John is trying to put together a Tichu session on Sunday nights. We shall see if I can make more of them, but I was able to finish all of my chores in time to make this one. There were a couple of new people present. So it was a good opportunity to increase the local Tichu skills.

However, my partner made some mistakes. One thing about this game that can be counter-intuitive is the fact that this a team game. One example is going over your partner’s plays when they call Tichu. When Traci called it, I was waiting to help with a Dragon and a Dog in my hand. After an opponent played an Ace (and the Phoenix was out), I stepped in and played the Dragon. So Traci shocked me when she bombed the Dragon. She then led a low sequential pair which was overtaken by the other team. At this point, my hand was cratered and I could only sit by and hope that she could go out first. My partner should realize that I am not going to play on top of their Tichu call unless I have a strong reason to.

The next mistake was knowing how to stop the one/two. The other team was about to one/two. Wayne only had one card left. So I saw an opportunity to stop him. I played my last Ace and would play three low pairs. However, Traci went over my pair with a higher pair. And then lead a low single. Which I could not stop. Here is another case where you should not play on top of your partner unless you are guaranteed to go out next.

This game had a lot of bombs in it. I counted ten of them. And it was a long and drawn out game. We were even on Tichu calls and one/twos. But we were seriously out-pointed.

Dancing Dice

Sadly, Adam has left Austin. And as a direct consequence, the scale has whiplashed to the fluffy side. Gravitt wanted to try out dancing dice. While I bought it because it is a dice game, it has been a while since I played it. Essentially, you have two choices in the game. You decide what dice (out of 6) you are going to reroll. Your other choice is what group of three dice you are going to place first in the order. That is pretty much it to this game. I started out poorly by placing in the bottom half of the group (and therefore losing dance points). But I eventually turned it around and ended up winning the game!

On the Underground

Ed brought out this new train game based on the London subway. I thought it was an okay game. But it is on the same level as Ticket to Ride. And if you have that game, there is no compelling reason to buy this game. At least in my opinion.

Wikinger

Next up was another new game brought by John. This game is about the early Vikings. But, during game play, I thought that the theme was weak. And I viewed it more like an abstract game. It didn’t leave me with a great impression for my first playing. But who knows? I’ll give it another chance.

Mini Bridge

As we were waiting for people to show, Adam dealt out a mini-bridge hand. With the point count being 16 (Mark), 4 (Mike), 7 (Adam), and 13 (Dummy), I got the bid. With this many points between myself and the dummy, Adam would not let me bid low. So I was forced to bid game in a minor suit (which means all of the tricks except for 2). My combined hand was: AKQ76542 K85432 AKJ9862 AKQ05. I called clubs as trump. Mike lead the three of hearts. Which I won. When I started trying to run out trumps, I had a bad split. Mike was able to win a trick with the Jack of clubs. One mistake that I made was discarding the two of diamonds which I needed to keep to protect my king of diamonds. So I ended up being set.

Call My Bluff x 3

While we waited for Tim and Mary to show up, we played three quick games of Call My Bluff. I made one dumb mistake when it was down to two players. Sigh…

Funkenschlag

Chapel went off to play the fluffier game of Andromeda while Tim, Adam, and myself played Funkenschlag. I missed playing this game. I spent most of the game going first. Mainly because I would connect to more cities than I needed to (or could power for that matter). But I was doing so to stop others from cutting me off or getting there first for a cheaper connection fee. Towards the end of the game, I was running just a little short of money. So I couldn’t end it. And then I made the classic mistake of not guaranteeing resources to power your plants. I noticed during the power plant auction that Adam was going to buy resources before me and he would buy all of the oil away from me so that my big oil plant wouldn’t power any cities. So I bought the fusion plant to replace it for 62 dollars. Adam was thinking of buying all of the coal away from me as well but decided against it when he thought that he couldn’t afford to both buy coal and connect to 20 cities. In the end, Adam and I could both connect to and power 20 cities. And Adam broke the tie by having more money left over at the end.

However, if I would have protected my oil plant by buying extra resources and not bought another power plant, I would have easily won the game. I was worried that Adam would connect to and power more than 20 cities. So thats why I bought the fusion plant. I only discarded the oil plant when I realized that Adam could have hosed me (the bastard!).

Still, I am glad that I played it and it was a fun game.

For Sale

We started off with this light, but good game. The auctioning is simple and works rather well. You bid for properties which you then turn around and sell for money. There are a number of rounds based on the amount of people in the game. You either increase the bid or drop out, loose half your current bid, and take the lowest property (which number from 1 to 30).

In the second half of the game, you turn around and simultaneous blind bid for money (which number in two sets of 1 to 15). Obviously, you want to use as low a property as you can. I had won the 29 property and knew Susan had the 30. So my dilemma was when to use it. I passed the first opportunity for a 15 and hoped that Susan would acquire it. But, she didn’t. When the second 15 came up, I definitely skipped that one. At the end of the game, I learn that she was not even tracking or going after the 15s. Sigh. I only psyched myself out it seems.

