Mike Chapel made this motivational poster… Amusing.

Exxtra

Wow, was my luck horrible in this game! It was definately my most unluckiest Exxtra game eva! Every time that I rolled above 70 (at least 5 or 6 times), it was knocked off. Argh! The only satisfying thing about the game was the end. Doug was poised to win. I, wanting the game to be over with, rolled and placed on the board. Marty, decided to try and stop Doug. He failed and lost one point. Which then tied him with me (for third). Doug won.

Forum Romanum

John bought this rare game on ebay and brought it here. I was definately willing to play the game again. It has simple rules and offers many tactical options. This game is much better than Die Dolmengötter.

I was in the lead for most of the game. And only very briefly lost the lead to Francesca. By the end of the game, I was twice as far ahead as everyone else. I need to start looking for this game on ebay…

You can see in the picture above, that Doug (yellow) was pretty negative at that point in the game. He made progress during the game and moved into positive territory. So when the end game scoring was calculated, it was a surprise that Doug moved to 2nd.

Modern Art

Ahh, this classic Knizia game was brought to the table. This game didn’t have that much competition for artwork. In fact, besides the five required to end the round, there wasn’t much other art on the table. In the last round, I offered a two pair collection which Doug (to my right) jumped on. He then ended the game by putting out another two pair of the same artist to bring the total to 5. There was only one other artist on the table at the time. I was in the lead, so I didn’t mind at all. Just surprised me…

Easy Come, Easy Go

When we were playing this game, I was talking to Marty. So I was a little distracted. However, I won, so it was not that detrimental. ^_^

Daimant

Another quick filler game to end the night. I lost my gems on the first couple of mine disasters. So I had to push my luck. On the fith, and final mine, it was me and Adam left. Adam dropped out when he figured that he had enough to beat Mike. I pushed my luck. The next card that was turned was the 15 card! This was more than I needed for the win!

Res Publica

This game has been sitting on my table, lonely and unappreciated for a while now. Thankfully, it was finally nominated to be played. Marty explained the rules to us. And we started playing.

This is a set collection game of two basic categories: towns-people (5 types of 12 each) and sciences (5 types of 12 each). You start out with 4 towns-people and propose a trade. The other people will propose the other half of the trade. You either accept or not. And then you draw a towns-person. Play then moves to the next person. When you collect 5 of the same towns-people, you lay them down with a 3 point settlement victory card on top of them. They will allow you to draw an extra science card. If you lay down 5 of the same science cards down, you take the top most victory card of the cities (starting from 9, 8, 8, 7, 7, down to one 4).

The meat of this game is in the trades. You can either propose a trade of a request or propose a trade of an offer. The other people will then propose the opposite kind (offers if you proposed a request). You name the specific type of card or the general type of card and an ammount. An example would be three Vikings, one Alchemy, or two people. You can also combine the request/offer with an AND or an OR. For example, one Goth or one Viking. Both sides must be able to fufil the terms and must trade the cards if someone is selected.

The dilemma, of course, is that you want to put the request and the offer together. But you must decide if an offer is more likely to get you what you want or a request will. I started out behind the curve with only one settlment out. But I was able to get my second settlement out with a jucy trade for the other person. In the end, I was hoping that Marty would not be able to complete a set. But Doug helped him out for the set he needed to complete. And because of that, Marty finished in first and Doug in second.

Mermaid Rain

Another playing of this game for me. Which makes me glad. I did travel to Tokyo and buy this game there. It is nice that it is finally being used.

In the Shadow of the Emperor

It has been a while since this game has hit the table. But I did remember a couple of strategy points. The first was that winning an electorate and ascending into the elector spot for the first time is what gives you victory points. Staying there after that only keeps giving you the power. Second, the purple electorates can be won as normal, but only single barons can ascend into the elector spot.

This was a tight game. Besides the mistake of not moving a married couple into the last free spot in order to go after Ed’s spot, the only other mistake that I made was not trying to be Emperor for a turn. That would have given me some much needed victory points…

Tichu

What is this, Mike not only played Tichu again with us, but also suggested it? Is the world coming to an end? Is Mike turning into smart-Mike?

I’m a little dissapointed here. The camera was set up, the players willing, but trying to enter the data after the fact, I still cannot figure out how the cards were played. Part of the problem is that people would not play in front of them and orient their cards correctly. So there are ambiguities that I could not resolve. Sigh. Next time, I am going to be more strict. One picture per card group played and the placement matters!

