March 2007 Archives

There was a small group today. Perhaps yesterday's rain scared them off. Perhaps they didn't get enough of a warning. Or perhaps they had a life.

Only Mike and John showed up. I was not doing so well today and was off in my throwing. No biggie. It was still beautiful out. Here, everyone is searching for my blue disc in the middle of a field with blue flowers...

Old Settler's used to handle rain beautifully. But now there is this new tiny stream on the course to avoid. And when a disc inevitably goes in the drink, we play that temporary water does not count. But I made Mr. Gortex shoes stand in the water when putting.

Only John and I went to lunch. He suggested Bennigans (which I have not been to in like forever). We both ordered fajita salads which were so so. It amused me when John orders water. When it arrived, he dumped out the lemon and squeezed in a packet of lemon Water Sensations (Citric Acid, Potassium Citrate and sucralose).

Perikles

Wow, Jon suggested that we play Perikles and everyone agreed. Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

I was definitely glad that I got a chance to play this again. But it will probably be my last time with this group. I don't think others came away with a good impression of it. Doug kept loudly proclaiming that I was in the lead and everyone should get me. However, in the end, Doug won the game and I came in third. Sigh.

Tichu

To finish out the night, we played Tichu. On my failed Tichu call, I knew it was a risk when I called it. And Doug confirmed it when he over Tichued.

Ugh. The run of bad luck continues. And, as you can see, one team was getting all of the points. Until Ed was set. Then, it went our way. But our desperation Grand-Tichus sealed our fate.

I have always felt that eating breakfast foods at dinnertime was extravagant. And, boy, was I in the mood for some comfort food tonight.

I started out by cooking some of the bacon that Marty bought for me at Cooper's. I have found that the easiest way to cook bacon is in the convection toaster oven. Yeah, you heard me right. Just place it on the top rack of the oven and put a pan on the bottom rack to catch the drippings. Set the temperature to 200 and leave it alone. That strategy makes it pretty hard to over cook it and the fat helps baste the bacon. I made extra for a future BLT.

Next up was biscuits. I used Alton Brown's biscuit recipe. And was shocked when I forgot just how incredibly sticky that recipe was. What is frustrating is that you really want to combat the stickiness by folding the dough and using lots of extra flour. But that is the last thing that you should do. If you overwork the dough, the biscuits will loose their fluffiness and turn tough. So I ended up with some rather interesting looking biscuits. But that doesn't matter much in your stomach.

After the biscuits were in the oven, I made some white hominy grits. With butter...

And last, but not least, was a cheese omelet with poblano peppers. Don't forget to add half 'n half or whipping cream to your scrambled eggs! Very important.

The biscuit recipe makes far too many biscuits for one person. So, after eating one, I threw out the rest. So sad in a way to waste food. But a necessary evil to enable my indulgence.

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The group decided on playing at Wilco. I was up early and in the mood for some practice. So I arrived at 8:40. I was able to get in a complete round of golf before everyone else was ready to start at 10.

For as long as I have been complaining about the lack of necessary improvements to this course, I was surprised to see one improvement actually made. They installed small numbered signs on the rocks next to each tee. I guess they finally clued into the fact that people had taken some initiative and had wrote the numbers in magic markers on the rocks. I guess that blob is supposed to be an oak leaf?

The next thing they need to do is to install concrete tee boxes. That would handle the erosion caused by the many people throwing discs during the year. Or, at least they should put some visible markers where the tee box is. You can't see anything in this field of dead oak leaves.

Our group was doing well compared to the others. Adam, Mike, and myself were each doing our share in good throws. My best throw came on hole 11. Within putting range for sure! And were were able to make that birdie. Adam stepped up to the plate on the next hole and we were able to make back-to-back birdies. We finished four ahead of the other two teams.

Today, the weather was threatening rain. But fortunately, that threat never materialized. I saw a couple drops splattered on the windshield during the drive, but nothing when I arrived.

I did have one good moment on hole 2. I sank a long putt for a birdie!

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

After taking some flak on Rozmiarek's site about only having a meaty diet when gaming, I was ready to play some lighter weight games tonight. Unfortunately, the other people wanted to play TtA yet again. Mike has declared that this game is in his top 10 game list and that he had to own a copy at all costs. So he bought one copy of this rare game (only 500 were made). He quoted a price of between 100 and 200 dollars for what he paid. I suspected that the location was Gnome, Alaska in that price range.

The actual game has some nicely produced components (the box, the center boards, and the rules) and some poorly produced components (the cards and the player boards). I consider these poorly produced because, although the look nice and colorful, they cannot stand up to repeated game play. My copy is perfectly functional and I will wait until the second edition is printed before purchasing a real copy.

