On the way to Tichu and TexMex, I got an RSVP from Nick and Stephanie, a call from Stephanie asking for directions, and an RSVP from Mark in rapid succession. Traci was a maybe so this could make 7, an ideal number because we would have Tichu and Cosmic Eidex, a three-player game.
Just like the late night session at GITHOT, we had six people sitting around a table playing Cosmic Eidex. I had a request to bring the game. Last week we had 6 try Tichu with a team rotating out each game. I enjoy Cosmic Eidex a great deal; someone always seems to not like it as much. David at GITHOT played with us but said he couldn't stand the game.
There's no short-term memory loss for Stephanie. She was able to count her points well through the game and sometimes wouldn't have to recount at the end of a trick. One hand let me win the game because Mark's special power allowed him to state the number of points he would take in and if he got it he would get the two points awarded at the end of the trick if he took in at least one trick. That last part was hard to remember. Mark said he'd get 8. We were playing bottom-up no trump and he buried an 8 so he was aiming for taking in no points. Stephanie's power allowed her to switch hands with someone if they agreed. I agreed. Wow she had a lot of low cards. Since Stephanie received a lot of high cards from me her strategy was to hit low also. Mark and Stephanie were ducking the whole hand giving me way too many points. Normally if you get 100 or more points you get nothing because you've been excessive in the points you've taken in and the other players each get a point. I switched mid-hand to trying to take in all the tricks since if you do that you get the two points awarded at the end of the hand. This was also hard to remember (though on the player aid we were looking at) and I got the two points by getting every trick that hand.
It's a fun game and I'm getting better at evaluating my hands and tracking points. I know I'm not good at it yet because you should also feed a point each hand to the person who is not your immediate rival for points. I still can't think past trying to earn a point for myself. I guess worrying about who else should get a point will come later like it took a long time for me to think of all 14 cards in Tichu and not just an immediate play.
I like Tichu best too. Eidex is good though and I always enjoy playing. Maybe the next time we have six I'll bring a two-player game with a small footprint and we could have a two-player game and Tichu going. I wouldn't mind playing Hive, Babel, Jambo, Aton, Phoenix, or any number of two-player games I hardly ever play.
Friday night is another meetup from the Central Texas Boardgames Meetup. I'm looking forward to it.
Golden Spike , my enemy my friend
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Sunday, January 27, 2008
We played an amusing game of Age of Steam with the Golden Spike map at Ed's. Mark and Ed were experienced players. I suck at Age of Steam and David has never played so Mark drew me as a partner. We had read how this is a team game of Age of Steam only for 4 players so I wanted to try it.
Mark was very helpful. He allowed me to urbanize when he wanted to because I was his "teammate." He gave me some killer moves and coached me as I forgot the order of the sequence of events. In this game, two and only two players start at each end of a East to West rail line and drive toward the middle. When a "team" connects to the middle, the game ends at the end of the round. If one "team" hasn't connected, they are eliminated from the possibility of winning and their score goes to zero.
About two/thirds through the game, we realized that the "team" is really a "side." The side is determined pretty much by the second and third builders. If the second player builds from the same city as the first builder, he will cooperate in connecting to the middle and compete for score after eliminating the other team. If he builds on the opposite side, he will cooperate with someone else for the race towards the middle and then compete for the solo win. If player one and two have chosen opposite sides of the board, the third builder will choose who they will partner with. It's not really a partnership since you are going for the solo win. The third player would just choose the flavor of competition with the other players at that point. It was funny watching Ed and Mark switch from hosing each other to walking in the kitchen to whisper strategies.
Ed and Mark started on the same side of the map; David and I were on the opposite. Ed and Mark fought tooth and nail through the game. They "mentored" us with Mark coaching me and Ed giving his helpful advice to David. This made it difficult for Ed and Mark to make progress towards the center golden spike. We thought only one member of the team had to reach the middle for both teammates to be eligible for the win.
David connected to the middle first from our side. This eliminated Ed and Mark from the game. I barely edged out David due to having more tracks on the board and some excellent coaching (kingmaking). It was a funny game to see our teammates we drew for in the beginning were not our teammates at all.
I want to play this again. It's a tough map. The mechanism of cooperating to the middle connection brings up a lot of timing issues. You want to time your connection to be ahead of the players from the other side of the board but only occur after you have secured victory over the player on your side. The "friend" you have been working with on one side of the board becomes the "enemy" you must beat after you guys have eliminated the other side. Choosing who you want on your team to begin with, once we play again, will be a little bit like the tough choice of who you wish to ally with in Martin Wallace's Struggle of Empires. This will be tough to get to the table as usually 4 means Tichu in our group.
Mark was very helpful. He allowed me to urbanize when he wanted to because I was his "teammate." He gave me some killer moves and coached me as I forgot the order of the sequence of events. In this game, two and only two players start at each end of a East to West rail line and drive toward the middle. When a "team" connects to the middle, the game ends at the end of the round. If one "team" hasn't connected, they are eliminated from the possibility of winning and their score goes to zero.
About two/thirds through the game, we realized that the "team" is really a "side." The side is determined pretty much by the second and third builders. If the second player builds from the same city as the first builder, he will cooperate in connecting to the middle and compete for score after eliminating the other team. If he builds on the opposite side, he will cooperate with someone else for the race towards the middle and then compete for the solo win. If player one and two have chosen opposite sides of the board, the third builder will choose who they will partner with. It's not really a partnership since you are going for the solo win. The third player would just choose the flavor of competition with the other players at that point. It was funny watching Ed and Mark switch from hosing each other to walking in the kitchen to whisper strategies.