This game was painful! For the entire game, our team did not once get more card points than the others… After 7 rounds, our team scored 120 points out of 700 points which averages out to 17%. Guh!

Other games that were played:

The game based on a painting: Siena

Struggle of Empires

Wow, what a struggle it is to get others to play this game. I always thought that the whole point of long game days was to play long and meaty games. At least I was able to find four other players to play this game with me.

This game has a number of interesting components to it. First, there are battles (either against neutral chips or against others). You make a risk assessment against the outcome of the battle. At even strength, you have a 40% chance of success. At plus one strength, it is 60%. Etc… Second, there is the disposition of players to one of the two sides in a war. Both the player order and which players are on what sides are determined by a series of bids. And third, there are all kinds of special power cards that are available. Do you go for allies in specific regions, general bonuses for battle, or extra money in specific regions? Many possibilities for strategy there…

I started out in the colonies (East Indies, India, Africa, and South America) and the German States. Luckily, no one fought me or even invaded in the East Indies and Africa. I tried to gain a greater presence in the German States but the dice were not with me. Finally one person (Susan) tried to come into India. However, I was lucky. She could have done a sneak attack against me, but she decided not to. On my next turn, I quickly moved a ship and army in (I should have instead put a ship and fort in). Later, she fought and won against my army, but didn’t have enough actions to kick my control markers out (which is all that count anyways). And she finally settled for a second place presence.

During the first two scorings, I was in the lead. But it was clear to me that I was slowly loosing ground. Carl was taking over some rich territories in Europe, but he was spending a lot of money trying to control who was on each side (I didn’t really understand his motivation to put John and me versus everyone else. He never fought me). After final scoring, I was in third place, but when 1st and 2nd places in unrest moved Mike and Carl back, I ended up in first place!

All told, it took us three hours to play this game after the rules were explained. Which is quite reasonable, I think.

Crystal Faire

Another playing of this game and this time we found that we got a rule slightly wrong. During the adjustment phase, each player is allowed to fill the crystals back up to three. And then they can take either 0, 1, or 2 and move however many crystals are left. I think that it would make the victory point levels for crystals much more chaotic. We’ll see…

I still am not completely likeing the trading phase. It doesn’t seem crystal clear to me what people will offer or what I should offer (pun intented).

Tichu

What is this? Mike volunteering to play Tichu? WTF?! Not much unusual to report apart from that. Well, Adam did play the rare straight which included an unused bomb in it. On the last hand, I called Grand-Tichu blind and was smacked down by Adam for that. He had all of the controls and I had nothing…

Ahh game night, it turns out that there were hidden problems with the camera. Last week, I was playing around with photographing Tichu hands. It worked well. Since I was in the experimenting mood, I decided to mess around with the white balance as well. I put on an Expo Disc on the camera and took a white balance picture. Which I then applied to the default white balance. It worked well and I forgot about it. Fast forward until tonight. I take some pictures, Ed takes some pictures, I take some more pictures. And then I realize that there were three problems with the camera. The first was that the color balance was off! Doh! The second was that I had forced only one auto-focus point to be active. The third was that the camera was recording small jpegs instead of large jpegs plus raw pictures. Sigh. The camera remains a persnickity beast…

Bluff

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca, we played a game of Bluff. And the dice were in my favor. I kept most of my dice during the game and ended up victorious.

Crystal Faire

Mike had brought along the new Hangman game called Crystal Faire. It continues to have the same production values of the other games that they have made. That is to say, not good at all. Adequate enough to be functional. And in one case, you have problems telling the difference between a light grey circle and a white circle.

