Thankfully, Jon invited me over to play some games with him on Thanksgiving. We started out with this two player version of the Ticket to Ride game system. The only problem that I had with it was just the general luck of the draw. In my case, every time I tried to tunnel through the mountains, I would turn up three locomotive cards! (For each matching color or locomotive card, you must pay an extra card to lay that track). Gah! How flawed! Needless to say I lost this game as a number of my turns were wasted by not being able to play.
Next up was a two player Age of Steam map by the SteamBrothers. In this variant, you had to build complete segments and you could not take out loans. Also, the starting order was fixed with each player essentially alternating as the start player. I took a risk and went for the longer purple delivery chain on the map. Jon made a good first build and had a number of vital first deliveries. But he was unable to expand much after that. I started to catch up and was able to perform some long deliveries. Which rocketed me into the lead.
And then there was Mr. Jack — or Jack the Ripper to his corpses. This sounded like an interesting two player deduction game. My job was to keep the identity of Jack hidden so that he could escape unnoticed. Jon’s was to stop that from happening. There are eight potential suspects. Who are revealed when the machinery of the game announces that Jack is in the light or in the dark at the end of each turn. So I tried to keep as many characters in one group as possible. At the beginning, everyone was in the light. But it got harder and harder to keep suspects from being revealed as innocent. I tried to set up Sherlock Holmes to eventually escape the net. But I was not subtle enough. Jon noticed it. And when he was forced to guess, he chose Holmes. I should have only moved William Gull to divert suspicion…
I haven’t played a Zombie game in a while. This one started off boring. But when the hope for escaping, the helicopter pad, showed up, it turned into a slug fest. And I am not talking about the constant slaughter of the undead this time. Everyone was trying to be the first to make it to the idling helicopter. Unfortunately, I was limited, or should I say hamstrung, by the card which reduced my movement in half. And it looked like I would never get rid of it… even by dying! Fortunately, we decided on a house rule that allowed the movement to be rounded up (so you could always move at least one) and to allow you to remove the card when you died (which is inevitable). Even with those accommodations, it was annoying. I held the card to move 10 squares instead of rolling dice. So I was hoping that Doug would clear out a tunnel and fail to reach the helicopter. And then I would swoop in for the escape. But it was not meant to be. At least every one of us was in contention for escaping…
We ended with Thebes. I like this game for it theme. But the randomness of the draw, or shall I say the big dig, was evident in this game. Matt could not find dirt. And I seemed to find nothing but dirt. Also, this was another game where I did not show any artifacts because I did not have the right combination of colors. There really should be a players aid of the possible exhibition cards so that people can plan which countries to specialize in.