May 2006 Archives

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You may be interested to know that global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking numbers of Pirates since the 1800s. For your interest, I have included a graph of the approximate number of pirates versus the average global temperature over the last 200 years. As you can see, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature. link via

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Ed held his yearly Memorial day gaming. It is very similiar to his game days except for the presence of bratwurst. Mmmm bar-b-queued bratwurst. When I arrived, Susan was outside taking pictures. Apparently, in the country, there are all sorts of flora and fauna out there.

Die Dolmengötter

Mike brought out his new Eggert-Spiele game that he purchased in the previous Adam-Spielt order. The last time we played the game, it was flawed and broken. But apparently, he got a rule wrong (big surprise there). So we tried it again. It was alright. Nothing special or exciting. The theme is an after-thought and doesn't grab me at all.

Fury of Dracula

Ed posted a weird note to rrgamers. It was meant to entice people to play a new game that he bought. When I watched a video of Scott explaining the rules, it seemed interesting. And when I found out that Ed was going to be Dracula and we were teaming together to get him, I just had to play!

This is a game that pits one person against others. Dracula is hidden but leaves a path of cards. When one of the characters moves on top of that card, it is revealed. Dracula has one card of each location, so cant normally backtrack. Revealing a previous location gives a clue where Dracula has been and might be going. You also know when Dracula is in the ocean because the card back is different (colored blue).

Dracula needs to be hidden for a certain number of days, spawn a couple of vampires, kill some of the characters (who conviently ressurect), or some combination. The players want to kill Dracula. Three times. Dracula never stays dead the first time! And Dracula has a host of minions that help him out. Bitten characters also give Dracula some information.

For our first game, we caught Dracula's trail somewhat early. But he escaped into the ocean. When we found him the second time, we thought we had the advantage. However, one character (Mina) decided to fight Dracula when she was at two hit points. Mina was rolling very good numbers and killed Dracula twice. However, Dracula played a card that allowed him to move twice and escape. He then played a card that did two damage to Mina which killed her (giving Dracula more victory points -- one away from winning). What killed the game for us was the next card Dracula played was a teleport card. He is now anywhere on the board. And he is about to win when the new day occurs. There was nothing we could do about it. Sigh.

Our mistake was drawing too many event cards. While the majority of the cards are for us, there are cards for Dracula in that deck. This is the only way Dracula can get these cards. And some of the cards were very beneficial.

Mykerinos

Mike brought out Ystari's new game out to the table. This is a set collecting game where you fight for the pieces of the set by having the majority of tokens. Each tile has two sides. The front has a picture of a character. The back has a 2x4 grid on it and it may have a number of victory points associated with it. For each of the first three rounds of the game, there are 4 groups of 2 tiles next to each other (making four 4x4 grids). In the last round, there are 6 groups of tiles. Each player then takes turns laying tokens on the tiles. You can place one token by its self or two more tokens orthogonal to an existing token. Pyramids are blocked spaces. Play continues until everyone passes. We then resolve each of the four groups. The person in first place can either take a tile or place a token on the museum. The second place person has the same choice and third and fourth places can only take tiles if noone else had previously.

Placing in the museum increases the multiplier of the five different characters. For example, if at the end of the game, you have 3 tiles of Mrs. Blackmore (black pluses) and your multiplier is 5, then you get 15 victory points. Also, on the following rounds, the characters can give you special powers that you may use once for each tile (by tapping it). The powers are: placing two tokens to start, placing three tokens next to an existing one, placing on pyramids, taking an extra token from the general supply, and placing a token on the museum.

I initially got the "Sir Brown" tile and "Mrs Blackmore". And I realized that I could use Brown's powers to place more of my tokens on the musuem to increase my multiplier for Brown tiles. I also concentrated my tokens to get more Brown tiles. And this gave me the win with 5 Brown tiles and a multiplier of 12.

Mauer Bauer

A Russconner (Matt) finally showed up to Ed's to play games. The groups do not seem to mingle very much.

Mike also brought out Mauer Bauer to play. This was the second time that I played it. And this time, I did not get many good cards to score victory points with. The luck of the draw, I imagine. Still, its not a bad game. Light, somewhat quick, and abstract.