On to the mechanics. This is a set collecting game by trading. There are six types of “crystals” with differing amounts of availability. You start with nine hidden behind a flimsy screen (which kept getting blown down by the air conditioning). A start player is chosen and a trading round occurs. That person draws five more hidden crystals and then chooses two of three sets (a set of four with one hidden, a set of five with three hidden, or a set of six with five hidden). The other players only choose one of their three sets. Every one places the crystals out on the displays. The start player then chooses someone’s display and then that person will choose one of the two displays of the start player. They then secretly exchange the crystals (adding the hidden ones). The start player changes and trades continue until everyone has traded. After the trade, we draw three crystals (since there were three players in the game) and move each of the crystals that were drawn down on the status display. Players then will have the opportunity to either take 0, 1, or 2 of those crystals and move a number of crystals up or down on the display depending on how many crystals remain for other people to potentially take. Now players have the opportunity to try and score their crystals. For each crystal, players can pass or place crystals out to match or exceed what is currently out there. The person with the most crystals out (where ties are good) will score victory points (which is money). They then have to discard a number of crystals. The victory points are the following as crystals move down the status display: 1 (-1), 2 (-2), 3 (-2), 4 (-2), 6 (-3), 9 (-3), 12 (-4), 16 (-4), 25 (-5), 36 (-6). The numbers in parenthesis are how many crystals the winners are required to discard.

There is a lot of keeping up with what everyone else does in this game. No one used their 6 crystal set in trades. People would offer their 4 and 5s and the others would offer their 4s. Which means that the trader will loose a crystal in the deal since their 5 would be chosen against the offered 4. In scoring crystals, people would usually go after the 3 or 4 victory points and loose two crystals. Rather than waiting and trying to score 6 or more. So I kept up with the Joneses. Then the purple crystal starting to make a run for higher victory points. I had majority in it and Mike was a close second (so two people were rooting for it and only one was opposed to it). I decided to let Mike continue scoring with me equally since we both lost the same number of purple crystals and I still had a slight majority. However, on the last round, Mike was able to grab one purple crystal and tie me to score 36 points. I was able to score more in other crystals for the win.

Sushi Express

We ended the night with this game. A light game supposedly about delivering sushi but really about trying to make laps around a loop. When you pass the sushi express tile, you can get a customer card or tip card. The first of a customer scores 3 and additional customers of that color score 1. The fewest tips score minus points. There are some special action cards that you can play during the game. But it is a short and simple dice rolling game. The only problem was the flushing of the customer cards. This tended to speed up the game a lot quicker than it should of been. But I won, so why was I complaining?

Other games that were played:

An obviously off color Hacienda board…

and Geschenkt…

During the drive home, I noticed some small, really dark clouds along with grey and white clouds. At least, the perspective made it seem that way that they were all together. But wouldn’t they all have the same amount of moisture in them and therefore be the same color?

Tsuro

Ed brought another new game called Tsuro. It is like Metro in that you build paths and each tile contains 4 points that are connected to four other points that form 4 roads. Instead of placing the tile anywhere on the board, you are required to place it in front of your piece (this prevents other people from directly hosing you). Your piece and any other pieces then start moving and stop when they come to the end of the road. If a piece moves to the end of the board, it falls of and the game is over for that person. So, there is some screwage of other people in this game but only if your piece ends up next to a square that someone else must play on.

Since you only have three tiles in your hand, you must hope that the other person must be forced to move their piece the best that they can and your piece will still be able to move. And that was the position that I was in a couple of times. I knew my placement would put me next to someone, and I hoped that they could do nothing about it. Ed seemed to be in a good position in this game. He was off alone in a big empty section. But that didn’t last long. Surprisingly, I won the game. It came down to having (or drawing) exactly the tile I needed to get myself out of the situation that I was in.

Vegas Showdown

I finally got to play John’s game, Vegas Showdown. I have seen it being played on the other tables a lot recently, so it must be good. It is basically a bidding game. In your casino, there is a number of people that come into it and an amount of money that they spend. Your income during the game is the minimum of these two. And at the end of the game, there are extra points for majorities in either of these two. With your money, there are three types of tiles that you fight over. Yellow tiles mostly generate income (and some times give you people or victory points). These are the slot machines. Blue tiles mostly generate people (and some times give you income or victory points). These are the restaurants. And green tiles give you victory points (and some times give you people).

There is a area each for one of a set of basic tiles (one yellow, green and blue) and four areas where more advanced tiles can appear. Each of these areas has a line of numbers that represent possible bids. The advanced tiles start off at a large bid (like 44 for example) and get reduced each turn that they remain on the board. When you bid for a tile, you place your marker on one of the bids. If you are out bid, you get to place again. This continues until everyone has placed.

You then pay for your tile and place it on the board. There are doors which allow people to travel in from one of two sides. Yellow tiles are placed so that they can be reached by a path to one side of the board. Blues from the other side. And greens can connect to a yellow or blue. You also get points if you fill up your yellow or blue areas. And can get points if you can travel from one end of the board to the other.

