November 2005 Archives

Tichu

Well, I decided to go to the new location where the RussCon group plays. And that is now at J.P. and William's apartment. I went there since Russ was going and he has little time left in the best country on the planet. So, of course, my first game was Tichu. This seems to be a tradition among the RussCon crowd. The good new was that I called and made a Grand Tichu on the second hand of the game after a 1/2 by the other team. The bad news was that we only played to 666 and therefore lost.

Kaivai

I probably made a mistake in bringing Kaivai here. After all it can be a long game and the rules are not extremely simple. One person was scared off by the rules and left for another game. And two people playing the game are very slow and methodical players. At least everyone agreed we could shorten the game.

In my first playing of it, we later found out that we got some of the rules wrong. When I bought it, I later noticed that we got even more rules wrong. And sadly, I got one rule wrong in this game. But I think that I have ironed everything out now!

I actually started out the day by going to the mad house that is known as Fry's after Thanksgiving sale. And wow was it packed both inside and outside. The line was twice as long as normal but it actually went quicker than usual since they had 60+? registers open.

Lucca Citta

Ed made us play another one of his free games again. Actually, I should feel lucky. Since I won't be buying it for myself.

Mission: Planete Rouge

The next game that we played was one that I wanted to play. The new Faidutti game. And true to Faidutti design, there is a lot of chaos in it. Enough to give me the feeling that playing the game was essentially random. Sure, there is some strategy for you to consider. It is an area control game. But a lot of things can happen to those meeples. You start off by selecting one of nine "characters" that have special powers (shades of Citadels). Some of the choices by your opponents can cause chaos. For example, Ed was forced to blow up the ship that only contained his meeples. And there are other chaotic factors. You can draw cards during the game that are bonus cards for you or will modify the gameboard at the end scoring. You place the later group of cards face down under the playing board. So they will be a complete surprise to your opponents.

Elasund: The First City of Catan

Dan finally showed up for a game day! And after much heclking, we sat down to play Elasund. In this game, the dice hated me and loved Dan (rolling many fives for two gold cards for himself and nothing for us). Surprisingly enough, Susan won this game. I thought that she was second place in the dice love.

Lost Valley

To end out the night, I suggested Lost Valley. It has been too long since I have played this game. It is a game I should play more often. Towards the end of the game, I wanted to go mining for mountain gold, but was unable to draw a forrest tile to place next to the sites for necessary timber. So I was reduced to getting lower valued river gold and stealing mountain gold from other players. Surprisingly enough, I was able to win the game.

Crokinole

John was nice enough to invite me over for a Thanksgiving feast. There was good food and good gaming. The first game was Crokinole which we played while dinner was being prepared. I am not dexterous enough to be good at this game, so I don't really like it. But I dont mind playing it once in a long while.

Quarto

John has a lot of two player games to play with his wife, Gina. And he introduced me to one, called Quarto. This is a connect four game where you try to connect a line of pegs that have four of the same attributes (light/dark, round/square, or hole/solid). You pick the piece that the opponent must play. I forgot about the solid attribute which let John win the game.

Anno 1503 Aristokraten & Piraten

John wanted to introduce Gina to Anno 1503 since she likes games where there is no direct picking on your opponent and each player has their own board. The dice was not as kind to me as it was for the others. But the game was surprisingly close with all three of us vying for the win. Fortunately for me, I had two cards that would allow me to steal the resource that I needed for me to win and stop John from winning. I learned this trick from Doug, who used it against me in the last game.

Ganoven Jagd

We played another simple and quick two player game. This has a movement mechanism like Billabong. And the goal to move the numbered piece representing your detective on top of the opponent's crook.

Honey Bears

And then we introduced Gina to the classic game of Honey Bears. And, of course, introduced her to the house rule of "Go Red Bear!" Enough said on that topic.

Subulata

For the last game of the night, we played John's Board Game Geek prize table pick. We got one rule wrong where we moved the pieces backwards as well as forwards. This turned the game into a much more meatier and chess-like game. I was too focused on eliminating John's pieces. This allowed John to set up a trap when I took one of his last pieces. This ended the game and gave him the win. I had forgotten about that rule. It was my fault. I could have instead moved my pieces into the target area instead. But I choose to go for the blood instead.

For lunch, I decided to stop at the new grocery store. It is a 190,000 square foot monstrosity. This has been the second time that I have gone to it and, during both times, it has been freakin packed! Since it is new, people move very slowly. This makes it incredibly hard to navigate quickly. I just want to get in and get out. I don't want to turn it into an expedition.