Its been a while since I last went out on my bike. So I passed on the opportunity of playing disc golf. The weather wasn't great. The temperature was 82 degrees, 76% humidity, raining slightly with an overcast sky. But it felt cool out. I think the evaporation from the rain cooled the air.

I was reminded again just how much country and pasture there is around here. Just a couple of miles away from my house, civilization seems to dissapear. While they are not entirely gone, it is enough to relax me.

Bunte Runde

We showed up at Tim's after Disc golfing and lunch. We had six people there and expected more soon, so we started out with a light game. John brought out Bunte Runde and was successful in convincing others to play. I was a little worried there at the start. I wasn't getting many points. But at the end, I was able to make up for it. And Mary (sitting on my left) got many points as well. And this was enough for the win.

Bluff

The call of the dice was heard. It has been a while since I have played this game. Everyone one but Tim was slowly loosing dice. And at one point, everyone had one die (Tim had 4) and an exact match was called. Fortunately, the house rule where you cannot loose your last die saved everyone (and Tim would win). In the end, it was down to me (1 die) and Tim (4 dice). And I was able to successfully whittle him out of dice for the win! In the last round I decided to put the red die out on 1 three. I would call whatever Tim did. I figured that he could either bump it up to 1 four or five. Or 2 of something. Fortunately for me, I guessed his number. So he went with 2 threes. And lost.

Railroad Dice 2

I like dice games. Combine that with railroads and you come up with an interesting idea. I first played the second game in the series last December. It is smaller lighter and faster than its predecessor. And it also has a bad vibe in my game group. So I am reduced to playing it elsewhere. Which is funny, because Jon and John from my game group played it with me.

Jenseits von Theben

Tim owns a copy of this game (like every other game it seems). And I have been wanting to play it for a while now (ever since Marty started a game of it during a previous visit to Tim's).

This is a game of digging for treasure. The map contains cities (London, Moscow, ...) and archaeological digs. The game lasts for a certain number of years and the week is the unit of time in this game. You can move from location to location, but it costs one week for each leg of your journey. There are four cards on display that can be taken by travelling to the city on the card and waiting the time specified on the card. These cards can give you specialized knowledge about one archaeological site, generalized knowledge about all sites, shovels (get extra cards during a dig), assistants (get extra general knowledge), and other special abilities. The main goal of this game is to dig for cards. Each site has 12 treasure cards in a deck with 16 blank cards and 2 knowledge cards. When you dig for cards you consult a table where you look up your knowledge about the site and decide how many weeks you want in return for a certain number of cards. For example, a knowledge level of 6 will give you the following cards for the corresponding weeks (1:1 2:2 3:4 4:6 5:9 6:12). You can only dig at any given site once per year (baring a special card, of course). You shuffle the deck and draw the cards. Any treasure cards that you turn up you can keep for victory points.

Also, exhibition cards can be turned up during the corse of game play. When one of these cards are revealed, an exihibition will be announced to take place at a certain city during a certain week of the year. Only specified treasures from dig sites will be shown. Anyone who is in the city at the time can play. The number of cards plus a dice roll will determine who keeps the exihibition card which will give victory points at the end of the game.

When the game is over, a final test is performed. For each of the five sites, whoever has the most knowledge will get 4 points. Also, whoever has the strongest knowledge in their weakest area will get 7 points.

This was an interesting game and one that I would be willing to play again. Too bad it is so hard to come by. Adam was the unluckiest one during the game. In 18 cards that he dug up, only 4 were treasure cards. Consequently, he lost the game. I got second place and Jon first. I was really worried about Robert. He collected 7 Congress cards which gave him 28 victory points (via a triangle scoring). But I was able to beat him out since he did not collect that many treasure cards.

We went to Cat Hollow since we would be gaming at Tim's later on. The four of us split into what I thought were two equal teams (long throw John and Adam versus putters Jon and myself). And we started off equal in scores. First one team would move ahead by a point and then the other team caught up and then went ahead by a point.

Oh yeah, a couple of discs had to be shaken out of trees...

...and climbed up trees to retrieve them.

By the 14th hole, Jon and myself went back into the lead by one. Where we stayed until the 16th hole. At that point, we were on fire and birdied two holes for the win!

I came home and found that my package has arrived! Boulder games sent out a note saying that they had Antiquity in stock. It was expensive but worth it. Especially considering that Boulder was offering some coupons that would bring the price down a bit. Yeah, Splotter will eventually reprint it. But who knows how long it will take (and it will be just as expensive).

