Tichu Tournament Rules for GITHOT

Only 4 player Tichu counts. We all know the that's the only real Tichu.

1. All players in a Tichu game must agree for the game to be a "tournament" game. This agreement must occur before players look at their cards. If one team wants the game to be a tournament game and the other team doesn't, the declining team must be mocked by the "real" team. This mocking period ends after the first pass of the cards.
2. Choose your partner well. The tournament is single elimination for teams and double elimination for individual players. This means that the losers can form into a new team that is still eligible to win the tournament. Teams who have won will list their team on the "undefeated" board. Players may only be on the "undefeated" board as a member of one team. After losing a second time, players are no longer eligible for the Tichu prize and all of their further Tichu games are not tournament games.
3. No table talk is allowed. A player may not be coached by any kind of signal including gestures and voice clearing. Hands may be discussed after their completion.
4. Scores must be kept in a legible manner and turned in after the game.
5. The Tichu tournament is fairly unstructured and any "tournament" game counts including late-night sessions in the hotel lobby as long as all players agree it is a tournament game.
6. The Tichu prizes will go to THE remaining undefeated team. This means that if more than one team is listed on the "undefeated board" the tournament is not over. Players should try and wrap up by 4 PM Sunday so that out-of-town players have plenty of time to travel home.
   
   

Join us for GITHOT--Games in the Heart of Texas, Jan. 11-13.

Cosmic Eidex Redux

We got three registrations from Sugurland for Githot in January. That's 38 people so far. I bet a lot of people will sign up at the last minute.

Tonight, we had three for Cosmic Ediex: Mark, John Hathorn, and myself. I don't see how the Asian Bo can survive. That restaurant is always practically empty.

According to this page the Jackpot power I had should have been even more powerful than it was. With the Jackpot, you get to declare a "Jackpot" before players bury their card before the first lead. You can choose which Jackpot to declare (hearts or diamonds the way we play, in the Eidex deck it would be hearts and Stars) and then a Jackpot is created. Whenever a trick is won with "all animals", the trick isn't won it's put in the jackpot. Later, whoever wins the trick containing the declared 7 also wins the points in the Jackpot. The way we played, the trick would have to contain all clubs or all spades to go into the Jackpot. It looks like a mixture of those cards would have been fine.

Mark had the Sphinx power. This meant that twice during each "hand", he could play a card face down and say who won the trick and not have to reveal his facedown card. John H. had the feminist power, the power to refuse a trick if a queen and a jack or a king is in the trick. He used this power several times.

I was pleased to have a power that I actually used. Mark mocked it as a "random jackpot" but it served me well. Once during the game, I roughed the hand by not following suit when trumps was played. We corrected it by giving the other players one point out at the end of the hand. Another hand, called a "game" in Eidex parlance, had me score just under the 100 points that would have given the other players a point each. I was able to just squeak out a victory. I'm just glad I didn't get stuck with a power that I didn't play the whole game. Last week I gave up on "the dealer" after trying to exchange cards with another player and being refused each time.

The first power I drew was too confusing so we put it back: Black Friday. Now upon rereading the rules it doesn't seem that bad. Black Friday wouldn't affect play, just the scoring at the end. Ravens would, using this power, normally double their normal values and one declared suit would have no values. If the Black Friday players declared to invalidate trumps instead of just another suit, Ravens would be worth a lot more gaining 20 for the Jack and 14 for the 9. Next time I'll keep that power.

Mark liked the game well enough to purchase it recently but he wasn't pleased with the special powers and the fact that the rules translations I've been carrying around can be ambiguous. I still say it's a great game. Sure you have to learn the special powers but once you've played with one you know how it works from then on.

Bits and Pieces

Last week I received an envelope from Jay Tummelson of Rio Grande with the following:
A boss piece for Goldbrau
A blue track for On the Underground
An olive tower sticker for Arkadia

That's awesome. For $2 I now have three complete games instead of three games with one missing part.

Cwali is sending me an orange scoring token for Gypsy King as well.

A recent inventory confirms that I have indeed lost Great Wall of China by Reiner Knizia. I may have left it at a game store, had it fall out of a game cart, or maybe it accidentally got packed in someone else's bin. I've been wanting to play it since I recently played the unrelated (except theme) game Chang Cheng.

Cosmic Eidex Chaos

There weren't enough for Tichu tonight and three of us wound up playing Cosmic Eidex by the same designer. We played without special powers until about the fourth hand when we introduced them. It was a very close game. We actually went into "chaos" because all three players tied with 6 and you must get 7 points to win.

This is where the game shifted and started to remind me of Bongo by Faduitti. Bongo is a dice game where you roll one dice that tells you how many animals to look for that match that number. If two of the three possible animals have the correct number of animals displayed, the answer is suddenly the animal that doesn't. It involves a little backwards thinking. In chaos in Cosmic Eidex, the condition in which all players are tied at six, you can win the game by winning all the tricks (still haven't seen it happen) or by getting 0 points. So normally if you are in the middle you don't get a point and the other two players do. It's usually kind of a hose the guy in the middle game where whoever scores lowest of the 157 possible points gets a point and whoever scores highest does as well. In this case, being in the middle would still create a tie for your opponents so you are the winner by being in the middle. Also, normally if you go over 100 points in your hand you don't get a point and the other two players get a point each. In chaos, this would put your two opponents in a tie so you would win.

John Hawthorn won the last "game" by going over 100 of the 157 points possible. This would have given both Wayne and myself a point if we were not in chaos conditions. In chaos, John won.

This is still a very interesting game to me with a lot of replay.

First Disc Golf Meetup

With Jon injured again and many of our disc golf friends missing in action, I decided to start a disc golf meetup. We had our first meeting Saturday. Mark and I met Robin and Tony at hole 1 and I immediately suggested teams.

It was a casual round with perfect disc golf weather except for a little wind. It was the kind of day that looked like it might rain and then didn't so we mostly had the course to ourselves. Tony has been playing disc golf for 5 or 6 years and it showed. His sidearm would often out distance my backhand and he had an amazing thumb. I'm not sure we were good enough to keep him coming.

Afterwards, Robin joined Mark and myself at Chuy's in Round Rock. Nick and Stephanie joined us there. It turns out Robin is a dam inspector. Chuy's was packed. They had upside down Christmas trees on the ceiling and some tasty food. Tony didn't join us because he was going to run through the disc golf course one more time which is his normal mode of playing.