There are expanded food choices for me now. The cheese selection is much better than the store at 620 (although it is still less than Central Market). They sell some things that I don't think should be sold at grocery stores. After all, the store should be about turn over and they should sell things that people need on a weekly basis. Do people need CDs and DVDs every week? Books with strategically placed stars on the covers? How about furniture? I don't think so!

They do sell Jalapeno Cheese Bread! O.M.F.G.! I have been seriously Jonesing for this bread! This alone is worth the hassle of shopping here!

Here is another example of waste in packaging. Shiner is selling a limited edition case of beer called 96 that is enclosed in a wooden box. Now what am I going to do with the box afterwards? And they don't even use six pack containers within the box. So much for transportation afterwards.

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John and I went to an Ice Bats game tonight. They played the Corpus Christi Rayz. It was fun. There were two fights that I had no clue why they were started. All of a sudden, I see two players throw their helmets and gloves off and start circling around each other with their fists up. And at some point one person grabs the other and then they start trading punches. And once they fall, the referees pull them apart. So it seems to me that it is a bit of showmanship kind of like pro wrestling.

We sat a couple of rows behind the opposing's team bench. And every time the Ice Bats scored, the fans would start chanting "You Suck!" Which is kinda mean if you ask me.

And after the game, we stayed for some songs in the Vallejo concert. All in all, there was cold beer, hockey fighting, and a rock concert. Which, in my mind, is a good night, indeed!

Another game of disc golf was played. I seem to be making a little improvement, for I was able to shoot two birdies again. I still suck at long range accuracy and can't throw very far either.

The day was beautiful for an overcast day. The temperatures were a little bit on the cool side. But that didn't stop me from wearing shorts.

Mu

Yay, another game of Mu was played! There seems to be hope for this gaming group after all. Both Ed and Mike, who are avid anti-muers were not here tonight. I think Doug is starting to get more of a feel for the game.

Euphrat & Tigris

Since Marty was here, he suggested that we play E&T again. And I tried a different strategy when my tiles consisted of 5 blue. I created an external conflict that won in blue but lost in black and red just to get those tiles out of my hand. Later in the game I was limited by black tiles and could not draw any.

Tichu

Ahhh, Tichu, the perfect compliment to Mu. I started the game off well by making my Tichu call. However our luck changed for the worst. On my first Grand Tichu call, I had 3 aces and was passed the mahjong so I wished for the remaining ace. I made that GT call. And on my next GT call, I once again had 3 aces, was passed the mahjong, and called out the remaining ace. I didn't make that call unfortunately and we lost the game.

99

And for the last game of the night, Adam suggested 99. This is yet another trick taking card game. But this one is designed for three players (not many are). I had played this game once, long ago and made a couple of mistakes (like not knowing that there was a trump suit). But still fun, and is a game I would play again.

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Diamant

Another trip up to South Oklahoma. We started with a quick filler. I usually press my luck too far in the first few rounds, and this game was no exception. In fact, the first few rounds were brutal! Many disasters came out and not many gems came out. So, as usual, Ed and I were behind and had to press our luck even more. And fortunately for me, I received some huge payouts and escaped before it was too late. And this game me the win.

Elasund

Ahhh, the sweet smell of another brand new Settlers game. I could have played this at BGG.con, but I resisted the temptation since I knew Ed had a copy. This game is probably the least settlers like after Candamir. I think that the new mechanics soften the harsh dice rolls but remove it too much from the original Settlers feel. In this game, my starting numbers hit a lot. So I felt more in the game. In fact, it was a close game between myself, Mike, and Kevin. I probably should not have spent four gold to protect one of my positions and instead went for victory points. I do still like this game though even with the new changes.

Barbarossa

While we were waiting for the other tables to finish up, we broke out another clay game. I really don't like the new rules to this game since there are two rolls that can hurt you and help everyone else. At least I was able to make yet another flat sculpture!

Magna Grecia

It has been a long time since I have played this game. Too long in fact. I feel that this game should be getting more play time than it currently does. In this game, I was the only person who had played it before. So, of course, I won it since you need to play it once before you start to get the hang of the strategy that you need.

Die Schlacht der Dinosaurier

Ahhh, the dinosaurs have returned! This is a light and fun dice fest of a game. We played it with two player teams and my mission was to fight Tim for dominance! And the dice were with me in this game. My velociraptors ("velo crapters") were slaughterhouses and took out many of enemy-Tim dinos. One particular brutal lucky roll of mine was a 37 (plateosaurus) vs 36 (T-rex). I probably should have taken Tim out quicker for the win. But I let him live and he killed off Lauren for the win.