So I now have more meaty games (Antiquity, Age of Steam), light-weight but still meaty games (Elasund; Alexandros; Hey, thats my fish), and pure fluff games (Dancing dice).

Update:
Finally unpacked, sorted, counted, and stored the Antiquity game. 1/2" x 1/2" tokens of: 473 Pollution, 48 Stone, 48 Gold, 48 Fish, 48 Sheep, 48 Wine, 48 Olives, 48 Shells, 45 Perls, 47 Wheat, 48 Wood. 160 Grass hex tiles. 80 Graves, 12 City maps, 16 Map tiles. 1 for each player of: 20 Houses, 16 Inns, 4 Cities, 22 Cubes, 1 Stables, Dump, Harbour, Market, Hospital, Granery, Cathedral, Explorer, Forced Labour, Brewery, Alchemy, Philosophy, Biology, Univeristy.

Sesh!

Another hot day of disc golf at the usual Friday location of Old Settler's Park. Normally, it is just myself and John that play. But since it is a holiday, MikeA, Adam, and Roxana showed up! John was the only person to throw their disc in the water. However, it was in the small creek (that is slowly drying up), so it was retreivable. Adam found another disc sitting out in the open. It must have been dropped out of a bag.

Someone's disc got stuck in the tree. We starting throwing water bottles at it, to knock it down. But Jon got impatient and climbed up to retrieve the disc (like he needs an excuse to get up there).

My team was on fire today. One of us would always throw a good shot. Adam and I usually throw the discs the same distance (and Jon for that matter). I seemed to throw the disc farther than usual today. I don't know why. On hole 17, Adam threw first to the goal. He missed, but the next putt would be a sure thing. This allowed me to agressively putt. And I was able to sink it from 50 feet away!

Afterwards, we went to the Mexican Ice Cream place to cool off.

During this Memorial day weekend, I could have had seven days of gaming. From Wednesday to Tuesday and in five different locations. We should have called it Memorial-con. Not that I am going to everyone of these events, mind you. But it is a cool thing...

This holiday is actually about honoring our troops. So keep that in mind when you are out there enjoying gaming!

Tichu

Adam and Mike came early. And when Jon showed up, we opened up the Tichu deck to play a couple of hands while everyone else showed up. For the first two hands, I had pretty good cards. I called and made Tichu both times. For the third, and final hand, Adam calls Tichu. Then Mike over calls Tichu. I cringe. Mike did have a Queen bomb, but Adam had a 9 bomb, the Dragon, the Phoenix, an Ace, and other cards. Adam also went out first. Sigh. I must work with Mike about over calling Tichu...

Indonesia

We broke up into two four player tables and Indonesia was on our table. I was very happy to play it again. After explaining the rules to Mike, it took us about two and a half hours to play. There was a little bit of Ashly-Rollmaning going on (and Hamzying) mainly during the Merger phase. Bidding seemed to require the most thought in this game. What was annoying was the constant queries about how much money everyone had. And unfortunately, I let it get to me. Perhaps if everyone wrote out their current total on a sheet of paper, it would speed up the game (maybe make large L.E.D. displays).

Anyways, it was still fun to play. Especially since I ending up in first by a narrow margin (it was a tight game). I will leave you with a picture of Mike Ashley-Rollmaning...

In this game, I made two mistakes. The first was letting the other team 1/2. I held an Ace, a Phoenix, a full house, and other cards. I was trying to help get my partner, Jon, go out. So I mainly passed. Unfortunately, this allowed Adam to get rid of low cards. And he was able to go out second. Sigh

For my second mistake, I was worried about a bomb. I called Grand-Tichu and had no problems. Well, until the end. I had two Aces and an 8 remaining. Instead of playing the Ace pair, I led the 8. And the rest is history...

SELECT * FROM ALL 2004-CORVETTES WHERE MODEL = Z06

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It has been a while since we played at the Lutheran Church. This course is much closer to Adam and Rehana, but it is tiny (only nine holes). There is a big parking lot and it is empty on Saturday (apparently not a day of worship). But I am A.R. about parking away from other cars (and taking two spots). So Jon gave me grief. He joked that another car would park by me even though I was pretty distant from anything. And guess what happens? Mike parks right next to me! This was his first time to the course, so he spotted my truck and parked next to it.

