Monthly Archives: May 2006

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The Most Offensive Show On Television link via

CO2: we call it life link via

Racing at 6,786 miles per gallon link via

A lottery for personal savings link via

10,000 sheep drawn by workers link via

World language map link via

rm -rf / link via

World of Warcraft Easter eggs link via

Puzzle floor link via

Ice lens photography link via

Precision flight of a radio-controlled airplane, indoors link via

Lego aircraft carrier link via

You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature. link via

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Game Day 05/29/2006

Susan

Ed held his yearly Memorial day gaming. It is very similiar to his game days except for the presence of bratwurst. Mmmm bar-b-queued bratwurst. When I arrived, Susan was outside taking pictures. Apparently, in the country, there are all sorts of flora and fauna out there.

Game #1

Die Dolmengötter

Mike brought out his new Eggert-Spiele game that he purchased in the previous Adam-Spielt order. The last time we played the game, it was flawed and broken. But apparently, he got a rule wrong (big surprise there). So we tried it again. It was alright. Nothing special or exciting. The theme is an after-thought and doesn’t grab me at all.

Game #2

Fury of Dracula

Ed posted a weird note to rrgamers. It was meant to entice people to play a new game that he bought. When I watched a video of Scott explaining the rules, it seemed interesting. And when I found out that Ed was going to be Dracula and we were teaming together to get him, I just had to play!

This is a game that pits one person against others. Dracula is hidden but leaves a path of cards. When one of the characters moves on top of that card, it is revealed. Dracula has one card of each location, so cant normally backtrack. Revealing a previous location gives a clue where Dracula has been and might be going. You also know when Dracula is in the ocean because the card back is different (colored blue).

Dracula needs to be hidden for a certain number of days, spawn a couple of vampires, kill some of the characters (who conviently ressurect), or some combination. The players want to kill Dracula. Three times. Dracula never stays dead the first time! And Dracula has a host of minions that help him out. Bitten characters also give Dracula some information.

For our first game, we caught Dracula’s trail somewhat early. But he escaped into the ocean. When we found him the second time, we thought we had the advantage. However, one character (Mina) decided to fight Dracula when she was at two hit points. Mina was rolling very good numbers and killed Dracula twice. However, Dracula played a card that allowed him to move twice and escape. He then played a card that did two damage to Mina which killed her (giving Dracula more victory points — one away from winning). What killed the game for us was the next card Dracula played was a teleport card. He is now anywhere on the board. And he is about to win when the new day occurs. There was nothing we could do about it. Sigh.

Our mistake was drawing too many event cards. While the majority of the cards are for us, there are cards for Dracula in that deck. This is the only way Dracula can get these cards. And some of the cards were very beneficial.

Game #3

Mykerinos

Mike brought out Ystari’s new game out to the table. This is a set collecting game where you fight for the pieces of the set by having the majority of tokens. Each tile has two sides. The front has a picture of a character. The back has a 2×4 grid on it and it may have a number of victory points associated with it. For each of the first three rounds of the game, there are 4 groups of 2 tiles next to each other (making four 4×4 grids). In the last round, there are 6 groups of tiles. Each player then takes turns laying tokens on the tiles. You can place one token by its self or two more tokens orthogonal to an existing token. Pyramids are blocked spaces. Play continues until everyone passes. We then resolve each of the four groups. The person in first place can either take a tile or place a token on the museum. The second place person has the same choice and third and fourth places can only take tiles if noone else had previously.

Placing in the museum increases the multiplier of the five different characters. For example, if at the end of the game, you have 3 tiles of Mrs. Blackmore (black pluses) and your multiplier is 5, then you get 15 victory points. Also, on the following rounds, the characters can give you special powers that you may use once for each tile (by tapping it). The powers are: placing two tokens to start, placing three tokens next to an existing one, placing on pyramids, taking an extra token from the general supply, and placing a token on the museum.

I initially got the “Sir Brown” tile and “Mrs Blackmore”. And I realized that I could use Brown’s powers to place more of my tokens on the musuem to increase my multiplier for Brown tiles. I also concentrated my tokens to get more Brown tiles. And this gave me the win with 5 Brown tiles and a multiplier of 12.

Game #4

Mauer Bauer

A Russconner (Matt) finally showed up to Ed’s to play games. The groups do not seem to mingle very much.

Mike also brought out Mauer Bauer to play. This was the second time that I played it. And this time, I did not get many good cards to score victory points with. The luck of the draw, I imagine. Still, its not a bad game. Light, somewhat quick, and abstract.