This game has a couple of flaws. First, is that it is played slowly. There is not much that you can do about this. Hopefully, we will get faster as we are more experienced with it. The second is the drawing of cards from the military deck. For the civil deck, you see thirteen cards and can choose from them (paying more action points the farther to the right that the card is located). However, for the military deck, its just a random draw. The problem is that you need a good balance of cards in the different categories from this deck. You want some defensive cards, some tactics cards (to boost your military), and some attack cards.

In this game, I never drew a defense card during the entire game! Gah! Total suckage. I believe that we need a house rule to fix this. Use the same face up setup for civil cards.

Because we only played until the end of the second era, we played with a house rule of you couldn't use St. Peter's Basilica with Michelangelo (and also, we discovered, with Joan of Arc).

In our game, Mike was clearly in first and I was clearly in second. Then, much farther back, was Adam and Jon bringing up the rear. I was doing good with keeping an army of three warriors using Legion tactics. The problem was that I had to spend them a couple of times on bidding for colonies. So I had to rebuild them. Unfortunately, my food and ore production was entirely consumed when I did this. So I was riding a thin line. That line broke when Adam first attacked me. He had taken Joan and built up his army enough to jump ahead of me in military strength. I decided to spend my entire army in stopping that attack. And I never was able to recover from that attack. I had missed my chance to take some stronger troops (swordsmen or riflemen). And I didn't have enough stockpiled food and ore to rebuild.

In this game, when you attack someone, your best bet is to attack the weakest player. That attack will cripple that player. Which makes it much harder to recover and build up your military to become closer in relative military strength. This game definitely proves the old adage of the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.

Tichu

After playing TtA, Mike was up for a game of Tichu. And my one-sided run of bad luck continues...

Jon continues his streak of being bad luck for me (that's my story and I am sticking to it!). Towards the end, I was forced into making a desperation Grand-Tichu call (Jon picking up all of his cards first). Which I should not of made in the first place, but oh well. On the next hand, Ed calls Tichu when his team only needed 35 points for the win. When we set him, we once again had a little hope of making a comeback. And Jon kept hope alive when he made a Tichu call. Unfortunately he made an ace wish when he played his eleven card straight. And I was able to satisfy that wish by breaking up my thirteen card run (leaving me with a 2, a 3 and a jack). Jon had no aces. So he was trying to improve his hand by forcing an opponent to play an Ace. It was a risky call. But when you are behind, you need to take chances...

Ed was holding another long game day. So I made cherry hand pies. They were fun to make. But towards the end, I was overwhelmed by the effort each pie took. First I had to mix the ingredients together and stick the bowl in the freezer so that the mixture would harden up. Then , for each pie, I had to:

• Take the bowl out of the freezer.
• Scoop out some of the mixture and weigh it (trying to get similar sized pies).
• Possibly put the bowl back in the freezer if I took too long making the pies
• Flour my hands well and put the scoop of the mixture and form a ball
• Put the ball down and start to roll it out
• At some point, put more flour on the circle of dough
• Stop when it is rolled out 5 inches in diameter
• Scoop out some cherry filling onto circle
• fold half of the circle over top of the cherry filling with a bench scraper
• Crimp the edges with a fork. Remembering to flour the fork because it occasionally sticks
• poke holes in the top for steam
• Pick it up with the scraper and put it on the sheet pan

My only problem with them was that I didn't let them dry out enough after cooking.

Ed installed a flash for his camera. Its interesting just how much light a camera needs in order to take a picture. For this picture, I used ISO 1600, a shutter speed of 1/30, and a f-stop of 5.6. 1/30th of a second is pushing it at this focal length (28mm). And an ISO of 1600 is pushing it with this camera as well. Sigh. I can't wait to get an 1D Mark III. Having an extra stop of ISO will certainly help.

Nottingham

John started off us with a new game, Nottingham. This game was billed as a light set collecting game. However, it turned out a be a hose everyone and random play game. There are seven suits of cards. On your turn, you flip over a card. You can either take it or use its power to mess with people. There are cards to seal from people, rob from people, force people to show their hands and take from them, force people to possibly give up cards, or to stop once those painful things from happening to you.

Theres no planning on what cards to collect. Only to hope that you can fulfill one of the set types that score lots of points. Playing those can't be stopped. Otherwise, you are at the mercy of someone screwing with you. Such fun.

Susan showed us the extremely cute and furry bundle of energy called Riku.

Through the Ages

Marty had wanted to play TtA. So I brought it over. However, he only wanted to play it three player due to time restrictions. Tim joined in.

