July 14th, 2005 |
As soon as someone arrived I was determined to start game night, and Scott arrived at about 6:40. Thus, Bastille Day Game Night got started quickly compared to the last month or so.
Tonight's highlights:
- Mike gets a head wound from falling games
- Mike uses a Jedi Mind trick on Scott
- Karla cuts Jamie's hair (for the better)
- Dan groans at mention of every filler game Mike owns (Note to Dan: buy and bring your own damn fillers!)
Great game night tonight. Good company, good conversation, and despite the physical and vocal confrontations (between Mike and his games in the former case and between Mike and Karla in the latter), a great time for all...except probably Dan.
| Cartagena |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 6 | 1 | |
| Scott | 3 | 2 | |
| Karla | 1 | 3 | |
Notes: I wanted to play something that would take about half an hour and we hadn't played this cute little game in a while. I had Scott lay out the maze and then we ran our pirates through it.
There was a huge red hat push right at the beginning, which resulted in Scott getting 3 of his pirates halfway through the maze or farther, though I placed a pirate furthest along the track. Early on, every time I thought I had Scott out-smarted, he'd draw the perfect card or slide a guy backwards that I wasn't expecting, so he had a leg up on me for a while.
After the initial red hat phase went out, though, Scott had four guys far along but 2 back at the start, whereas Karla and I were helping each other along a bit at the beginning. By the time Scott was ready to move his two lollygaggers, he was forced to burn cards, as the first maze piece was empty of pirates to hop over.
About mid-game Howard stopped by and chatted a bit as we played, secretly rooting for anyone but Mike.
Karla was middling about too much. She didn't really get the good cards when they were at peak usefulness. For example, she only had one red hat in the initial push, and as soon as bottles became useful she ran out, and when daggers and skulls were enough to get somebody in the boat late in the game, she didn't have those either, being forced to play keys and red hats.
Scott's problem was that he kept playing all his cards, then having to back up. I started to manipulate things so that he'd either get only one card or have to go back pretty far. He slowed down substantially.
Then I made a final push when the last third of the map was filling up. I let Karla and Scott fill in the spaces, and in my last three turns, though all my pirates were 2 or 3 whole maze pieces back, I was able to get all three in the boat. Scott saw he was doomed and managed to get three in there as I played knife, skull, knife to get all my green pirates on the boat.
During the game, Scott said that this would be a good one for his nieces and nephews, and told me that they had already ordered Gulo Gulo, a game Scott himself enjoyed so much he bought it up in Green Bay one weekend.
After the game, Howard left, and we said, "Aren't you going to wait for Jamie?" To which Howard replied, "I don't want to see him!"
| New England |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla Annable | 34 | 1 | |
| Scott Palmer | 29 | 2 | * |
| Jamie Howland | 28 | 3 | * |
| Mike Winslow | 23 | 4 | |
Notes: I gave Scott my 3-player list, and he was feeling adventurous, as he selected New England, a game he hadn't played before and one which the group hadn't played in over a year. Mike reached for the game, which lay under a stack of heavier games, including Power Grid, Tower of Babel, Samurai, Santa Fe Rails, and the very heavy Shadows Over Camelot. With a "Karla, Help!" and much ruckus, Scott and Karla looked up to find a pile of games on the floor and Mike rubbing his head, having won a Pyrrhic victory in claiming New England from the bottom of the stack. Scott, in his empathy, took a few pictures to commemorate the event:
| |
| Mike rubs new divot in his head... | ...caused by Shadows Over Camelot (Now with SPLIT CORNER!) being cleaned by a somewhat sympathetic Karla |
Jamie entered at that moment, and quickly apprised of the details as Mike taped up the corners of Samurai and Shadows Over Camelot (which a sight-deficient Karla had a lot of trouble rearranging), laughed and asked, "Has that happened before?" "Yes," I said, "All the time." Karla and Mike commenced a mini-argument about getting more bookshelves.
Finally, after a call from Dan at about 7:15 or so assuring us that he was coming, we set up New England and I explained the rules pretty quickly. It's really quite easy to explain, though it's incredibly abstract.
Scott started off with his Palmers going after the Pilgrims right away. The Winslows took a ship, and the Annables and Howlands (which Jamie took in honor of Howard) developed land. The same thing happened in the next round, but Mike took a barn instead of a ship and Jamie took a ship instead of developing land.