Vampire

And to finish it off, we played Vampire. I am starting to play this more now that Russcon is over and I don't feel like this game is always being suggested. Towards the end, I needed one yellow card for a strong score. But I was unlucky and could not draw it at all.

Another day of disc golf at a new (to me) course. The course is located off of Well Branch Boulevard and IH-35 and is only 9 holes in length. So we played it twice. There was good news and bad news for the day.

The bad news was that the water traps were particulary ferocious! And what was surprising was that the river was tiny and shallow! And yet it must have swallowed ten of our discs. Mike had the worst luck of us all. He had bought a new disc and practiced with it a little bit and found that he liked it. But on the first hole of the course, he threw it into the water. And at that moment, a pump up the hill turned up and started sending water down the hill. Which went into the stream and totally clouled up the water. Which meant that Mike could not find his disc. And only after we were done with all of the holes did the water finally clear up enough to see the disc.

The good news was that I got two birdies! Which was enough for my team to win twice. Woo woo!

Adam starts to carry around a big stick in order to help rescue Mike's disc at the end of the game.

Mike finally retreives his disc!

Mu

While we were waiting for Jon to show up, we started off with a learning game of Mu. Our goal was to expose John to this great trick taking card game for five players. Unfortunately, Doug still is not a fan of it.

Kreta

When we broke up into two three player groups, John suggested Kreta. I was able to play better than the last time but still not good enough to win. And weirdly enough, John was in the position that I was in when I played it before. He was out of contention for the current spaces with not much hope to change the future course of the game. Perhaps there is a flaw in this game?

Anno 1503 Aristocrats and Pirates

Doug suggested this game after I failed to get John to want to play Railroad dice. In this game, sixes were rolled a lot. Which means that lots of bad things happened. Doug was able to steal a specific card from me three times! Argh! But what was funny was that he thought that he needed one building to win the game. Little did he realize that I had taken the last special building in the game. So he did not win it. He did have to go after another victory condition (which he did after two turns).

I was under a game fog and forgot to take a picture of the game.

Indonesia

Indonesia was another game that I heard good buzz about and I was glad that I got an opportunity to play it. The game was taught by Ray from the Houston game group. He was very friendly and gave a good explination of the rules. Since I had to leave at 1pm, I made sure that the group was ok with calling the end early. It was a good thing that I did that since one of the gamers who joined I knew was a slow player from a previous game. This was a very interesting game about companies shipping goods to cities. There were some interesting mechanics. Money that you spent bidding on turn order went into your own bank and was locked for the rest of the game. And money at the end of the game was your victory points. So you were essentially reducing your fluidity and were then unable to use it for mergers. Which brings me to the next interesting aspect. You can take two similiar companies and join them together. People who can take the new company can then bid on them. So you can loose a company that you are investing in. This makes you revalue your company since you pay the owners for control of the company. You can even merge spices and rice to create and Indonesian dish called Siap Faji (microwave meals). Another interesting aspect is that cities demand all good that can ship to it. So that if it costs you more to ship it than you receive in profit, then you still must ship the goods.

Another player in this game was evidently pissed off at his position. He then start acting chaotically by performing actions just to see what would happen (whether it would benefit him or not). This was pretty fustrating. Still, I enjoyed playing and will pay the high price for this game.

Kaivai

This morning I saw Anye and talked with her. We decided to check out Kaivai out of the library and try it out. Unfortunately for us, the rules translation was rather poor and we got a couple of important rules wrong. This gave us a lot of money and made the island construction different than what it should have been. With the right rules, money would have been much tighter and the building would have been much tighter. However, even with the wrong rules, I felt that the game was meaty and had a lot of strategy to it.

Kreta

I broke my rules again for the convention and played a game that I already own. But at least this time I had not played the game before. I chose not to fight for the first two areas which made me behind in the game. I was not worried about it since I thought that I could catch up later on. However, I could not make that happen. Finally, I got fustrated and decided to call the scoring on my turn even though I was not in contention for the areas. You see, one of the perks of scoring is that you can decide if the next number that is turned up will be scored or to discard it. I did this for two turns hoping to get the cards to be in areas that I had controll in. However, people were able to move pieces over on their one play and still be able to take control from me. It seems that you need to start the arms race early and continue it for the whole game.

