Around the World in 80 Days

Tonight was a Joncon since Ed was busy this night. We started out by playing a new game that Jon brought back from Boeblingen. You travel from city to city by playing cards in combinations of 1, 2, or 3. Each card has a method of transportation and a number of days that it takes. The object is to travel around the world quicker than everyone else. There are a couple of ways that can make you loose more days in the game. One is to be stuck with the detective at the end of your turn (loose 2 days). Another is for at least one person to make it back to London before your do (loose 1 day). The last way is for someone to draw one of two action cards (out of 20?) that immediately cause everyone to miss one or two days. The last way happened far too many times!

Jon raced out in the lead and stayed there. I decided to say in the rear of the pack. Once Jon made it back to London, I decided to put on a burst of speed and was able to stay the fastest traveller in the game.

Taj Mahal

I suggested this game and Marty jumped on the chance to play. This time I decided to go for an Elephant strategy. It would have worked well but for one critical time. On the third to the last city, I believe that I played one too many elephants (3) at the start. I won that city but on the next city I got into an Elephant battle with Marty that I lost. If I had kept my other double Elephant card I could have played 6 by the second turn and won. Unfortunately, Marty switched suites and out-Elephanted me. I went from 2nd to 2nd to last.

Oh well, still a fun game!

Zero

Marty could not grok my Zero playing style. For one hand, when it was my turn, I could not improve my hand. So rather than giving someone else a better card in the hope of improving my hand in the future, I knocked the table. Someone else knocked the table soon after that and the round was quickly over. Marty was shocked to learn that I had a score of over 20 for that hand! He says that the Gathering of Friends plays this game differently.

10 Days in the USA

For the last game of the night, Roxana played with us and chose this game. This was a somewhat quick and light game. Unfortunately, my travelling luck was weak tonight and I lost the game.

Kill Dog

Matt decided that the Meta game would be a game of Kill Dog. So we played one practice game. Not a bad game. No one got in the mood and acted like a criminal. The game would be better with real money and plastic squirt guns filled with water.

Tichu

Yay! Another game of Tichu! Sadly, I have gotten to the state where this is the only enjoyment that I get out of Russcon. I’m flawed, I know.

Exxtra

This game of Exxtra royally sucked for me! There were two new gamers playing this game and they did not make their own decisions. For example, at the beginning of the game, I had rolled a 7-3 and placed it on the 4 (leaving the 5 open). Play continued around the table until the person on my right’s turn. He rolled a 7-6. Everyone started shouting to knock me off and he grinned and did it. So instead of getting 5 points for himself, he chose to take 3. Sure, during the game you knock off the leaders or people who you are competing with. But at the beginning of the game when we are all still at 0? Make your own decisions and don’t listen to other people and help them win at your own expense.

Of course I was knocked off repeatedly during the game and came in last.

Igloo Pop

This is a cute, somewhat quick, game where you are racing against others to guess how many Eskimo children (a.k.a. beads) are in igloo huts (a.k.a. small plastic containers). When you start, you quickly grab a hut and shake it. If you can guess with some confidence how many beads are in it, you can put your token on the hut and place it on a card. There are cards on the table (10?) that have either one, two, or three numbers on it. You then quickly grab another one and try again. Soon, all are claimed or no one wants to guess any further. Then, we go around the cards and see if the guesses were correct. If you are the correct and the highest number on the card, then you get your marker back, other people’s markers who guess incorrectly, and the card. If you are correct but your number is lower than another person who correclty guess higher, you get your token back but they get the rest of the tokens and the card. If you are incorrect, you loose your token. Play continues until someone runs out of tokens.

I was at one with my inner Ice Giant and I won the game. It is a fun game when it is played with the right people.

Submarine

This is the new Colovini game where you try and pick up treasures from the bottom of the sea. I didn’t like the first playing. It was a brain burner of a game that seemed to drag on far too long. Perhaps other playings can redeem the game for me.

