Ahh game night, it turns out that there were hidden problems with the camera. Last week, I was playing around with photographing Tichu hands. It worked well. Since I was in the experimenting mood, I decided to mess around with the white balance as well. I put on an Expo Disc on the camera and took a white balance picture. Which I then applied to the default white balance. It worked well and I forgot about it. Fast forward until tonight. I take some pictures, Ed takes some pictures, I take some more pictures. And then I realize that there were three problems with the camera. The first was that the color balance was off! Doh! The second was that I had forced only one auto-focus point to be active. The third was that the camera was recording small jpegs instead of large jpegs plus raw pictures. Sigh. The camera remains a persnickity beast…

Bluff

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca, we played a game of Bluff. And the dice were in my favor. I kept most of my dice during the game and ended up victorious.

Crystal Faire

Mike had brought along the new Hangman game called Crystal Faire. It continues to have the same production values of the other games that they have made. That is to say, not good at all. Adequate enough to be functional. And in one case, you have problems telling the difference between a light grey circle and a white circle.

On to the mechanics. This is a set collecting game by trading. There are six types of “crystals” with differing amounts of availability. You start with nine hidden behind a flimsy screen (which kept getting blown down by the air conditioning). A start player is chosen and a trading round occurs. That person draws five more hidden crystals and then chooses two of three sets (a set of four with one hidden, a set of five with three hidden, or a set of six with five hidden). The other players only choose one of their three sets. Every one places the crystals out on the displays. The start player then chooses someone’s display and then that person will choose one of the two displays of the start player. They then secretly exchange the crystals (adding the hidden ones). The start player changes and trades continue until everyone has traded. After the trade, we draw three crystals (since there were three players in the game) and move each of the crystals that were drawn down on the status display. Players then will have the opportunity to either take 0, 1, or 2 of those crystals and move a number of crystals up or down on the display depending on how many crystals remain for other people to potentially take. Now players have the opportunity to try and score their crystals. For each crystal, players can pass or place crystals out to match or exceed what is currently out there. The person with the most crystals out (where ties are good) will score victory points (which is money). They then have to discard a number of crystals. The victory points are the following as crystals move down the status display: 1 (-1), 2 (-2), 3 (-2), 4 (-2), 6 (-3), 9 (-3), 12 (-4), 16 (-4), 25 (-5), 36 (-6). The numbers in parenthesis are how many crystals the winners are required to discard.

There is a lot of keeping up with what everyone else does in this game. No one used their 6 crystal set in trades. People would offer their 4 and 5s and the others would offer their 4s. Which means that the trader will loose a crystal in the deal since their 5 would be chosen against the offered 4. In scoring crystals, people would usually go after the 3 or 4 victory points and loose two crystals. Rather than waiting and trying to score 6 or more. So I kept up with the Joneses. Then the purple crystal starting to make a run for higher victory points. I had majority in it and Mike was a close second (so two people were rooting for it and only one was opposed to it). I decided to let Mike continue scoring with me equally since we both lost the same number of purple crystals and I still had a slight majority. However, on the last round, Mike was able to grab one purple crystal and tie me to score 36 points. I was able to score more in other crystals for the win.

Sushi Express

We ended the night with this game. A light game supposedly about delivering sushi but really about trying to make laps around a loop. When you pass the sushi express tile, you can get a customer card or tip card. The first of a customer scores 3 and additional customers of that color score 1. The fewest tips score minus points. There are some special action cards that you can play during the game. But it is a short and simple dice rolling game. The only problem was the flushing of the customer cards. This tended to speed up the game a lot quicker than it should of been. But I won, so why was I complaining?

Other games that were played:

An obviously off color Hacienda board…

and Geschenkt…

During the drive home, I noticed some small, really dark clouds along with grey and white clouds. At least, the perspective made it seem that way that they were all together. But wouldn’t they all have the same amount of moisture in them and therefore be the same color?