Texas Hold 'Em Tournament

Jon and I went on a search for dinner. Unfortunately, the hotel where we are staying has really poor eating places around walking distance. You need to take a train or drive a car to go somewhere good. After I finished and came back to gaming Jon presented me with a really tough choice. There was an open slot for Die Macher or I could play Hold em. Argh! I really want to play Die Macher at least once. But I want to get some Hold em experience (even though it is a tourney and not for real money). Since I know that Tim owns the game here and he holds long game days, I decided to play the tourney. True to form, our table played slowly and I felt that we did not get a lot of hands in during the alloted time for the blinds. I played tightly and was lucky on a couple of hands (a straight draw filling in on the turn). However, I was unlucky as well by betting my pocket 10s against someone's pocket aces. I made it past the first break when they converted everyone's money into the higher denominations. However, after a couple of hands after the break, I decided to go all in with my pocket aces. Two other people called. They had A8 and AJ. On the flop came A x 8, so I was now a severe underdog. On the turn came J and I lost one the river. At least I moved all my money into the pot when I had the best odds.

Tichu

It was now late in the night for me (11:00). Fortunately for me, Ed was not playing a game and he was willing to play Tichu with me and go find two other people. So we borrowed Derk's Tichu deck (which he keeps in his pocket) and we off waving the glorius red deck around. It did not take long to find someone willing to play the game (who came with an new person). This was past my bed time again, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

So Ed explained to rules to the new player and I wrote out a cheat sheet. The partner had played it before online. And he was aggressive in calling Tichu on marginal hands. Ed had better cards than I did and he was able to call Tichu. But sadly they left after a few hands.

Tichu

And now Jon shows up and he wants to play Tichu. Jon too was keeping a deck of Tichu in his pocket. Ed did me a favor and found two experienced Tichu players for us (Aaron Fuegi and Michael Weston). This was now really past my bed time, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

It was myself and Aaron versus Jon and Mike. Ed tells me that Aaron is an experienced Tichu player and has written an article on it on the geek. On the first hand, I called Tichu and we one-twoed. We started out in the lead but then lost the lead. At the end, they had 950 points and they were about to win the game. So we needed to call Grand Tichu to win the game. We both look at our first 8 cards and try to decide who has the GT hand. I had an ace and a phoenix. Aaron clearly did not have an obvious GT hand. Since I was not ready to call it, he calls it instead. I start to get worried when I get another ace and the dragon in my remaining cards. However, he was able to make it and we one-twoed for the win!

Tichu

Mike left and was replaced by David desJardins. I recognized David from his online posts (which is I guess is a form of celebrity). David also knew how to play. This was now really really past my bed time, but since we were going to play Tichu, I decided to stay up.

I drew Jon for my partner and I was worried. After all, these are two experienced players and they seem to be more experienced than us. Once again I started off play by calling Tichu and making it. On the next two hands, our team was able to set David's Tichu calls. Later on, I made another Tichu call and really should have called Tichu for a hand. I hosed Jon by passing the dog to him when he was going to call Tichu. Towards the end, they started calling Grand Tichu. However, they were too far behind and we won the game!

I went back to my hotel room at around 2 am in the morning! Gah!

Struggle of Empires

I walked into the game room this morning and was lucky enough to find a game of Struggle of Empires that was starting and needed a player. Woo Woo! Our game group has the occasional day of playing long games. However, they dont play long games and refuse to play Struggle when I suggest it. So I was glad when I had this opportunity. This game lasted around 4 hours which pushed me to 2pm without eating lunch! I enjoyed playing it while being hungry which should say something about the game.

Caylus

Caylus is definately the popular game of the con. There were three copies in play during all four days. So I am sure that everyone got a chance to play it. And I was lucky again to have walked up to the table when they were looking for another player.

For right now, the reputation seems to be well deserved. There are lots of interlocking rules. During your play, there are tough choices to be made. And there seems to be many different paths to victory.

In this con, I have met many new people and have had a chance to play in different group dynamics. In my normal gaming group, people can be taken at their word (except for Mike) and deals are binding. However, in this game, one player decided to screw me over. You see, I took a chance to spend three coins to help protect my position. I did this because this would allow Red, the next player, to protect two of his positions for three coins. I thought that it was a fair proposal which Red accepted. Unfortunately for me, he decided to screw me over and not protect his other piece (which would have protected my piece). But what was great, was that the next player decided to spend a coin to go back to the original position. Which ended up screwing Red twice and myself once.