Through The Ages

Next up was Through the Ages. Harry specifically came to Ed’s to play this game. And you did not have to twist Adam’s arm to get him to play it again. I did alright in this game. My weakness was not keeping up my military strength. Adam was in last for most of the game. But, towards the end, he built up his army to be much stronger than the rest of us. He first attacked Harry and took him down a notch. Next he was going to go after either myself or Marty. Fortunately, he went after Marty and came up with an astonishing 37 points taken from Marty. Thankfully, the game ended (he had mentioned that he was going to go after me next). The end game scoring slowly moved Adam firmly into the lead and me into second. I was doing alright with Elvis as a leader and some Theaters. But I think what had hurt me was not having enough civil actions during the game. That and not enough science generation.

Age of Steam: Mississippi Steamboats

With this being one of the last of Adam’s gaming days in Austin, he got to pick the games for us. Which meant some nice and meaty games. He decided on playing a game of Age of Steam with a new map. The addition rules were short and terse. So we misunderstood some of the aspects of the game. Like, for example, of do you need to purchase the track from a city on the river to the river itself? We decided that you had to. Apparently you did not. But I think that it really didn’t hurt the game after all.

Apparently, Adam had made some mistakes in both calculations and misremembering the rules. So he was in catch up mode. Since this is such a tightly strung game, it was rather impressive that he was able to keep up with us after being forced to take three shares a round (and then maxing out early). I thought that I was not doing so well. I wasn’t able to get longer and longer deliveries. And I was dependent on the northernmost river connection which turned out to be rather flaky and only one space wide. The steamboats (which allow you to transport across the river and give you bonuses for delivering on them) are pretty random on where they end up. Rolling two dice and moving the result will do that.

I was surprised when we started the final scoring. I turned out to have the most victory points after the shares were subtracted. And no one out built tracks either…

Tichu

To end the night (and to make me stay for another game), we played a game of Tichu. Adam was aggressive in calling Grand Tichu as usual. But, the heroic team set him every time.

Our (that is to say, Ed’s) only Tichu call was amusing. I led the Mahjong with a straight and random-wished a ten. Which turned out to hurt Ed as he was forced to play. However, he did call Tichu and played the rest of his straight when everyone passed. Ed was able to go out first. And I was able to make it out second with my nine bomb. Sadly, Adam couldn’t either set Ed or stop me from going out with three Aces and three Kings left in his hand…

Mini Bridge

While we were waiting for everyone to show up, Adam dealt out a hand of mini bridge. And I was the lucky person with 12 points. Sadly, I didn’t turn on the big halogen light and get the aperture up to f/8.0 so that you can see my dummy’s support. But it wasn’t much: two spades and no Aces. So, I bid the minimum spade bid and ran trump when the second heart was led. Adam commented that I should have promoted my club King since I had the Queen in the dummy. Sigh. I should have.

Guatemala Cafe

John brought out a new game by Eggert Spiele. This game has a theme, but it plays dry and turns into an abstract game. My mistake was teaming with Jon on my left. Jon had created a black plantation on his first turn. And I did as well on my first turn. Then, he had placed black ships in the corresponding port to increase the multiplier. Next he had tried to score black a couple of times but other players blocked it. However, it can only be blocked so many times. So I thought that I was finally going to score. Adam never gave me a chance to score myself. I could only set up Jon to score it. But I knew that Jon was not going to score it again in the game. Even though it was his highest scoring opportunity with 16 points. I even left black people on the board so he could catch up to my potential score which had not changed the entire game.

Sigh. You can’t do all of the work alone in this game. You need to team up with others. But when that person actively denies their own scoring, you are hosed.

Tichu

Jon had the mojo tonight for stopping non-desperation GrandTichu calls. On the first stoppage, Adam was left with three Aces and a Phoenix. Apparently, he should have played pair of aces, pair of aces, dog instead of dog.

Battlelore

Another game of Battlelore while we waited for Rehana to show up and another game of how sucky can the dice roll for me. Ugh.

Through The Ages

Marty was in town and wanted to play a full game of TtA. And he didn’t have to twist Adam’s and my arm to get us to play. Weirdly, Chapel couldn’t make it. So, Marty invited Harry over.

This game probably took us five hours to play. I went to bed after 12 which meant I lost some precious hours of sleep.

I was able to get Michelangelo as my era 1 leader. Mainly to stop Adam from getting it (he had St. Peter’s Basilica) but I was able to turn him into a point generator. My second and third era leaders were not so good (William Shakespeare and Elvis Presley). Fortunately, I was able to draw the assassinate leader card. And discard it eventually when I didn’t think that my military would get up to strength. Sadly, after that, Adam jumped out into the lead with Sid Meier. I was only able to attempt a raid on him which he defended against.

