February 28, 2004

As expected, we had a big group over for gaming last Saturday. In addition to Bob, Carol and Rachel Jones, attending were Eric, Dan K and Rachel S, Jo and Cary, and a boatload of Ruvinksys, Bill, Steffi, her brother Andrew, Jason, and Alex. The list does not include about a half dozen children. :-)

We’ll do another session in a few weeks. Hope to see everyone soon!

Bob

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Below is the tote board followed by Eric’s notes (winner is listed in bold).
Tote Board

• Loco Dan, Bob, Carol, Rachel S Bob: This is a version of Knizia’s classic filler, Flinke Pinke, which has been released in several different editions. It’s quick, fun, and has a decent amount of strategy.
• Goldland Rachel S/Carol 20, Eric 14, Bob 14, Dan 13, Cary 13 Bob: Goldland is a beautiful exploration game. This was a very tight game with a difficult finish. Carol took over for Rachel S who had to leave. (It is interesting to see that the photo on the back of the box, pictured at the link, shows all the tiles laid out initially with the unexplored tiles upside down. This is contrary to the rules and probably done to make it look better for the picture. However, it might be more in the spirit of exploration to start with all the tiles down, provided you could reorient the tile when you explore it.)
• Heave Ho Rachel J, Carol
• Web of Power Carol 53, Dan 48, Bob 45, Eric 40, Cary 38 Bob: Carol and Dan staved off a last minute come-from-behind surge by me with a very strong advisor play. Alas, it wasn’t enough.
• Taj Mahal Jason 50, Carol 40, Bill 38, Dan 36, Eric 31 Bob: I didn’t get to play. Wah.
• El Grande Alex 110, Bob 109, Jo 90, Andrew 71, Cary 62 Bob: A very close game. A 1 point difference is El Grande is about as tight as a game can get.
• Bang! Rachel J (Sheriff), Bob (Deputy), Cary (Deputy), Alex (Renegade), Carol (Outlaw), Dan (Outlaw), Eric (Outlaw) Bob: We learned two important things in this game. One, Alex is probably the best Bang! player we have. He convinced most of the people at the table that he was one of the Deputies and so didn’t get shot at by the good guys while encouraging the Sheriff and other Deputy
• to kill the third Deputy. And two, I have no right playing Bang! ever. I was the stupid Deputy who fell for Alex’s trick and I became convinced
• that Cary was one of the Outlaws. So, I shot him up and then Rachel killed him. Of course, the Outlaws didn’t do much better as Carol killed Eric. All in all, a blast of a game. See Eric’s notes for particulars.
• Bohnanza Bob 13, Carol 11, Rachel 11, Dan 9, Cary 9, Alex 7, Eric 4
• Verräter Alex, Cary, Rachel, Bob Bob: I’ve owned this for a long time but the only time our group has played it was at a Babycon long ago and I didn’t play it then. It’s a quick, cut-throat game of shifting allegiances. The main mechanism in the game was used by Bruno Faidutti in designing Citadels, a game we’ve played many times. I thought Verräter was very good even though I did poorly. I hope to play it more.

Eric’s Notes

• 2:19 pm: Eric arrived at the Jones’ house around 2:00. Dan K and Rachel S were already there. Cary arrived at the same time Eric did. Bob, Dan, Rachel S and, Carol were playing Loco. Dan won by one point over Bob.
• 2:28 pm: Carol sat out while we played Goldland.
• 3:25 pm: Carol and Rachel J started a game of Heave Ho!
• 3:58 pm: Rachel J won Heave Ho!
• 5:11 pm: Rachel S left and Carol took her place in Goldland. Carol won with 20, Eric had 14, Bob had 14, Dan had 13 and, Cary had 13.
• 5:18 pm: Next Bob brought out Web of Power.
• 5:57 pm: Carol had to leave and was replaced by Rachel J.
• 6:07 pm: Carol returned and took her place back from Rachel J.
• 6:12 pm: Carol won. Final scores were Bob 45, Dan 48, Carol 53, Cary 38, Eric 40.
• 6:18 pm: Cary left to pick up Jo.
• 6:41 pm: We took a break for dinner. The Ruvinskys arrived.
• 7:45 pm: We split into two groups. Carol, Dan, Bill, Jason and, Eric played Taj Mahal. Bob, Andrew, Alex, Cary and, Jo played El Grande.
• 10:17 pm: Jason won Taj Mahal with 50, Carol had 40, Bill had 38, Dan had 36 and, Eric had 31.
• 10:20 pm: Jason and Bill left after Taj Mahal.
• 10:34 pm: Alex won El Grande. Final scores were Bob 109, Andrew 71, Alex 110, Jo 90, Cary 62.
• 11:07 pm: Andrew and Jo left after El Grande.
• 11:12 pm: Rachel J joined us for Bang!
• 11:42 pm: Rachel J was the Sheriff. Dan, an outlaw, was the first killed.
• 12:01 am: Eric, another outlaw, was killed by Carol.
• 12:18 am: Bob, a deputy, was killed by dynamite. Cary, the other deputy, was killed by the Sheriff.
• 12:23 am: Alex, the Renegade, was killed by the Sheriff.
• 12:34 am: Carol, the last outlaw, was killed by the Sheriff. The good guys won.
• 12:46 am: Next we played Bohnanza.
• 2:37 am: Bob won with 13, Carol and Rachel had 11, Dan and Cary had 9, Alex had 7 and, Eric had 4.

February 8, 2004

• 3:00 pm: Eric arrived at Bob’s around 2:45. Royal, Stephanie and, Kimberly were already there. We decided to try Killer Bunnies.
• 4:35 pm: The game ended with Royal having four carrots, Eric had three, Stephanie and Bob had two each and, Kimberly had one. Stephanie won. Carol didn’t draw any money and only drew a bunny very near the end of the game; the game ended before she got to play it.
• 4:54 pm: Next we decided to play Medici.
• 6:14 pm: Stephanie won. Final scores were: Carol 61, Kimberly 73, Bob 112, Stephanie 114, Royal 81, Eric 99.
• 7:31 pm: After Medici, we took a break for dinner.
• 8:04 pm: Rachel joined us for Robo-Rally. We played with four flags on one board (Cannery Row). We decided the flags could be touched in any order. We also decided to play with unlimited lives and started with one option each. Royal started with the jump jet which enabled him to get his first two flags fairly quickly.
• 10:23 pm: Royal won. Carol, Stephanie and, Bob had two flags each. Rachel, Kimberly and, Eric had one flag each.
• 11:05 pm: Royal and Stephanie left and the rest of us decided to play High Society.
• 11:29 pm: Kimberly ended with the least money with $25 million and, was therefore out of the running. Eric won with 18 points.
• 12:02 am: Next we played Filthy Rich.
• 1:10 am: Bob won. We all agreed this would be a decent game except that taxes come up too often.

Bob: When playing Killer Bunnies, we made one mistake which probably made the game play better. Terrible Misfortune cards, which Carol drew in abundance, do not need a bunny to be played. If you do not have a bunny to be killed by the card, you may play it on another player! Since Carol drew somewhere between 4 and 6 of them during the game, it’s possible that none of us would have had a bunny at the end. It certainly might have changed the outcome because it’s likely that everyone who only had one bunny at the end would have had none and had to fork over their carrots. All said, it sounds like we may have been better off playing this incorrectly.

Eric: I’m not so sure about that. If Carol had been whomping our bunnies with misfortune cards, we would have gone through the deck faster, giving Carol more of a chance to draw bunnies. All of the take carrots cards are Aggressive so, we wouldn’t have been able to play as many of those.

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