December 15

Glenn and Eric were the first to arrive. While waiting for the others, we decided to play a game of Torres. This is the third or fourth time we’ve played but, unfortunately, none of the earlier games seem to have made it into the log. Having been a while since we last played, we were all a little rusty on the rules at the start but, pretty much had them straight a couple of turns into the game. Eric won with 279, Bob came in second with 261, Carol had 248 and Glenn had 230.

By the time we had finished Torres, Dan and Jay had arrived. We decided to try Jay’s new game, Munchkin. Usually, whenever we play a game for the first time, we get a few of the rules wrong. This time was no exception. At one point, Dan drew the Amazon, which will not attack females. Dan had an elf card which pictured a female elf and, he assumed that the sex of the character on the card was what the Amazon card meant but, the errata page makes it clear that the card refers to the sex of the player. Also, Jay, who was at level 9, won the game by playing a card that gave him a level but, it turns out that you can only reach level 10 by killing a monster.

Tony came in half-way through Munchkin. We dealt him into the game and, he managed to do quite well despite starting out at a significant disadvantage.

Now we had seven people, which is an awkward number for gaming. There aren’t all that many games that can take seven players nor are there many games that are good with three players, which makes splitting into two groups not so attractive. Settlers of Catan can take up to eight if you combine two sets so, we played a seven player game with the “peanut” configuration shown in the Mayfair rules. We also used the rules that you can keep up to 13 cards when the robber is rolled and, no robber on the first two rounds of the game. The game progressed fairly quickly. Bob won, with several other people only one turn away from winning.

Next we decided to play an old favorite, Advanced Civilization, which can take up to eight players. Because of its long playing time (8+ hours), “Civ” rarely gets played at our regular gaming sessions. We used the Western Expansion map. Bob played Babylon, Tony played Crete, Dan played Egypt, Carol played Italy, Jay played Illyria, Glenn played Thrace and, Eric played Assyria. We started at about 6 P.M. Dan and Glenn both had to leave around 11 P.M. so, just before 11 we decided to play one more turn and then end the game. At the end, Jay won with 2240, Bob came in second with 2082, Eric was in third with 1932, Carol was in fourth with 1659, Glenn was in fifth with 1529, Tony in sixth with 1427 and Dan, who got hit with more than his fair share of calamities, came in last with 1106.

After Dan and Glenn left, the rest of us decided to play one more game. We chose Princes of Florence. This was the first time Tony had played the game. Bob again tried the strategy of collecting profession and recruitment cards that did so well in the last game (10/13/01). Near the end of the game had trouble making the minimum point value required to produce a work but, finally won with 61 points. Carol came in second with 55, Jay was third with 54, Tony was in fourth with 44 and Eric came in last with 43.