After playing at Old Settlers Park for so long, the holes here seem so tiny in comparison. I could use my putter for the whole course. On hole two, I can overthrow the hole with my putter. However, I usually stick with my long range disc since it gives me some more options for throwing styles. John recently discovered the "Thumb throw" where you hold the disc straight up and grip it with your thumb on one side and the fingers on the other and throw it like a baseball. You can throw it high over the trees. And it flies essentially straight (well +/- 20 feet). John used it for most of his throws off of the tee.

Speaking of tees, my throw off of tee 3 veered off to the right and landed at tee 4.

For lunch we went to Red Robin. I tried their taco salad which looked like a huge starfish alien. Not only is it far too much food for a meal, but they drizzle ranch sauce over it (200 extra fat-based calories). So I got them to substitute salsa for it.

Afterwards we drove down to King's Hobby and browsed. And then off to The Gas Pipe on Burnett. We bought some more discs cause we keep loosing them, you know?

Adam joined us for the usual round of disc golf on Friday afternoon. It was hot out there and it was at least in the 90s. This is a bad sign for the comming summer. I hope to continue playing Fridays. But we shall see though. On the first hole, Adam's disc lands on top of the goal! Which, unfortunately, does not count as in and I gave him the first letter in PIG by sinking it myself.

On hole two, we lost John's Wraith. We assume that it went into the creek and tried looking for it. Either it went into the deep (and obscured) part or it was laying somewhere on the grass and we never noticed it. But I did notice a set of colorful plastic flowers that were trampled into the mud. So ephemeral...

On hole four Adam loses his disc into the lake. Luckily it was floating on top and was buoyed by a pocket of air. But when we threw the retreiver at it, it promply sunk and dissipeared into the murkey depths. Adam went in wading but was not brave enough to go far enough in to get his shorts wet. So we called it a loss.

On hole 5, my disc veered off to the left and hit the road and skipped to the other side. Someone had spray painted E's across the road (some of which looked like stick figure Klingon bird of preys). Who knows what that signifies.

Unfortunately all of this searching for discs caused us to skip three holes. We did throw at hole 18 and I some how slid my disc under a fence that protects a transformer.

It was late and I only missed a couple minutes of my Pilates class.

I went to Gumbo's for lunch today. This is currrently on of my favorite restaurants. And the food was excellent as always. But what was interesting was the conversation that I overheard which sounded like it was straight out of a letter to Penthouse (which I only read for the articles, of course).

To my right was a table of four young males. One of them was telling a story and he was obviously bragging. Which went something like this:

He travelled to some town (which I did not catch the name of -- I was not really paying attention at this point). Apparently, it was a Wednesday night and the night life was rather dull. But he goes to a bar and checks it out. After circling the place he goes and orders a beer. Not two minutes later, but this woman walks up to him and asks him if he wants to go somewhere else. He is interested, so he goes with her and leaves the beer. He doesn't go into much detail what happened that night. But apparently, they start seeing more of each other and somehow the Mother enters the picture. Mercifully, he does not go into detail about the Mom.

The next surprising thing that I hear is that she is about to have cosmetic surgery performed on her. His audience now jokes about if something is added or removed. It seems that she is having her breasts enlarged. So he remarks that he gets to see the before and the after. He also mentions that he is going to rub cocoa over her scars. (I imagine that they are non-existent now adays. They can go through the belly button after all!)

All throughout the story, he kept stressing how special he was. How unique he was. Blah, blah, blah. One example was when he mentioned that the next time he goes to this bar, other men would be lined up to see the new look. They would remember him and wonder why he was picked when they were there far longer than he was.

Good thing I was facing away from them. I would not have kept a straight face at all...

Elfenland

We had six people tonight, which is a hard number. Do you play a six player game or break up into two 3 player games (ignore other useless combinations, please)? It had been a while since we went with six. Elfenland was brought out onto the table and we all agreed. I view this game as rather dry and boring since I just view it as a travelling salesman problem with spurts of player-screwage, dealing with the bad cards that were dealt to you, and living with the poor set of tiles to choose from. But, it had been a while, so I acquiesced to the groups wishes.