Breaking Away

This is a good that that simulates a bicycle race. I always like playing this game. Although tonight I raced poorly. It also played differently than previous times. Adam jumped ahead quickly and stayed ahead the whole game (usually a biker has one burst of speed and then is out of the race). I tried to keep my bikers in a group to support one another but was unable to. So I quickly lost steam in all of my riders. Still, its an interesting game.

Control Nut

Marty brought this game to Russcon and I jumped out of the group that was starting Modern Art to play this game. This is a trick taking game that was self published and given out at the Gathering Of Friends. It is a partnership game that consists of 4 suits of 13 cards and 8 special power cards. At the beginning of the round, 4 of the special power cards are randomly drawn and then auctioned one at a time. Each player will have one bid where they must choose 3 cards from their hand and use them to bid for the card. The player with the highest total will then pass the three cards to the other three players. This happens for all three cards and who ever has the most special cards (or received the special card last in the case of a tie) determines trump.

So, there are already a number of interesting features of the game. You are given some knowledge of the cards in everyone’s hand. You are given better cards from the winners of the bidding. And there are an unequal number of cards in people’s hands.

The special cards are played during the game instead of a regular card (like Wizard where you can play the special card instead of being forced to play the lead card). Some of the special powers are always wins the trick, change the trump, and bonus points.

The play stops where both people on one team cannot play cards any more. The score is the number of stars taken (1s have 2, 3s have 1, and 7s have 1) times the number of tricks taken plus 5 points for each special card taken plus any bonus points from special cards.

Marty and I scored rather poorly this game. It definately requires some play to determine the best strategy.

Tichu

Truely a classic partnership trick taking card game and my favorite of that genre. My partner for this game played rather horribly (like they have never played a trick taking game before). For example, with the following cards remaining: KK337, he led KK and then led 33 which lost and went out last because no single card lower than a 7 was played. On another hand, he played a Phoenix on top of a queen when there were aces and the Dragon still out there. We lost.

For Sale

We started out with the short game For Sale. This was the first time that I played it (which is sad since I have owned it for a while now) and I liked it. The quality of the game is nice. The artwork is pretty and the card quality is solid.

The first half of the game plays like a game of chicken. Players can either take the worst building or offer money not to take a building yet. If a player takes the worst building, then they give half of their money that they offered to the bank. The last player left gives all of the offered money to the bank and takes the last card. Any remaining money will contribute to your score. In the second half of the game, players compete for checks which are the other part of their final score. This part of the game involves blind bidding where players select a building from their hand and reveal them simultaneously. The person with the highest building takes the most expensive check.

Strand-Cup

We decided to play another quick game since some other people might show up soon. I suggested a speed game of Strand-Cup. This is a good game and it fits its theme well. As long as people do not agonize and play the game like they would a volleyball game, you will have a fun time. Doug and I felt the pain of not having a well rounded hand of cards. However, the game can accomidate that by allowing you to discard a card during the serve and rolling a dice instead, or having another team mate volley the ball.

There is a randomness to the game with the dice, but it is offset by the number of points that is needed to win the game. However, Doug was having bad luck during the game. He rolled 1-1, 2-2, and 1-2 when he was trying to volley the ball. He should not have been on the sand that day!

Attika

In this game, I was the start player. I only had two types of cards and I did not have my city out, so I decided to draw counters and put them on my mat (and fortunately, I drew my city). On my next turn, I put my city close to Jeff. On Jeff’s turn, he decided to hose me and put 3 roads around my city. After that I was out of the running to win the game. Had Jeff played better he could have won the game. Instead, Doug won it.

Euphrat & Tigris

I suggested that we play this game. This is another game that I wish we would play more of. During the game, I did not have the right mixture of tiles when I wanted to go on the offensive and attack. Consequently, I didn’t do much during the game and lost. We had new players in the game and I was surprised that it was a quick game.

Goa

Tonight, the only game that I played was Goa. The russcon group has been infatuated with word games recently. And tonight was no exception. Almost everyone wanted to play Letras. I decided to sit it out and wait for more people to show up. When another person showed up, I suggested Goa.