And that was basically it. A simple game. With simple and drab artwork. And cheap materials. But it works alright. Not on the thematic level of Volle Hutte though.

Tichu

Two games of Tichu tonight. Both extremely one sided. The second game started with a Grand Tichu call because Mike thought he was still playing the first game (the 1000 point delta had already been obtained). Mike only had the Phoenix and the Dog when he made the call. When an Ace was wished for, our team had them all! And he still made it! The other extreme was when Adam called Grand Tichu. I passed him an Ace. Mike made the Ace wish. Adam bombed with Aces. And consequently lost the call. Sigh.

An interesting hand of mine. What bomb potential… What would you pass and why? I went for the four bomb and was passed a 4! Which was good enough to set Jon’s Grand Tichu call.

I have been itching to record more detail on our Tichu games. Right now, I have an XML file of our game scores along with the Tichu/GrandTichu calls. The next step that I want to record is the actual cards played during the game. So, tonight, I tried to record that information on the ThinkPad during the game. Adam was also helpful and recorded as well. This does slow the game down a bit (and take a bit of my concentration away from the game). Mike and Jon were impatient with this. So I gave up after three hands.

So for the next game night, I am going to set up this contraption. A tripod positioned over the table with a remote controller attached. I played around later with the settings. With the kitchen fluorescent light, the fan’s fluorescent light, and the big halogen light half on, I can get a 1/60″ 2.8 picture. But the entire table is not in focus with that wide aperature. Stepping down to a 16, the shutter speed moves to 1/2″. And with the halogen light on full, I can get a 4/10″ 22 picture. Which is good enough.

To give this picture which is 850K. The cards are readable. And the ISO was only 400. I could double it and halve the shutter speed if necessary. I think this should work…

John is a temporary bachelor. So he invited us over for gaming. I arrived a little late because I gave myself the luxory of a shower after disc golf. John’s house is pretty close to mine. Which is nice. He did warn me about his new dirty neighbor, another barn swallow in a mud nest. Complete with bird poop.

Age of Steam

I brought some meaty games to play: Indonesia, Byzantium, Zepter of Zavandor, and Lexio. We ended up playing Age of Steam… with Adam… who is a very strong player in this game. However, Adam was really nice and consentented to give us some advice during this game. I also took some pictures of the board (although I did miss some turns in the game). In fact, I should have brought my tripod with me to set up and automate taking pictures. Sigh. I did take pictures with my new lens though. I pushed the aperature as narrow as I could (a little too much… the shutter speed was 1/15″ and the aperature 4.0… which resulted in a little bit of shaking. I miss the image stabilization of this 2.8 lens. It is interesting how dark our gaming environments are and how little light there is when you want a full depth of field).

Anyways, back to gaming. Adam was generous in giving helpful advice. Which was a little detrimental in his maintaining of the game’s state (he is usually very good at that). Mike initially jumped out in the lead. He was shipping some good intermediate length routes. I tried to concentrate on the east side of the board. Building routes that would eventually allow me to ship length 6 goods. Adam concentrated on engineering his locomotive. He also heavily borrowed money. Much to his detriment later on in the game. I was able to locate some stealthy yellow goods and deliver them along 6 cities. Adam tried breaking into my eastern territories (Mike only built two routes over there and never used them) but was too late. I was able to jump into the lead and stay there.

It was a good educational game. I hope Adam writes some good tutorials about this game. He needs some competition. Jeff has left and Mike Ashley-Rollman is leaving. Oh yeah, Marty is leaving too.

Ahh, game night. Time to experiment with recipies and get unsuspecting people to sample them. Tonight, I tried a recipie from Cook’s Illustrated: The Best Key Lime Bars. And they were pretty good…

Mermaid Rain

Marty suggested that we play Mermaid Rain and I was happy. I have been wanting to play this game. Ever since I bought it during my trip to Japan. Which has been a while… Sigh.