When the game was in its last round, Adam declared war on me. Usually, the defender gets a chance to respond and build up its defenses. But not in this case. And I had just spent my military in getting a +11 victory point colony. Flawed!

When the scoring was over, I was able to pip Marty by a couple of points for second place! Woo woo!

Imperial

Ahh, another good game of Imperial for me. This time, I controlled Austria/Hungary and Russia. Sadly, A/H hit a brick wall. I definitely did not want to encroach on Russia’s space. And I never did get a ship in the sea to go out to Africa. Also, I had some hiccups with the financing. I had built one factory too many. So, when it came around to pay out dividends, I did not have enough money in the Treasury. So I had to make a couple of inefficient moves (that is performing no actions when landing on the space) in order to make it back to taxation.

I was able to build Russia up quite well. No one was really attacking her either. So, it was clear that I needed to make the invest/taxation run. The only problem was when I was buying more Russian bonds. I had the opportunity to buy the 8 level. But it would leave me with no money. I needed two dollars for the run up to taxation to end the game. So, I took a chance of Italy paying me some money. Which didn’t happen (and I should have been able to compute that, actually).

This allowed other countries to increase their final multipliers. When the dust settled, I was able to win by a couple of points. Which is a little too close for comfort.

Princes of Florence

The going joke in our game group is to respond “Haven’t we played that recently?” when Adam puts Princes of Florence on the table. In fact, Mike was adamant that he actually had played it not too long ago. But when you cannot remember the rules, perhaps the recent playing was actually back in August… of last year.

This is definitely Adam’s game. And he jumped out in a huge lead to prove it.

Tichu

To end out the night, we played a game of Tichu. Rehana showed up after we had played 3 hands and the last hand was called. So the loosing team had a chance to tie it up with a Grand Tichu 1/2. Fortunately, they failed.

A couple of interesting hands here. The player to my left makes, I think, a 36 bid and calls threes trump. It is a shock to realize that I had 4 of them including the boss trump (3:3). The trump split was quite horrible: 3 0 0 4. Needless to say that they were set. I am beginning to realize that you really don’t need a premium hand to bid.

Case in point: I have five 5’s including the top two. But I had two loosing bones in my hand including a five point bone, 3:2. I bid 36 and everyone else passes. I lead one of my two losers and the opposing team takes the trick but with no other points on it. Then, the person on my right leads a 3 and I am forced to play my 3:2 bone. Fortunately, my partner is out of threes and trumps in with the 0:5. I then lay my hand down and claim the rest since all I have now are trumps.

Figaro

I recently bought this game, so I had to bring it out to play. The game is about the screw-ups of the court jester and how badly he annoys the king. The game has cute artwork. Unfortunately, for some reason, this group thought that the game was broken. I didn’t think so. Maybe they were missing something…

Yspahan

It’s been a while since I have played this game. And, I don’t think that I have won this game yet either.

Tichu

My first Tichu was risky. I had 1-7, QQJJJ, Ph, and a 5. And there was one round that had three bombs. Fortunately, we were able to set John’s Tichu call.

Adam tried out another recipe. Unfortunately, there was a cake malfunction. Two of them, from what I hear. So, to recover from the disaster, he decided to blend the results. And this is what turned out. He had an amusing quote when he explained that with so much cold butter in it, it had firmed up quite well.

Pillars of the Earth

Finally I get to try this game out. Mike had bought the German version in December. But we never got around to playing it. Apparently, this game is based off of the story by Ken Follet. However, you do not have to read the book in order to play this game. This game was certainly interesting to play. It is a return-on-investments game where you slowly build up your victory point generation. There are only six rounds in this game. So, it should be a quick game. The only problems are 1) trying to figure out what workers to go after and 2) dealing with the randomness of the resource generation. With three amounts of three resources giving you nine cards, only seven of the cards are dealt out in a round. So it is possible to get only one amount of a resource in a round. And that resource could be the one that you are banking on.

Taluva

Another playing of this lightly meaty game for me. The game feels like it should play quicker than it does. We had Jon with us and it was his first time playing. And because of that, Ed left him alone and only picked on me. Which wasn’t that fair. Jon tried an interesting strategy by only placing huts for most of the game. Which made for a rather large settlement. But he would need to eventually split it up so that he could place more than one tower or temple.

Battlelore

Once again, everyone bugged out early. So I played a two-player game of Battlelore with Adam. Adam had Iron Dwarves on top of hills. Which are hard to dislodge with my weaker Gnomes. I had some pretty bad luck with the Battlelore card (there is only one of these in the deck). Adam played it against me and was able to activate a lot of units. On my next turn, I played the card which performs the same action. I was only able to activate one unit with a horrible roll. And then Adam plays the same card that I did and activate a lot of units again. After that, we shuffle the deck. And what does Adam draw, but the only Battlelore card! Ugh! Flawed!!