I started out all right. But, during turn four, I was near Marty, who was obviously in the lead. And the difficulty chips came out on Marty's likely path. Which happened to surround me. Sigh. It didn't help that I recieved bad cards and unhelpful tile placements.

Traumfabrik

Mike left early. With five people, the game choices increase. And Traumfabrik was brought out. I like this Knizia gem and happily played it. I really should get off my ass sometime and print out the paste ups for this game. I like playing with the English language movies and studios rather than their German equivalent. Marty was trying to deduce the English language film names during the game and I didn't help him much by substituting monkeys in the title (like Gentlemen Prefer Blonde Monkeys).

With so many Grimms and one Ashley-Rollman in the game, this game took a while to play. I didn't mind the wait so much for the bidding because that is the core to the game and you need to be thoughtful about it. However, what I did mind was the agonizing waits over tile selection in the party. Mike would choose first. But before he did that, he would slowly look at each person's movie and figure out what they would need. And then go around the table again for good measure. So, I was in no mood to do that same thing at the end of the game for the final party. Yes. I could take my time, figure out what people's scores would be if they could choose tiles, and hose them. But that just destroys the mood of the game. This should be a nice, fun social experience and not a long drawn out calculating process.

I quickly went for the actor that I needed to finish my movie and get me some points. Yes, I should have taken the agent since it had another star and also was a wildcard. But I wanted the game to be over quickly. Mike was happy to take the agent and apparently this gave him the lead in the final scoring. I could live with that. However during the clean up of the game, I got to hear from multiple people many times of that fact. Yes, I realize that. Even after the third time you told me. Sigh. It was more painfull than the calculation. So the next time I will try and figure out what everyone needs and how to hose them.

Or, I could just play Nicht die Bohne!

Mike, the random wisher, was threating to sit on my right but did not. Apparently, my complaints about the random wish has become legendary. On the second hand, Adam might have made a four wish but chose not to since I was his partner. This would have taken out Jon's bomb. Sigh.

For the last hand of the game, Mike started and played a number of cards (two straights). When he led a single and had two cards left, I risked it and called Tichu. I had two Aces, the Dragon, a medium single and a long straight. True, there was a chance that Jon had a bomb and a dog. But I had to call it just the same.

Wow, what a short and painfull game -- at least for the other team! On the second or third hand, I had a dilemma: should I Tichu on this hand: AAKKQT9876543M ? I wasn't worried about the straight, but I would play the Mah Jong next. I had two Aces but no Phoenix or Dragon, so I can count on neither Ace gaining a lead for me. Also, with the Phoenix out there, the pair of Kings might not be good. So I didn't call Tichu. But I did go out first.

Ed had a dilemma of his own. Twice, Adam calls Tichu (or GrandTichu). Mike has only one card left. It is up to Ed to play high enough to stop Mike. And neither time could Mike be stopped from eventually going out first.

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For our Saturday round of disc golf, we played at Cat Hollow after learning that the new course in Williamson county was still unfinished and was missing its goals. There were a couple of announcements on the message board (apparently, there are enough women around here to make a weekly mini).

Adam threw a disc at an angle high up over the trees and it landed, after punching through the canopy), in a playable spot. So I took a chance and tried the same style of throw. Unfortunately, my disc was a little too far to the right and did not come back over the course. It also failed to puch through the tops of the trees. Thanks in part to the pervasive clinging thorny vines that climb over trees and starve them of light. So, I called in the heavy-hitting tree-climbing Jon. He was able to climb up to the top, grab the disc, and throw it down. There was a little scare when the branch he was using as a foot hold gave way. But he held on and found another spot.

Adam had two interesting putts. From our location, the steep and downward flight path of the disc looked on target to hit the goal. But it missed and cratered the earth. When we got to the goal, we noticed how close it was. Only a foot or so away...

Antike

Another round of Antike, and this time I tried the Marble strategy. But I must have done sometime wrong, because my economy was not as strong as Marty's was in the last game. So I was not in the running to win the game. Doug was doing well. Mike was going for cities and he controlled a lot of them, so his economy was snowballing. And Adam warned us that he was going to win on the next move. But both Jon and John, who could do something about it, did not and Mike won the game.

