1870

Mike convinced us all to try the “lite” version of this game. And it really, really sucks. It was completely unbalanced. And, thankfully, we finally stopped playing it. It was so painful, in fact, that I am placing it on my permanent ban list.

Why is it so unbalanced? Take a look at the picture and keep in mind that you can only place two track segments per turn. John (lower left) goes first. Mike (upper left) goes second and cuts John off. He also cuts me (upper middle) off as well. I cannot reach Houston or Galveston before Mike does. So I decide to go for Alexandria. However, as I draw near, I realize that everyone else will be able to use up the remaining city markers before I can use one to connect to Alexandria. I was only able to, in fact, because John skipped connecting to Galveston. It is only in the next stage of the game that you can connect up the tracks with other tiles.

The other flawed aspect of this “game” was that there are only a limited number of train engines. Once all of the 4 engines are bought, all number 2 engines are removed. So when Mike was able to buy a second number 4 engine before I could buy my first, I lost my number 2 engine and only had a number 3 engine left. This effectively takes you out of the running for the game.

Mu

At least we were able to play Mu. Its an okay trick taking game for five people. Although I must admit that the strategy is not as crystal clear for me as it is with Tichu.

Byzantium

Mike bought a new game that I was itching to try out. Martin Wallace’s new game Byzantium. In it, all players can controll the three sides that are fighting (the Byzantines, the Arabs, and the Bulgars). You score victory points based on your actions on one of two main sides (the Bulgars score victory points on the Arab track if they take out Byzantine cities or vice versa). If your two scores are “close” (the lesser is at least or more than 1/2 of the greater) then your scores are added together. Otherwise the lesser score is ignored. However, there is an alternate win of only the Arab’s score if Constantinople is taken over. This is remaniscant of Liberte.

Unfortunately, after the rules were explained, we realized that we were taking too long to play the game (aka Ashley-rollmaning). So we stopped after one round (out of three). I certinally would like to play this game again. And I think that this game can be played faster. The problem was that it was not obvious what the strategy was after the rules were explained.

Tichu

An interesting situation came up in Tichu today. It had been discussed briefly but today I experienced its full force. My partner, Mike, likes to make random wishes. By that, I mean that he does not wish for the card that he passed. And instead tries to use some intelligence on what card to wish for. But it basically boils down to a guess that this person has the card and needs it versus my partner having the card and needing it. Since this is really a partner game, anything that hurts your team is a bad thing (in my opinion).

So, previously in the game he wished for a five and played a straight. Thankfully Adam could fufill the wish and play over it because I could as well and it would hurt my Tichu call. Now Adam calls Grand Tichu. Mike plays the Mah Jong, wishes for an Ace, immediately bombs it, and then leads two sequential pairs. Adam passes. Unfortunately, I can fufill this wish with my AAKK. And now Adam easilly makes his GT call. Our team has wasted a bomb and AAKK.

In a perfect world, Mike would always have the lead and work down the possibilities of Ace combinations and Adam would have to fill one of them. However, Adam’s team-mate would recognize what Mike is trying to do and try to stop it. If I passed on the sequential pairs, then Jon, if possible, would want to take control of the lead and lead a single if he has no Ace since that is the least destructive choice. The question always is, how likely is the Tichu caller able to fufill the wish compared to your partner.

And to leave you with an idea of just how desperate the last hand Grand Tichu’s can be. Here is Adam’s hand:

Mike’s hand:

Jon’s hand:

and my hand (for the GT call):

Ys

Another playing of Ys for me and I still like playing it. Yes, there is an aspect to it where you need to control an area by blind bidding. However, as the turn progresses, you begin to get more information. This somewhat is analagous to a “fog of war” where information slowly resolves itself.

Attila

This is a older game that I like and that we rarely play. So I was glad that it was brought to the table. Unfortunately for me, I had both good and bad luck in this game. The good luck was that I was able to control and initiate the scoring. However, my card draws were really bad and I could not draw the colors that I wanted to control. Sigh.

Flea Circus

To end out the night, we played this light game. I was able to make a lot of melds and it was enough for me to overcome Ed’s 6 different 7 cards that he was collecting for the win!