Pompei the last 37 seconds

This was another game by Jeff Widderich. He was at the con demoing his games and when I walked by, he grabed me into this game. This game is about saving peasants before the Pompei volcano wipes out the town. Your final score is the number of your color tokens that you save times the number of other color tokens that you save. The problem for me with this game was that apparently the designer felt that explaining the full rules would take too much time since there were some special exceptions that usualy doesnt happen. What he did instead was start the game with new people and explain the rules as the game progressed and the special tiles came into play. The problem that I had with this was that I got no strategic sense for the game. I was only making tatictal decisions based on advice from the designer.

In this game, I was rather lucky. I was able to save a lot of people. I also had a number of opportunities to screw other people. This probably left a bad taste in the other players' mind since they too did not understand the strategic game but they had bad luck and lost the game.

CardChess

This was another short game by the same designer. And fortunately for us, it was basically four player chess with shuffled pieces that were introduced one at a time. Which gave the game an interesting feel to it. I would definately play it again.

In this game, I was doing pretty good. I was attacking Jon's queen. The designer was in a little trouble. And the third player was slowly building up his defenses. Unfortunately for me, the designer was the first to loose the game by checkmate. When this happened, his remaining pieces were taken off the board. This immediately exposed my queen to be taken by the third player (who moved next). After that, the third player had a queen, a rook, a bishop, and two knights. Jon and myself had far less than that. So we called the game. This would be interesting and challenging with good chess players.

Shear Panic

For the first game of the first Board Game Geek convention, I played a game with very cute sheep called Shear Panic. Dan would love this game because the pieces were all minature models of sheep around 1 1/2 inches in height. The four player game contains two sheep for each player with a black sheep in the center. The game consists of four scoring "fields" that you move along via a timer token. The four ways of scoring are as follows: try to get your sheep next to each other, try to get your sheep in the rows that are closest to BBB, trying to get your sheep next to the black sheep, and trying to get your sheep in the rows farthest away from the shearer. On your turn, you have one action to choose from a limited number of actions. And you can only use each action once. Each action also has an associated timer cost which moves the timer token along the scoring track. This forces you to trade off moves that help you score points versus trying to keep your options open in the future.

The game had 8 pages of rules, but there was quite a number of questions that we had after trying to read them. Another problem was the lenght. The box says 45 minutes. However, the game took 2 hours to play after the 45 minutes that we spent trying to figure out the rules. This game can be a real brain burner as players try to consider every option open to them. When we moved into the final scoring area and moved to the first scoring opportunity, the player to my right could not cause a scoring. He could only try to position himself. Unfortunately for him, he really set me up for a killing. I was able to cause both sheep of two players to be taken out of the game (his and Jon's). When this happened, he got up and left the game! Sigh. We called it after that rather than trying to figure out what happens in this scenario.

Ra

Tim and Mary showed up around this time. Tim had bought Ra (the Uberplay version) from a vendor and opened it up. I decided to join them. As we were removing the pieces from the bags I noticed that there were two 15s and no 13. So Tim goes back to the vendor to switch out the pieces. So, we decide to count every piece to determine if there was any other missing pieces. And it was a good thing that we decided to do that because we were missing a Pharoh tile. So Tim goes back again.

And now the game finally starts. During the first round, I scored badly. I had no civilization tile or any Pharoh tiles for -7 points! Fortunately, I did better after that. I was at least able to avoid having the least Pharohs. I was able to get one of each monument tile and all 5 tiles of a monument for 30 points! This was a first for me. Unfortunately for me, I was tied for the least money which gave me -5 points and 3rd place. We later learned that if Mary had not traded a money tile for a money tile, then she would have had the least and I would have been in 1st. And Tim also could have been in first as well if a previous auction had happened differently. Revisionist history is so fun.

Euphrat & Tigris Card Game

Another new Essen game for me that I wanted to try out before buying. It was so new in fact, that it did not come with a copy of the translated rules. Fortunately, we found someone who could explain the game to us. And the game is remarkably similiar to the boardgame! This game uses the San Juan method of keeping track of points. When you build a colored tile next to your leader by placing a card down on the table, you may take another of the same colored card from your hand to turn over and keep as a point. There are still internal and external battles but the most you can score is one point of the corresponding color. The white wild card "cube" is in this game with the same mechanism. There are even monuments in the game (but only 3 choices: red/blue, green/blue and black/blue). Monuments can be built if four of the same cards are next to each other.

I definately recommend buying and playing this game!

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