At this point Dan arrived and threw all into a chaos of conversation about some woman working for Epic that he couldn't identify, so Jamie found a picture of her and emailed it, asking "Is this her?", which made Dan laugh his ass off. It was hilarious, but deterred from the game, much to Scott's and my frustration. At last, I got Karla to focus, and she was frustrated, wondering what the hell she'd be able to do. She thought that once her land was developed it was useless to get more cards, and without undeveloped land she couldn't place barns or pilgrims, so WTF? I calmly explained to her that she'd have to re-build her chunks of undeveloped land for the rest of the game.
Onward we went. Scott and I were the only ones with Pilgrims, as Scott managed 4 of them and I grabbed 1. No one else took any for quite a while. Karla also kept taking the 1 or 2 chip, always saving her money. (Again, she thought the money would be worth something at the end of the game and complained about that. Scott, however, took my side, as he had asked for clarification on that very question around midgame).
Jamie was going along all right, but development cards were rare, and the ones that kept popping up were either unusable for both of us or only worth 3 points. Scott had managed to develop a big 10 area and a 6 and spent most of the rest of the game claiming Mike's majority in barns.
Karla, despite her short attention span, kept grabbing tiles for cheap and developing them for cheap. Mike squandered a turn in which he couldn't really afford anything (and it all sucked anyway) and got grumpy. Karla had a gazillion shillings, but refused to spend them, leaving Mike with the 4 chip (with 6 gold). Out of frustration I took the 10. I had wanted to claim a green tile and develop a 6 card, but with cash enough to only do one thing, I freaked out and wasted a turn.
That was stupid. I could have used a barn to store the card for later, which Karla did that very turn for a 10 card, and I felt like an ass and deserved to lose.
Jamie and I tied for the ship lead most of the game and used it a lot, until the last turn, when I had the sole majority, which cost Jamie some extra points, as he was hoping to flip over a tile in order to use it and develop one of the face up cards.
After that round, Scott opted for 6 tiles, which was one too many, and the game ended immediately. Scott thought he had the win, as he had the majority in pilgrims and barns and had developed a 10 and a 6. Jamie had no majorities, and had developed three 6's and a 3. I had two 6's and a 3 and had the ship majority. But Karla had had very productive turns all game. Whereas Mike or Scott or Jamie would get one tile and one card, Karla frequently went for 2 tiles or 2 cards and used her barns. She managed to develop about 5 pieces of land and grab some extra points in the last turn to nab a surprisingly large 5 point victory over Scott.
I learned a lot about this game: use patience, and don't base your entire strategy around getting majorities in any one good. The game is much tighter with 4 than with 3, and makes it more challenging. A good game and one I'd like to try again soon.
| Coloretto |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 46 | 1 | |
| Scott | 40 | 2 | |
| Dan | 35 | 3 | |
Notes: Karla and Jamie had stepped out to give Jamie a little haircut on the front porch, but Dan, having finished his Milio's sub and lamenting his late arrival for half an hour, was getting depressed. I demanded we play a quick game to while away the time. Every game I recommended got shot down with a groan by Dan: Circus Flohcati? Groan. For Sale? "Noooo." High Society? Eyes roll. I wasn't even going to suggest 6 Nimmt! or Clans. Scott kept mentioning a card game that we play, but he couldn't remember it, so I grabbed Coloretto and said, "We're playing this, dammit!"
The game was pretty run of the mill, except that I had four different cards in the first round. As we played, though, I was able to fill up three of my rows beautifully while only getting stuck with one more negative card. Meanwhile, Scott's attempts at greed were failing to Dan's benefit, though Dan soon had 4 sets of colors with at least 2 cards in each. That fact partly helped me out, as I would frequently put a card both of us wanted in a row that would expand another row to four.
One moment stuck out, though. Scott had flipped a card that was somewhat useful to both him and Dan. I felt that Dan could take the card, but it would hurt his chances for the rest of game, as he needed big rows (all of his were about 3 high). So I thought that, if Scott put the card in that row - a row much more useful to Scott and only superficially useful to Dan - that Dan would pass to try to greed it up. So I pointed at the row and Scott immediately placed the card there. Dan then took the row - foolishly, I thought, though it did hose Scott badly, something I fail to take into account at times - and Scott immediately said, "Why'd you tell me to do that? Now I'm screwed!" The rest of the game he lamented my use of the Jedi mind trick on him.
