King Solomon’s Mine

I drove to South Oklahoma for another Saturday gaming day with Ed and Susan and arrived a little early. Marty was also there so I brought out Coloretto Amazonas and started explaining the rules. However, other people started arriving and everyone forgot about playing the game. Sigh. So we started with another new game, King Solomon’s Mine. In it you try and dig for artifacts by playing cards that describe a shape. You rearrange pieces on the board so that the pieces that fit the shape are all on the same level. You can then pick up the pieces. I had low numbered cards (but not as low as Ed’s). In the end, Doug pipped me in the scoring for magic items and pipped Adam and Mike in the scoring for cursed items. It was an not so bad game.

Shadows over Camelot

For the next game, we played Shadows over Camelot. In the last game that Susan played, she was the traitor and amusingly enough, she was the traitor in this game. Everyone is trying to beat the game and have good triumph. The traitor (if there is one) is trying to get evil to succeed. You perform a number of quests such as finding the Holy Grail, and defeating the Saxons, etc. If you succeed, then good swords come out and if you fail then bad swords come out. And when the round table fills up, hopefully good prevails. I started out by going for Lancelot’s Armour since Susan had mentioned that it was good for the traitor and I knew I was not the traitor. I also met the requirement of having a full house. I was successful and then went on to find the Holy Grail next! Because I got the Armour, people suspected me of being a traitor which was amusing. Susan was trying to hide by helping to search for the Grail. No one else was accussed and we ended the game by killing the Dragon!

Diamant

Another playing of this fun, push your luck game. And for this game, I pushed my luck too far! I only successfully predicted one mine and lost my fortune in the others…

Trump, Tricks, Game

Ed brought out this game for us to try since Mayfair gave it to him to review. My initial impression of this game was hopeful. After all, it is a trick taking card game. However, during the game play, my impression turned less than favorable. In each round, you can only take three tricks and you know what suit the trump card will be in for the next round. I was trying to take trump cards for the next round but my choices were very limited. I was forced to follow suit too often. And after my three tricks were captured, I could only possibly decide who would receive points or trumps if I didn’t have to follow suit. In the end, the scoring changes to a color based system. And because John kept the three highest trump cards and gave them all to Doug, Doug was able to claim all but three tricks which gave him the win. What a flawed game!

Niagara

Next was Niagara. Still a decent game to play. However, I made one mistake that allowed Ed to steal a gem from me and win the game. Had I been paying attention and card counting I might have been able to stop it. Not a biggie though… I don’t think that I want to play the game that way anyways…

Around the World in 80 Days

And another playing of Around the World. Still a decent game to play as well. In this game, people played some of the most time consuming travel cards that I have seen (like a 6 train and an 8 ship together). And another strange thing was that all trains came up one time.