Another problem with russcon folks is that they take longer to play games. Goa says on the box that it is a 90 minute game and we took 3 hours to play the game. Some of the reasons for that is people get up to talk to other people, or to get food, or to talk on the phone. But that doesn’t account for that much of the wait. This group just operates on a different timescale.

It is a shame that Goa is not played that often. We seem to play it once a year. Because it has been so long since I last played it, I did not remember any old strategy or things to look out for.

Manifest Destiny

Today, I played Manifest Destiny as my only game. This is a somewhat complex game and we were asked to read the rules before playing. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to do that, but, during the drive to Ed’s house, Adam explained the rules to me (well, as much as you can with no visuals). We started around 6:30pm and ended at 10:30pm which made it a long game. The map is centered on the United States and includes Canada, Mexico, and small boxes representing other areas like the Middle East. There are three eras during the game (the last being our century). Your goal is to expand an empire, but I did not really feel like I was playing a civilization game. There is a lot of randomness to this game in determining the success of attacking, defending, and researching technology (which gives you special powers). The bias is towards attacking, so your are constantly growing and shrinking in your area. Your strategy is determined by what action cards that you draw. These cards are mostly malicious so expect a lot of swings in who the leader is at any one point in time.

I was surprised that I won this game. After all, I was playing with Marty and Adam. Both of who have played this game before. I think that I won because no one picked on me during the game. Adam and Jon were both leaders at one point and then heavily mangled by other players. For example, Jon was decimated in one area by one action card.

Sadly, as elated as I was when I won the game. It quickly turned to shame when I accidentally spilled my beer on Adam’s game!

Clocktowers

This is a light filler game. I am glad that we finally played this, since I own it. I bought it because it is an Alan Moon game that I thought was Capitol-lite. For my first playing of this, I really didn’t feel the Capitolness. However, perhaps more playings of this will coax out that Capitol feeling that I was looking for. On its own, its a quick game with not much player interaction besides the usual moaning and groaning about your poor cards.

Ice Cream

This is another light filler game. The theme is about ice cream and it seems to fill it well. It bears some resemblence to Coloretto. It is playable by both kids and adults. You need to keep in mind how to set yourself up for the next round of play as you hose your opponents.

Ticket To Ride Europe

This is the next game in the Ticket to Ride series. Since the original game was so popular, it is no surprise that a franchise has been created. I like this game better than its predecessor. It has a mechanism that helps you out when your route is blocked. And it introduces new features to the game such as tunnels and ferries. In this game, I was having some bad luck trying to draw colors that I needed. When the game ended, I had many cards left over and only played about half of them. Consequently, I lost because I wasted so many turns trying to draw needed cards. This game still has some of the aspects of the original game that I did not like. They are: initial route cards may not be close to one another, and other people will cut you off in the route you are going for.

M

This is still an interesting game, although I had bad luck in it. The key to winning is controlling when a “scoring” occurs. If you can do it, then you can pick up a tile that helps you and hurts others. The other part to the game is trying to match up to other tiles so you can take points from the player to your right.

I played 6 games of High Society today during lunch and it was fun. They were quick, rapid fire, played in succession games. As we played each game, a “group mind-think” started to form on what certain items were worth and to not spend all of your low cards, and to mind “gaps” that form when money is gone from the game. Towards the end, we had all reserved our four highest cards and we were passing on later numbered items after spending all the we thought we could get away with. In the last game, a 2X doubler was completely passed on by everyone and then a final 2X doubler was passed on Mike and Dan. I had two money cards left in my hand. I needed to buy it to win so I spent my lowest cash card. Unfortunately, that moved me into a tie for the lowest remaining money and I lost the game! If I had only saved a 1 or 2 dollar cash card. I could have bought that doubler and won. Oh well, it was fun.

Ahhh, I should visit there someday. Today, it was the deciding factor in Paris Paris. I went from a tie for first with Ed to a solo victory! Woo Woo!