Its been a while…

country

Its been a while since I last went out on my bike. So I passed on the opportunity of playing disc golf. The weather wasn’t great. The temperature was 82 degrees, 76% humidity, raining slightly with an overcast sky. But it felt cool out. I think the evaporation from the rain cooled the air.

I was reminded again just how much country and pasture there is around here. Just a couple of miles away from my house, civilization seems to dissapear. While they are not entirely gone, it is enough to relax me.

Game Day 05/27/2006

Game #1

Bunte Runde

We showed up at Tim’s after Disc golfing and lunch. We had six people there and expected more soon, so we started out with a light game. John brought out Bunte Runde and was successful in convincing others to play. I was a little worried there at the start. I wasn’t getting many points. But at the end, I was able to make up for it. And Mary (sitting on my left) got many points as well. And this was enough for the win.

Game #2

Bluff

The call of the dice was heard. It has been a while since I have played this game. Everyone one but Tim was slowly loosing dice. And at one point, everyone had one die (Tim had 4) and an exact match was called. Fortunately, the house rule where you cannot loose your last die saved everyone (and Tim would win). In the end, it was down to me (1 die) and Tim (4 dice). And I was able to successfully whittle him out of dice for the win! In the last round I decided to put the red die out on 1 three. I would call whatever Tim did. I figured that he could either bump it up to 1 four or five. Or 2 of something. Fortunately for me, I guessed his number. So he went with 2 threes. And lost.

Game #3

Railroad Dice 2

I like dice games. Combine that with railroads and you come up with an interesting idea. I first played the second game in the series last December. It is smaller lighter and faster than its predecessor. And it also has a bad vibe in my game group. So I am reduced to playing it elsewhere. Which is funny, because Jon and John from my game group played it with me.

Game #4

Jenseits von Theben

Tim owns a copy of this game (like every other game it seems). And I have been wanting to play it for a while now (ever since Marty started a game of it during a previous visit to Tim’s).

This is a game of digging for treasure. The map contains cities (London, Moscow, …) and archaeological digs. The game lasts for a certain number of years and the week is the unit of time in this game. You can move from location to location, but it costs one week for each leg of your journey. There are four cards on display that can be taken by travelling to the city on the card and waiting the time specified on the card. These cards can give you specialized knowledge about one archaeological site, generalized knowledge about all sites, shovels (get extra cards during a dig), assistants (get extra general knowledge), and other special abilities. The main goal of this game is to dig for cards. Each site has 12 treasure cards in a deck with 16 blank cards and 2 knowledge cards. When you dig for cards you consult a table where you look up your knowledge about the site and decide how many weeks you want in return for a certain number of cards. For example, a knowledge level of 6 will give you the following cards for the corresponding weeks (1:1 2:2 3:4 4:6 5:9 6:12). You can only dig at any given site once per year (baring a special card, of course). You shuffle the deck and draw the cards. Any treasure cards that you turn up you can keep for victory points.

Also, exhibition cards can be turned up during the corse of game play. When one of these cards are revealed, an exihibition will be announced to take place at a certain city during a certain week of the year. Only specified treasures from dig sites will be shown. Anyone who is in the city at the time can play. The number of cards plus a dice roll will determine who keeps the exihibition card which will give victory points at the end of the game.

When the game is over, a final test is performed. For each of the five sites, whoever has the most knowledge will get 4 points. Also, whoever has the strongest knowledge in their weakest area will get 7 points.

This was an interesting game and one that I would be willing to play again. Too bad it is so hard to come by. Adam was the unluckiest one during the game. In 18 cards that he dug up, only 4 were treasure cards. Consequently, he lost the game. I got second place and Jon first. I was really worried about Robert. He collected 7 Congress cards which gave him 28 victory points (via a triangle scoring). But I was able to beat him out since he did not collect that many treasure cards.

Disc Golf 05/27/2006

adam shaking

We went to Cat Hollow since we would be gaming at Tim’s later on. The four of us split into what I thought were two equal teams (long throw John and Adam versus putters Jon and myself). And we started off equal in scores. First one team would move ahead by a point and then the other team caught up and then went ahead by a point.

Oh yeah, a couple of discs had to be shaken out of trees…

jon climbing

…and climbed up trees to retrieve them.

By the 14th hole, Jon and myself went back into the lead by one. Where we stayed until the 16th hole. At that point, we were on fire and birdied two holes for the win!