Tsuro

Ed brought another new game called Tsuro. It is like Metro in that you build paths and each tile contains 4 points that are connected to four other points that form 4 roads. Instead of placing the tile anywhere on the board, you are required to place it in front of your piece (this prevents other people from directly hosing you). Your piece and any other pieces then start moving and stop when they come to the end of the road. If a piece moves to the end of the board, it falls of and the game is over for that person. So, there is some screwage of other people in this game but only if your piece ends up next to a square that someone else must play on.

Since you only have three tiles in your hand, you must hope that the other person must be forced to move their piece the best that they can and your piece will still be able to move. And that was the position that I was in a couple of times. I knew my placement would put me next to someone, and I hoped that they could do nothing about it. Ed seemed to be in a good position in this game. He was off alone in a big empty section. But that didn’t last long. Surprisingly, I won the game. It came down to having (or drawing) exactly the tile I needed to get myself out of the situation that I was in.

Vegas Showdown

I finally got to play John’s game, Vegas Showdown. I have seen it being played on the other tables a lot recently, so it must be good. It is basically a bidding game. In your casino, there is a number of people that come into it and an amount of money that they spend. Your income during the game is the minimum of these two. And at the end of the game, there are extra points for majorities in either of these two. With your money, there are three types of tiles that you fight over. Yellow tiles mostly generate income (and some times give you people or victory points). These are the slot machines. Blue tiles mostly generate people (and some times give you income or victory points). These are the restaurants. And green tiles give you victory points (and some times give you people).

There is a area each for one of a set of basic tiles (one yellow, green and blue) and four areas where more advanced tiles can appear. Each of these areas has a line of numbers that represent possible bids. The advanced tiles start off at a large bid (like 44 for example) and get reduced each turn that they remain on the board. When you bid for a tile, you place your marker on one of the bids. If you are out bid, you get to place again. This continues until everyone has placed.

You then pay for your tile and place it on the board. There are doors which allow people to travel in from one of two sides. Yellow tiles are placed so that they can be reached by a path to one side of the board. Blues from the other side. And greens can connect to a yellow or blue. You also get points if you fill up your yellow or blue areas. And can get points if you can travel from one end of the board to the other.

And that was basically it. A simple game. With simple and drab artwork. And cheap materials. But it works alright. Not on the thematic level of Volle Hutte though.

Tichu

Two games of Tichu tonight. Both extremely one sided. The second game started with a Grand Tichu call because Mike thought he was still playing the first game (the 1000 point delta had already been obtained). Mike only had the Phoenix and the Dog when he made the call. When an Ace was wished for, our team had them all! And he still made it! The other extreme was when Adam called Grand Tichu. I passed him an Ace. Mike made the Ace wish. Adam bombed with Aces. And consequently lost the call. Sigh.

An interesting hand of mine. What bomb potential… What would you pass and why? I went for the four bomb and was passed a 4! Which was good enough to set Jon’s Grand Tichu call.

I have been itching to record more detail on our Tichu games. Right now, I have an XML file of our game scores along with the Tichu/GrandTichu calls. The next step that I want to record is the actual cards played during the game. So, tonight, I tried to record that information on the ThinkPad during the game. Adam was also helpful and recorded as well. This does slow the game down a bit (and take a bit of my concentration away from the game). Mike and Jon were impatient with this. So I gave up after three hands.

So for the next game night, I am going to set up this contraption. A tripod positioned over the table with a remote controller attached. I played around later with the settings. With the kitchen fluorescent light, the fan’s fluorescent light, and the big halogen light half on, I can get a 1/60″ 2.8 picture. But the entire table is not in focus with that wide aperature. Stepping down to a 16, the shutter speed moves to 1/2″. And with the halogen light on full, I can get a 4/10″ 22 picture. Which is good enough.

To give this picture which is 850K. The cards are readable. And the ISO was only 400. I could double it and halve the shutter speed if necessary. I think this should work…