September 6th, 2005 |
Birthday for Lee! We ate ice cream and played games that Lee wanted to play...sort of. He really only chose one: Mille Bornes.
| Igloo Pop |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla | 15 | 1 | |
| Mike | 14 | 2 | |
| Lee | 6 | 3 | * |
Notes: I can't believe I almost won! I could have, too, but I got greedy and tried to take a card labeled 9 instead of 8/9 with the igloo that turned out to be #8.
Lee didn't do so hot. I did a bit better knowing my tendency to put the #6 igloo on the #12 card, so I was a bit more conservative. Karla, though, who started off very poorly, made a very nice comeback and passed me with an excellent final round.
| Mille Bornes |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla & Jamie | 1900 | 1 | |
| Lee & Mike | 625 | 2 | |
Notes: Lee chose Mille Bornes to play, but when Dan and Annie showed up about half-way through the first round, it looked like we were only going to play one round, which was too bad. The game is okay.
Jamie and Karla didn't have a Roll card early on and they kept hitting Lee and me with accidents. So I waited on my Roll cards until they started moving, and we took the early lead, only to be waylaid by a Speed Limit while they made steady progress, thanks in part to having two safeties (using one as a coup ferré). It was just a matter of time before Lee and I were left in the dust.
Much too luck-reliant for me.
| Spank the Monkey |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | Spanked the Monkey | 1 | |
| Jamie | 7 High | 2 | * |
| Karla | 5 High | 3 | * |
| Lee | 3 High | 4 (Tie) | * |
| Annie | 3 High | 4 (Tie) | |
| Mike | 2 High | 6 | * |
Notes: Spank the Monkey is a silly, fun card game in which you try to get to the same level of garbage as the monkey and try to "spank" him out of the junkyard. Each player tries to stack up garbage to get to the monkey, who moves around a lot.
It's pretty fun and rather chaotic. I never had much in the way of garbage, while Dan and Jamie were stacking up nice. Lee had some good stuff early, but lost it all in a confiscation (he had nuclear waste and some other illegal thing). Annie put up a flagpole early on, then I knocked it down and she had very little impact after that.
Eventually Dan caught up with the monkey (who became a gorilla) but Dan still managed to get rid of him on the first try.
| Puerto Rico |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Jamie | 52 | 1 | |
| Mike | 49 | 2 | |
| Dan | 42 | 3 | |
| Annie | 39 | 4 | |
| Karla | 33 | 5 | |
Notes: Next we played Puerto Rico, and Annie was the first player, followed by Karla, me, Jamie, and Dan. This gave Jamie and Dan corn. I can't remember too many details, so I'll just try to summarize what each player did.
Karla: Karla had indigo, but didn't develop many goods, though eventually she managed to produce tobacco and sugar, but too late to gather many VP chips. She was also poor, and got really angry with me when she found out the University only let you put a colonist on a building that you actually buy. She got very angry and was going to quit, but then she settled down and kept playing. Still, a lack of money and no solid amount of goods produced cost her a lot of points. 18 shipping VPs, 15 building VPs, 0 bonus = 33.
Annie: Annie went after the Hospice and Construction Hut, then acquired indigo and sugar. She always seemed to pass over corn for a quarry, then took plantations when there were no corn plantations. She managed to get a little bit more shipping than most of us and had a steady supply of money from taking the prospector. She never managed to get any corn (which Jamie was hoarding) and just managed a few good shipments and despite her decent cash flow, she didn't get many buildings, though she did get fortress. 20 shipping VPs, 13 building VPs, 6 bonus = 39.
Dan: Dan was doing pretty well, I thought. He was going after Jamie, so he avoided duplicating the corn strategy (especially when Jamie was collecting all the corn plantations). Dan's only problem was that he didn't have a quarry until about halfway through, so he was paying full price for the buildings. Still, he had a good amount of money, as he had the Factory and the Small Warehouse. He collected the Residence by the end, too, and at one point produced all 5 goods. Still, he was checked (like all of us but Jamie) in shipping. 17 shipping VPs, 21 building VPs, 4 bonus = 42.
Mike: I picked up coffee early on and was quickly producing it. I was always in good shape in cash, though I forewent the Small Market. Still, I managed the Factory and Small Warehouse. Like Dan, I went for a multitude of goods to maximize the factory. Near the end, I tried to hose Jamie by taking Captain, even if it was sub-optimal. I had very few VPs until I managed to ship some Indigo, then picked up the Harbor to get some bonus points on my coffee. I had a ton of buildings, and with the Guild Hall, I managed to get every production building except the Small Sugar Mill, netting me some very good bonus points, but not quite enough. 17 shipping VPs, 23 building VPs, 9 bonus = 49.
Jamie: Jamie went with the corn strategy, which was not sniffed out and hindered at all until late. He had the perfect complement of buildings: Small Market (to make corn useful), Harbor (+1 on shipping, which was his focus), Customs House (+1 VP per every 4 VP ships), Small Warehouse (to save his corn in the rare event that he couldn't ship it), and Construction Hut (to get him quarries, since he didn't have much early round cash). I also handed him 2 extra points at one point because I was hoping to get in on a corn shipment, not realizing (i.e. counting) that he had 8, not 7, corn. He was also scooping up extra points from shipping an indigo or a sugar here and there (usually for +1). With all that corn being shipped, he benefited the most from Captain phases and had just enough building and bonus points to hold on for victory: 31 shipping VPs, 14 building VPs, 7 bonus = 52.
Summary: As the one to Jamie's right, I had the most impact in messing with him, which I didn't do until late. I tried to grab corn to keep it from him, but Annie and Karla kept inexplicably passing on the corn plantations, always enabling Jamie to get another one, even if I took one. Dan wisely avoided messing with Jamie, though he did try to get him once or twice. I did, too, despite that one mistake (giving him 2 VPs), creating a shipping phase where Jamie couldn't ship anything.
The big move, though, was when, with me governor, and Karla, going last, chose the craftsman, giving Jamie another full docket of corn, which he was able to ship immediately. That hosed me out of some points and gave Jamie his pick of ships, which (of course) he immediately filled with 7 or 8 points of corn. Karla would have been much better off forcing Jamie to pick craftsman. Had that move not occurred, I could have overcome my -2 point setback and probably won, as either Jamie, Dan (with a factory), or Annie would have taken craftsman and I would have been able either to grab more shipping VPs or hose Jamie (or, most likely, both).
Instead, I suppressed a groan and watched my Puerto Rico winning streak vanish.