Wilson!

shipment arrived

I came home and found that my package has arrived! Boulder games sent out a note saying that they had Antiquity in stock. It was expensive but worth it. Especially considering that Boulder was offering some coupons that would bring the price down a bit. Yeah, Splotter will eventually reprint it. But who knows how long it will take (and it will be just as expensive).

So I now have more meaty games (Antiquity, Age of Steam), light-weight but still meaty games (Elasund; Alexandros; Hey, thats my fish), and pure fluff games (Dancing dice).

Update:
Finally unpacked, sorted, counted, and stored the Antiquity game. 1/2″ x 1/2″ tokens of: 473 Pollution, 48 Stone, 48 Gold, 48 Fish, 48 Sheep, 48 Wine, 48 Olives, 48 Shells, 45 Perls, 47 Wheat, 48 Wood. 160 Grass hex tiles. 80 Graves, 12 City maps, 16 Map tiles. 1 for each player of: 20 Houses, 16 Inns, 4 Cities, 22 Cubes, 1 Stables, Dump, Harbour, Market, Hospital, Granery, Cathedral, Explorer, Forced Labour, Brewery, Alchemy, Philosophy, Biology, Univeristy.

Sesh!

Disc Golf 05/26/2006

found disc

Another hot day of disc golf at the usual Friday location of Old Settler’s Park. Normally, it is just myself and John that play. But since it is a holiday, MikeA, Adam, and Roxana showed up! John was the only person to throw their disc in the water. However, it was in the small creek (that is slowly drying up), so it was retreivable. Adam found another disc sitting out in the open. It must have been dropped out of a bag.

found disc

Someone’s disc got stuck in the tree. We starting throwing water bottles at it, to knock it down. But Jon got impatient and climbed up to retrieve the disc (like he needs an excuse to get up there).

My team was on fire today. One of us would always throw a good shot. Adam and I usually throw the discs the same distance (and Jon for that matter). I seemed to throw the disc farther than usual today. I don’t know why. On hole 17, Adam threw first to the goal. He missed, but the next putt would be a sure thing. This allowed me to agressively putt. And I was able to sink it from 50 feet away!

Afterwards, we went to the Mexican Ice Cream place to cool off.

Memorial day gaming

During this Memorial day weekend, I could have had seven days of gaming. From Wednesday to Tuesday and in five different locations. We should have called it Memorial-con. Not that I am going to everyone of these events, mind you. But it is a cool thing…

This holiday is actually about honoring our troops. So keep that in mind when you are out there enjoying gaming!

Game Day 05/25/2006

Tichu

Adam and Mike came early. And when Jon showed up, we opened up the Tichu deck to play a couple of hands while everyone else showed up. For the first two hands, I had pretty good cards. I called and made Tichu both times. For the third, and final hand, Adam calls Tichu. Then Mike over calls Tichu. I cringe. Mike did have a Queen bomb, but Adam had a 9 bomb, the Dragon, the Phoenix, an Ace, and other cards. Adam also went out first. Sigh. I must work with Mike about over calling Tichu…

Game #1

Indonesia

We broke up into two four player tables and Indonesia was on our table. I was very happy to play it again. After explaining the rules to Mike, it took us about two and a half hours to play. There was a little bit of Ashly-Rollmaning going on (and Hamzying) mainly during the Merger phase. Bidding seemed to require the most thought in this game. What was annoying was the constant queries about how much money everyone had. And unfortunately, I let it get to me. Perhaps if everyone wrote out their current total on a sheet of paper, it would speed up the game (maybe make large L.E.D. displays).

Anyways, it was still fun to play. Especially since I ending up in first by a narrow margin (it was a tight game). I will leave you with a picture of Mike Ashley-Rollmaning…

Game #1a

Lunch Time Tichuers 05/25/2006

In this game, I made two mistakes. The first was letting the other team 1/2. I held an Ace, a Phoenix, a full house, and other cards. I was trying to help get my partner, Jon, go out. So I mainly passed. Unfortunately, this allowed Adam to get rid of low cards. And he was able to go out second. Sigh

For my second mistake, I was worried about a bomb. I called Grand-Tichu and had no problems. Well, until the end. I had two Aces and an 8 remaining. Instead of playing the Ace pair, I led the 8. And the rest is history…


The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T Team #1 GT/T GT/T Team #2 GT/T
Ed & AdamR MarkH & Jon
  -20    
120
 
  -5    
205
 
 
-50
T-   250  
T+
155
    245  
 
215
    385 T+
  215     585  
 
335
    565  
  535     565  
 
600
    500 T-
  605   GT-
395
 
  605   GT+ 795  
  445 GT-  
855