Bunte Runde

For our first game of the evening, John brought out a newish Knizia game that was unknown to me. It is part of his games for children series. But it is playable for adults as well. There is a circle of wooden pieces that have two arributes. The first is shape and the second is color. And there is a bunch of plastic tokens in the middle that are victory chips. On your turn, you can move the marker up to three spaces and take the piece it lands on. If the piece is that last of a shape or color then it is scored. All players who have one of the attribute get a plastic chip. When the plastic chips are gone, the game is over. And that is it: simple, quick, and has some meat to it. I like it! We played with the variant that your final score adds the score of the player to your left. This gives you an incentive to get that person to finish something that you can score as well.

Thurn und Taxis

This is my second playing of this game and luck was on my side. Although Marty told us of three things that we got wrong in our first playing (one of the was: when you have no cards, you must draw two). I was always able to draw the card I wanted. I only flushed the cards a couple of times but I had more cards in my route in my hand so it wasn’t critical that I flop a card that I needed. Towards the end, I was considering how to draw cards or flush cards that Mike (who was sitting on my left) was needing… Playing for screwage in the end.

Mike wanted to steal my seat! The audacity!! He picked up my Sicherman dice and rolled the dice with the big numbers on it and gave me the dice with the small numbers on it to roll. Sadly for him, he rolled a 3. I had one number that could beat him, two that would tie, and 3 that would loose. The odds were not bad for me… and I rolled the 4!! Hehehe… not like I would have given up my seat or anything… but it was an amusing break.

Turbo Taxi

After that, we played another new game from my Adam Spielt order called Turbo Taxi. This is a remake of Friese’s game called Flickwerk. It is a simultaneous puzzle solving game in where you try and connect a network. This network must have only two exits off of the board to the houses. The other requirement is that the cars (or taxis) must be able to drive on the road to the house of the matching color. I think that I like the theme of the old game better where it is a circuit board.

Mike needed help in the first round. He called out done and then John and Jon would stop what they were doing and check the winning conditions. They would point out some failure to Mike. Which Mike would then fix and call “done” again immediately. This went on until Mike was able to finally satisfy the winning conditions. Flawed!! I just ignored them and tried to solve it myself (unassisted).

Tichu

Mike once again made a random wish and this time It took a bomb out of my hand. He did call GrandTichu on 35JQQKAP, so I will cut him a little slack there. If the Tichu caller is worried about a potential bomb, can you correctly hurt your partner? I think that getting a bomb out of the opposing team is better than the benefit of leaving your partner with a potential bomb to stop the lead of the other team.

So, my question is: in the above picture of a Tichu hand, what cards would you pass and why?

The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T	Team #1	GT/T	GT/T	Team #2	GT/T
	MarkH & MikeA			Jon & JohnG
	0		T+	300
	210	GT+		390
	510	T+		390
	630	T+		470
	630		T+	770
	630			970
T-	560			1040

Tichu

This next game will go down in the annals of time, filed under how to loose a game when you are 690 points ahead and need 205 to win. I blame Mike, really. This is the disc-golf Tomahawk equivalent play in Tichu.

The opposing team is really far behind and clearly needs to start calling GrandTichus. We just need to coast to victory and set them occasionally. As you can see from the score card, the Jo[h]ns call GrandTichu seven times in a row and are successful 71% of the time. Which gives them 600 points. They still need 295 points from point cards before we can get 205 points from point cards. And this leaves us with the deciding factor. We need to over-call Tichu and be set… twice! Yes, the other team only has partial information. But they can make up for it a little bit since the non-caller will pass their best card. Draw backs are getting the dog and Mah Jong action against you.

I will give Mike some credit. In the picture above, he had to over-call Tichu. But, did he have to make the same mistake twice??? Tichu is a game where even though you have powerful cards, you are not guaranteed to go out first. When you loose the lead, the other team can play card combinations where you (and your partner) do not have an in to take back the lead.

By the way, for Mike’s first hand, he had dog9TTJQQD and considered calling GrandTichu but did not. He picked up 778JAA and called Tichu and made it. P.S.: If you would have called GrandTichu, it would have been another instance where we would have won…

The scorecard for a game of Tichu

GT or T bet made or lost

This team scored more points than the other or one twoed

GT/T	Team #1	GT/T	GT/T	Team #2	GT/T
	MarkH & MikeA			Jon & JohnG
	300	T+		0
	265	T-		35
	665	GT+		35
T+	795			105
	830		GT+	370
	840		GT-	260
	810	T-		490	GT+
	840		GT+	760
	920		GT-	580
	920	T-		780	GT+
	935		GT+	1065