This game was close! In the end, Marty pipped me by a couple of points. Towards the end, I had a good leader (James Cook) with some territories. So I was scoring well. However, Marty was able to put Iconoclasm into play during the third era (discard all leaders not of the current era). This made me loose Cook and his point generation. Marty was able to play a good leader (Elvis Presley) and able to get his victory point generation up to 16 points a turn.

I knew I had to respond somehow. Fortunately, my army was bigger than his. And, I drew Annex (take a colony), Assassinate (kill a leader), and Spy (take 5 science points). I played Annex first and won. Later, when I was 18 points ahead in military power, I played Assassinate. Unfortunately, I did not bother to sacrifice some units to increase the power. And Marty was able to play 3 six point defense cards to keep his leader. I should have went all out.

Still, it was a fun and close game.

Age of Steam: Western U.S.

To end out the night, I played another meaty game: Age of Steam. We tried a new board as well. The board was interesting. There were two clear choices of starting locations. However, towards the end of the game, everyone was close in points. Apparently, all four corners of the map were decent starting locations. But the western half of the board had a lot of mountains. And building on mountains is costly. That probably hurt Ed and Jon somewhat.

The final scoring was nail-biting. It looked like a close race between me and a new-comer. We were tied in the first calculation. And I turned out to have built more track than he did for the win.

At the Rivery course, sharp-eyed John noticed this metal box hiding in a hole. It seems that this is a geocaching store.

John and I went to the normal Old Settler's course. And every time we stay away from the course for a while, it seems that we forget how to avoid the water hazards. Well, at least we didn't loose any discs this time...

It looks like they have installed one flood control/monitor thingy. I wonder why its so tall?

Just great. As I was cleaning my glasses this morning, they snapped in half! At least I can use my old pair until I get a new set.

Through The Ages

This night I held a special event. A four player, full game of Through the Ages. We even started earlier than normal at 6:00pm. The game lasted 6 hours though. And, strangely enough, no one attacked or started a war during the game.

This game, while fun, suffers from two problems. The first is the down time. The only way to alleviate that is to bring a computer with an internet connection.

The second is randomness of the military cards. You need a well balanced draw (some tactics cards, some defense cards, some event cards, etc). It always seems that you can never draw what you need. I think that this game needs a card rack for military cards as well as civil cards.

Looks like the Blue Bonnets have started blooming. I wonder how plentiful they will be this season... Spring is the only pretty time in Texas.

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The group went out to Pease park today. I had initially planned to do disc golf at the Rivery and watch 300 at the new Citylights theater. But John (knowing my plans) posted a wheres disc golf going to be note and Adam suggested Pease. So the plans morphed into Pease + food (turned out to be Changos) + 300 at the Alamo Village.

Apparently, all this construction going on is for flood control computers. Which I think is a waste. It hardly rains around here...

John and Adam canceled on me, but Jon showed up (which is extremely rare for a Friday). I had a really bad day. I think I lost a point to Jon at about every hole. But the weather was beautiful out and playing with friends is the real reason to be out here.

I did have two good first throws. But I couldn't convert them into birdies.

Gravitt showed up late with a new toy: a bag with a backpack strap. Apparently in celebration of his ace...

Bootleggers

Last week, I had promised to play a game that John wanted to play. And John brought over his cart of possibilities: Gloria Mundi, Big Kini, Sienna, Himalaya, Factory Fun, Midgard, and Traders of Genoa. The group settled on Bootleggers. I had played it once and didn't have a particularly fun time. But I was willing to give it another shot.

This is a game that has a lot of dice in it. Dice determine your production of moonshine. And dice determine the demand of speakeasies. You can mitigate the poor dice rolls with special cards (an extra still or extra dice at a still). But these cards are in a big deck with other cards and are subject to the random shuffle. You get to pick one card from a row of n+1 cards in player order. Your order is based on what card you choose at the start of the round. The cards range from 1 to 70-something and are dealt out at the beginning of the game. So, the net of it all is that you rely on getting good cards to go first. But you are waiting for the extra dice cards to show up in the display. In order to mitigate poor production dice rolls.

There are a lot of links in that chain to try and make a better experience for you... Too many.

Whatever you produce, you ship in truck to bars. The bars have three waiting lines each. If you have majority presence in a bar, you get to use the first line. If you have presence in a bar, you get to use the second line. Otherwise you are forced to use the third line. These lines and your order in the lines determine what goods are accepted by the bar. If your goods were accepted, then you get paid. Otherwise, you are screwed. You get nothing and have to get rid of the unused goods. Also, if you have majority influence in a bar, the bar will pay you extra for each good that it bought.

At the end of the game, whoever has the most money wins. Simple and unpleasant.

Mu

To end out the night, we played Mu. Its a great trick-taking game that not enough people love. We had to force Doug and John to play it. But, eventually, they will come to love it...