At the end of the game, when I had proclaimed my victory, Scott calculated that my Jedi mind trick had cost him enough points to lose the game. Heh heh heh.
Scott said, "I should have known better! I've played this before."
"These aren't the droids you're looking for, Scott."
| Ra |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 38 | 1 | |
| Dan | 36 | 2 | |
| Scott | 35 | 3 | |
| Karla | 26 | 4 | |
| Jamie | 8 | 5 | |
Notes: Karla and Jamie came back pretty quickly and gabbed while Scott, Dan, and I played Coloretto. Afterwards, we still had 30 minutes of game night, and presented with Mike's List of 5-Player Games to Squeeze in at the End of the Night (Colossal Arena, Quo Vadis?, Ra, and Boomtown), they chose Ra.
So off we went to Ancient Egypt. Scott managed to get the lead in pharaohs in the first turn and Dan grabbed about 5 different monuments. Jamie didn't have much of anything, as he and I both took the -2 pharaoh penalty. It was a very long first round, as hardly any Ra tiles appeared and there was a lot of yelling and loud conversation between turns. Frequently I would say, "Karla, your turn." In response, whenever she felt I was taking too long, she said, "Mike, your turn!" Dan and I exchanged looks of impatience most of the game.
Dan and I scooped up some first round river points, and Scott netted a Civ bonus early on. Most of my points though, were amassed in 2 gold and 2 god tiles, netting me 10 points. I avoided the Civ penalty and though I took a -2 hit, I was only two pharaohs out of first place.
The second round dictated the rest of the game, as Ra tiles kept appearing and re-appearing. Dan got a lot of stuff for cheap: managing to stay out of the basement in pharaohs, getting a flood for his rivers, grabbing a civ tile and one more monument to get up to 6. I wasn't doing so hot in this round, but with three Ra spaces left, I bid my 14 chip to grab only a pharaoh and a Civ, keeping me out of the penalties for both. I felt that the Ras would fill up quickly and that I'd be doomed if I didn't get rid of my penalties.
Sure enough, the Ras were drawn in the next four tile draws, and Dan and I relished our luck in getting out early. Scott, in fact, hadn't won a single auction the entire second round, as he had the 16, 12, and 9 tiles, and kept feeling that nothing was good enough for them. In fact, nothing was...for most games. Five-player high ratio of Ra tiles...you've got to spend them. It didn't hurt him too bad, though. He lost 5 for no civs, but still managed to have the most pharaohs. Jamie took the pharaoh penalty alone this time.
In the third round I essentially just went for some critical stuff: stay out of the basement in pharaohs and bid tiles, and get points from rivers and whatever else I could, like monuments, gold, or god tiles. I managed to do just that, helped by a set of tiles that had an earthquake on it (which would ruin two monuments). I managed to take it so that it didn't hurt my standing and the set of tiles - along with my already acquired flood and gold tiles - would save me from any penalties. I had two low bid chips and the 15, which I had bought solo in the hopes of avoiding last place in suns.
Scott managed to win a couple auctions this time, but Jamie was squeezed out of almost everything, and really took a hit by the end of the round. He didn't use his low chips - 5 or 6 - in spots well enough. Dan had an excellent set of monuments, though I thought he had 7 different ones when he really only had 6. Still, he had a set of 4 pyramids that was worth 10 points. Karla and Jamie each had 6 different monuments, and Scott had absolutely none.
My river, gold & god, and penalty avoidance method grabbed me a tight victory over both Dan and Scott. Dan never was hit with a penalty either and also had a lot of river tiles. Still, his first round was kind of low-scoring, and though he outscored me the rest of the way, my early lead just barely held up. Karla would have had a score in the thirties, too, if she hadn't had the fewest bid chips after the last round. Scott had managed to get the +5 for bid chips (and pharaohs for a third straight round), and he just missed 2nd place by a point. Had he won an auction in the second round, he probably would have won.
Jamie was very upset with his performance. He took -11 in penalties over the game and was usually stuck with things like 3 river tiles and no floods, and never nabbed gold or a god tile. Plus, he was stuck in the 2nd round paralysis along with Scott.
The play of the game was probably when I took the pharaoh and civ tiles (and the 10 bid chip) with my 14 chip in the second round. Followed by the quick Ra tiles - filling the board - it vindicated my spending the high chip on it, as it saved me 5 points...5 points that would have cost me the win.
This marks two times we've played with the correct, once-around rules, and two victories for me!