding chips and my one VOID check would do me in, especially when Karla announced that she had $60,000. But all my really good checks saved my butt and I squeaked out a victory. I said that I "kicked ass" but Jim said, "You didn't kick ass, you only won by one thousand!"
Way to kill my buzz, Jim.