One of my vices is the weekly breakfast tacos at IBM's cafeteria. For a long time, I didn't know about it. You see, they offer pre-made tacos that sit under heat lamps. But if you wait at the grill, you can get made-to-order tacos for only 30 cents more. Not only can you get whatever items you want, but these tacos are huge. One of these tacos is easily bigger than two of the pre-made ones. The only drawback is that the chef is rather slow and likes to talk. So be prepared to wait.

The group went to the Rivery today. I arrived early today to practice. Hrm, it seems they put a tiny bit of mulch on the tee and put a stake in the ground. I wonder what is going on?

My first throw went high, hit a tree, and landed on top of some branches. Sigh. Now I have to look around for some rocks... John stopped by and was excited about getting his first ace.

So we wandered off to practice at hole 17 next. I like this hole. There is a tunnel that ends in a hole which goes downhill. I like to try and throw an arcing hyzer that heads off to the left and high over the short cedar trees. If you aim it right, it will curve back to the right and go right into the hole. Well, this throw didn't curve so much and, instead, hit an abandoned shack. It must have hit just perfectly. Because the disc impaled itself on a nail!

John's disc was thrown a little more to the right and found its way through a much smaller hole besides the shack.

We were going to head off when it came to 10 am. But Nick and Stephanie showed up in the nick of time (hehe, pun intended). Apparently they found some rather outdated instructions for finding this disc golf course and had to walk around to find us.

Stephanie's disc got lost in a dormant tree. So Nick went about beating it with a dead tree limb...

It seems that all of the holes had a little layer of much put on them. But I wonder why. Are they marking them for some more permanent improvements like a concrete tee pad?

On hole 15, there is a new tee. The group wanted to use that one instead of using the old one. Unfortunately, the new one is much easier.

I went to the IBM club's Casino Night and played no limit Hold-Em. It was fun. Everyone started with $200 in free chips. So everyone plays differently -- much looser. But not me. I was tight. I only had one pocket pair tonight and the Queens held up.

The last hand of the night was amusing. Since the chips would turn into raffle tickets at the end and I could care less about the raffle prizes, I decided to go all in. I then look down at my cards: an eight of diamonds and a three of spades. The second worst hand possible. Sigh. Still, I was determined to go all in no matter what. Four other people called and I had the smallest chips of all of them, so there was still betting going on.

The flop comes Ace, King, three of diamonds! I have hope now for a flush! Then the rest of the people bet and go all in. I am sure someone has a better hand than me at the moment, but it is out of my hands. The turn is a Jack of diamonds! Yes. I made my flush with only three possible cards that will beat me (Queen, ten, nine). Now I have to hope that the board does not pair. The river is a seven of clubs. Everyone one reveals their cards and no one else has a higher diamond (or any diamond for that matter). Woo woo!

It is always fun ending the night quadrupling up.

Age of Steam: 1830's Pennsylvania

Adam suggested Through the Ages to play again. But when Mike and Doug joined in and we had six people over, I sat out. With Adam out of the picture, Jon suggested Age of Steam. I certainly was willing to play that. I could tell that John was not looking forward to playing it again by the pout on his face. In fact, he earned the nickname: Mr Pouty-face. We were going to let him pick the next game in appreciation for playing with us.

This map has black cubes as coal. There are two special rules for the transportation of coal to a gray city. You can either transport it like normal and score it double. Or, you can double your engine size and score it normally. The coal towns are on the western half of the board and they are situated in mountainous country. On the east are normal towns with better location. So I ignored the coal and focused on that area. I started out pretty well and built up a good network. But it became clear that John was on a downward spiral. So we called it and reset the game.

In the second game, John did much better. I still focused on the eastern half of the board. And Jon was adventurous and went after coal. When it became clear how powerful delivering coal was by how much of a boost it gave your income, I started to turn my sights westward. Jon was in the lead by delivering single coals and I was in second with good double deliveries. When I finally made it to some coal towns, I was able to make 5 and 6 length coal deliveries. This boosted my income by 10 and 12 points at a shot. So much so that we had tons of money halfway though the game. I was able to outdistance Jon again. When Jon's income was 50 and mine was 56 and we were 3/4ths of the way through the game, we called it again.

Unfortunately, John had to leave and we could not play Medina like he suggested. Sorry, John. Next time!

Tichu

While we were waiting for Rehana to show up, we played Tichu. Our heroic team was well out in the lead when Rehana showed it, so it was desperation Grand Tichu time. Jon was the one to call it. Adam lead a straight and made a random King wish. His intention was to then lead a pair and hope to get Jon to play a pair of Kings. Unfortunately play had to pass through me first and I had a King bomb (natural). Sigh. Jon did manage to go out first. But, fortunately, we were able to stop the one-two.