Anyways, this game has a number of elements from different games:

• Elfenland: where you play cards to walk around the board and visit locations
• Havoc: the Hundred Years War: where you play cards that form a poker hand. Two down initially and you may add one card or pass.
• and set-collecting majority of treasures

It was an interesting game and one that I want to play again…

Flea Circus

We convinced Marty to stay for one more short game. And Flea Circus it was. And boy did the fleas hate me. Ed, Marty, and John were drawing 6s and 7s. I was stuck with 0s-4s. I played one set down. And, later, when I had two more sets that I wanted to play, I tried just drawing one more card for some points. And, out of the one card that was displayed on the table, it would always match. Which would end my turn. I didn’t get a third chance because Marty ended it with a gala of 6s/7s…

Mykerinos

On Memorial Day, Mike Chapel brought a new game for us to play. He took one for the team and bought it on spec (Ystari has made good games in the past). Mike read the rules to us and we played it. Well, tonight Ed and Susan wanted to try it out. So I explained the rules as we learned them. And what a mistake that was! Apparently, there are two schools of thought on this. The first is fast and furious. Break open the game, puzzle out the rules, and play the game. The second is to spend a couple of days reading over the rules, play test the game with a gamer significant other, visit forums to answer any questions that come up, patiently teach the rules while people interrupt you with their random thoughts, and then play the game for real. It seems like some people prefer the latter. Sigh.

On going over the rules, I noticed one picture that demonstrated expanding pieces from an existing one. It pointed out a broader aspect of adjacency that we missed the first time. It changed the strategy of how you would play the game. But it was no biggie. We moved on. I won by keeping with my previous usage of Mr Brown and getting a high multiplier for his cards.

And then the chit hit the fan, so to speak. Accusations started flying, mistakes were pointed out, recalls were demanded…

Tichu

Ahh, Mike and Adam stayed for a late night game of Tichu. All three players were mentally tired after their longer than usual game of Antiquity. And you could tell from the play. Adam called Grand Tichu at the start on a rather weak hand. But he persevered and made it. Adam also did the dreaded random wish and this time it was for an Ace. When Mike passed and I had to play an Ace, I was happy that everyone passed and that Ace took the trick. Jon later calls Tichu. Fortunately, we were able to stop him.

After we were up by over 400 points and the end of the game was drawing near, the other team started calling desperation Grand Tichu calls. And desperate they were. For the second Grand Tichu call, I went over Mike’s straight and with DrAAQQJ left, I over-called Tichu. And made it. But I would have been mocked if I did not make that call.

When went through the game data I noticed something interesting. If the other team had not made the loosing GrandTichu or Tichu calls, then we would have been tied at 1000 vs 1000. They grabbed 100 more points than we did which we made up with our extra Tichu call!

Mike invited us over for a Deadwood night. It would include a high definition Deadwood showing and board games. One would think the board game selection would be themed like the similiar Rome night. But you would be wrong.

Oh, and do something about that bird’s nest with the poop on the door mat!

Buccaneer

In keeping with the wild west theme, John brought out Buccaneer. This is a pirate game of robbing ships. On your turn, you have two choices. You can either take one of your pirates that is in front of you and place it on top of a pile of one or more pirates that is in front of someone else. Or, if you have a stack of pirates that meets the minimum height requirements for boarding a ship, then you can grab some booty. There will be an item chip that you can collect (if there are two, you choose fist and the person underneath you can have the other one). These item chips are worth many victory points if you have majority. Otherwise, they are worth one point apiece. There is also money that you receive. However, you have to pay off everyone else in the stack that boarded the ship with you. And sometimes this can end up costing you more than you made. Such is the life of the pirate it seems.

This game played rather dull. You have to wait until the begininning of your turn in order to plan a move. And other people’s choices of moves can be surprising. Or at least they can be unexpected.

I had the thought of perhaps keeping a number of enemy pieces out of action by taking a stack that is 1 away from maximum size, capping it with my piece, and then never using it. But usually those stacks already have a couple of your pieces on them so they weren’t candidates for my hosage. Also, a couple of times during the game, it would be possible that the next person had to pass because they were out of pirate tokens. But the previous person would instead board a ship and release some tokens to that player. All in all, rather boring. And People were not livening it up with pirate speak either…

Hacienda

Mike really wanted to play Hacienda. Which kept with the Deadwood theme… not! As is usual with this game, I was the start player. And aparently, John had never been the last player in this game. So he took every opportunity to cause scorings and end the game. Which worked well for him since he was in first. I was just too money starved during this game. Sigh. Can’t score too many points if you can’t afford water holes and haciendas.