Ed and Mark started on the same side of the map; David and I were on the opposite. Ed and Mark fought tooth and nail through the game. They "mentored" us with Mark coaching me and Ed giving his helpful advice to David. This made it difficult for Ed and Mark to make progress towards the center golden spike. We thought only one member of the team had to reach the middle for both teammates to be eligible for the win.
David connected to the middle first from our side. This eliminated Ed and Mark from the game. I barely edged out David due to having more tracks on the board and some excellent coaching (kingmaking). It was a funny game to see our teammates we drew for in the beginning were not our teammates at all.
I want to play this again. It's a tough map. The mechanism of cooperating to the middle connection brings up a lot of timing issues. You want to time your connection to be ahead of the players from the other side of the board but only occur after you have secured victory over the player on your side. The "friend" you have been working with on one side of the board becomes the "enemy" you must beat after you guys have eliminated the other side. Choosing who you want on your team to begin with, once we play again, will be a little bit like the tough choice of who you wish to ally with in Martin Wallace's Struggle of Empires. This will be tough to get to the table as usually 4 means Tichu in our group.
Tichu for Five
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Monday, January 07, 2008
Last night we had five for Tichu so we tried a couple of neat twists. The first thing we did differently was to use two decks so one deck was being shuffled while another one was being dealt. This would hopefully speed things up a little like they do in poker tournaments. Do you know how hard it is not to shuffle a deck of cards when it is passed to you? I think every one of us started shuffling at least once and realized the cards were already shuffled.
Unfortunately, my Mu deck is currently missing and Traci hates it anyway. Wayne explained that they keep up with individual points in Threechu, a variant for three I may have spelled wrong. We decided to do that for five. We still played in teams of four--we just had a rotating player each round. If you were last out with cards, you gave the points to the first player who went out (like always), the points in your hand to the other team (like always), and then you got to sit out the next hand while you shuffled the secondary deck. This changed the dynamics somewhat as you didn't want to go out last and each person had their individual scores. If one team scored 140 and the other team scored 60, 140 was placed in both of the individual players scoring column. We decided to play to 500 and Jon Grimm barely won.
It was fun to play Tichu that way for five. Nine o'clock crept around before anyone knew it. Afterwards we played a couple of more games of Tichu and that put us well past midnight. We followed up with a game of R-Eco, a cool card game I haven't played yet about garbage and illegal dumping. That's funny because Saturday night's after midnight game was Industrial Waste.
My wife comes back from being out of town today. How did I occupy myself while she was gone? Games, games, and more games including 5 people for day games on Friday. We played Elfenland, Vegas Showdown, and Joey and I played two-player Race for the Galaxy. That works pretty well as a two-player game. When Joey left I fell asleep on the couch; so much for continued gaming into Friday evening. Of course everyone I played with is going to GITHOT--Games in the Heart of Texas next weekend.
Unfortunately, my Mu deck is currently missing and Traci hates it anyway. Wayne explained that they keep up with individual points in Threechu, a variant for three I may have spelled wrong. We decided to do that for five. We still played in teams of four--we just had a rotating player each round. If you were last out with cards, you gave the points to the first player who went out (like always), the points in your hand to the other team (like always), and then you got to sit out the next hand while you shuffled the secondary deck. This changed the dynamics somewhat as you didn't want to go out last and each person had their individual scores. If one team scored 140 and the other team scored 60, 140 was placed in both of the individual players scoring column. We decided to play to 500 and Jon Grimm barely won.
It was fun to play Tichu that way for five. Nine o'clock crept around before anyone knew it. Afterwards we played a couple of more games of Tichu and that put us well past midnight. We followed up with a game of R-Eco, a cool card game I haven't played yet about garbage and illegal dumping. That's funny because Saturday night's after midnight game was Industrial Waste.
My wife comes back from being out of town today. How did I occupy myself while she was gone? Games, games, and more games including 5 people for day games on Friday. We played Elfenland, Vegas Showdown, and Joey and I played two-player Race for the Galaxy. That works pretty well as a two-player game. When Joey left I fell asleep on the couch; so much for continued gaming into Friday evening. Of course everyone I played with is going to GITHOT--Games in the Heart of Texas next weekend.
No Lost Games in 2008
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You heard, right; that's my resolution. You probably think I'm going to become an ultra-competitive game player now, right? Wrong. My resolution is to stop physically losing games. Last year I lost The Great Wall of China. I don't know how I left this game behind and I don't know where it is now. I just hope it's being enjoyed by someone.
I spent a lot of time yesterday looking for Mu and More deck. I had no luck with that one either. Sometimes I put games inside other games for travel purposes. I also sometimes take that one to Tichu and TexMex night in case we have five show up. This means my pore Mu could have been left on the floor or another seat at a restaurant.
A related resolution is to not lose any game pieces. Since I share my games with so many people and take them all over town that will be a little harder to manage. Rio Grande is very helpful when I lose a game piece at least and I can usually get another one sent in the mail. Of course, with a substantial part of my collection going to next weekend's GITHOT--Games in the Heart of Texas it may be tough to reign them all back into their boxes.
I spent a lot of time yesterday looking for Mu and More deck. I had no luck with that one either. Sometimes I put games inside other games for travel purposes. I also sometimes take that one to Tichu and TexMex night in case we have five show up. This means my pore Mu could have been left on the floor or another seat at a restaurant.
A related resolution is to not lose any game pieces. Since I share my games with so many people and take them all over town that will be a little harder to manage. Rio Grande is very helpful when I lose a game piece at least and I can usually get another one sent in the mail. Of course, with a substantial part of my collection going to next weekend's GITHOT--Games in the Heart of Texas it may be tough to reign them all back into their boxes.
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