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!