Wabash Cannonball

I came across this game when reading clearclaw‘s posts and became intrigued. A lot of people like this game and rate it highly. So I tracked down Winsome games and ordered it. When I ordered it, I was warned that the components are rather cheap. And they are extremely cheap. The rules are black and white and pixellated. They remind me of a photo copy. The map is a plain folded color sheet. The railroad income track is at least laminated. The cubes are standard colored wooden cubes. But the money and railroad stocks are cheap paper.

Gameplay was interesting. And i definitely want to play this again. On the forums, a couple people have already went to the effort of sprucing up the map and including some helpful information. But, due to fears of litigation, they have not shared their work with others. This motivated me to try it myself. I spent two very long days working with (and learning) Inkscape. I will see what comes of it.

Tichu

To finish out the night, we played Tichu. I had an amusing pass where I received K,J,J! I love it when you trade up. Also, on one of my hands, I had an Ace bomb, Phoenix, pairs, and some low cards. I was all set on calling Tichu. However, Mike plays a length 8 straight, Kings full of Queens full house and has one card left. I did not know where the Dragon or the Dog was so I did not call it. I was sad to learn that my partner has both of them. And he also plays high enough so that Mike passed on singles a couple of times. Oh well.

Due to a scoring error, we shouldn’t have played the last hand. But it was a fun one. We thought the score to be 745 to 955. It was desperation Grand-Tichu time. Jon was not paying attention as he was talking about Dexter. So I am forced to call it. I made my GT. And Jon goes out second for the win (we had all the high cards between us).