Beowulf - the legend

For the next game, John brought out a new Knizia game, that I own but have not played yet. It has the same mechanics of the Lord of the Rings: the card game. The strategey was not obvious at the start. But we played along and finished the game. On of the "chrome" parts of the game was the retelling of the Beowulf story. We follow a path and each spot on the path has a small section of the Beowulf story associated with it. John would read it to us at each stage. My first impression was not a good one, but I am willing it play it again.

Tichu

Ahh, another game of Tichu to finish out the night. Unfortunately, the game started out bad for us. The luck was clearly with the other team. But when the score was 125 to 475, we set their Tichu call and one/twoed ourselves. This brought us back in the running. But, again, the luck was not with us and we fell back out of the running. Adam was smack-talking me by saying how he was going to destroy me once again. When the score got to be 455 to 945, it was time for a desperation Grand-Tichu. Jon forced my call by picking up the cards. You can see above what kind of hand I had. At least I had a bomb, but what would you pass? Mike got cocky and over Tichued (he had been joking about it earlier). I was in trouble from the beginning. Then Mike played the Dragon. I was tempted to bomb it, but decided to wait. He then played a King high straight with one card left. So I was forced to bomb it. I kept the Ace at the top. And I am left with singles (low ones at that). So I sighed and started working my way down from the top. Surprisingly enough, Mike passed on the Jack and the Eight! I made it!! Even more surprisingly, Jon was able to go out second! This tied us up at 855 to 845. On the next hand, we one-twoed for the win! Woo woo!

Mike seems to have a weakness of overcalling Tichu on GrandTichu and being set.

Ugh. Another one sided day and Adam was getting all of the good cards, calling Tichu, and making it. And just to rub it in, Adam over Tichued on my desperation Grand-Tichu call. Oh yeah, and they scored most of the points as well (one 100, a couple of 95s, a 75, and a 65).

On Wednesday, surprisingly enough, I saw a note on Round Rock Gamers - Disc Golf that Jon was "working from home" and wanted to play disc golf. So I left a little bit early and we met up at Old Settler's park. John Gravitt also showed up. I practiced a little bit and stumbled across this disc sitting out in the open field. It was a brand new TeeRex in the star plastic. It is unsurprising to find discs in this manner. When you throw discs, sometimes you loose track of where they land. You search in a likely area but don't find the disc because it took an unlikely flight path and landed somewhere else. Case in point, John lost a disc that was thrown towards hole one and he later found the disc, unexpectedly, next to hole two!

Poor Ed, I feel for him. For lunch time gaming, he brought out Dragon Delta. This game is just full of chaos and screwage. You program 5 actions in advance. You have two types of cards that interfere with other people (a stop color from performing an action and pick up a stone/board). There are six people playing this game.

Ed is the most visible player in the group. He brings games in for us to play. He patiently explains the rules. And sometimes the price of that visibility is being picked on. In the first round of the game, three separate people played a stop red card. This resulted in Ed only being able to perform two of his five actions and it effectively took him out of the running.

Of course Lauren won the game. She is never seen as a threat.

Spring time brings with it some dangerous weather. Last night at around 3am in the morning, a fierce storm blew through. I could hear the wind really howling out there.

We were planning on attending The World's Biggest Disc Golf event. We figured that it would be crowded in Zilker park, so we planned on playing in Kyle. There can't be that many people in Kyle now, can there? Anyways, Jon, John, and myself were sitting at a crowded Starbucks at 7:15 am when Mike calls me. He says that the course is flooded and the event was cancelled. Apparently, some holes were underwater. Bah!

So we decided to play at Old Settlers. It is all buffalo grass. And we figured that it would be playable if we avoided the muddy tees. Apparently, the winds in that storm were worse than I thought. Many trees were had limbs torn from them.

Hole four caused us the most problems! Jon threw his disc into the water but it landed on the other side of the creek. Unfortunately, John lost two new wraiths in that same creek. Even though the creek is tiny, the water was all murky from the storm. And we could not find them.

At hole 10, I managed to get my putter stuck high in a tree. And that was not the only thing stuck up there! Besides the usual rocks, there was a metal tree stake! The tree now looks like a warrior Ent.

Went out to Old Settlers Park as usual. I started off having trouble finding two of my throws. But, I got into a groove and started picking up speed. A couple allowed me to play through on hole 8.

In the "parking lot" was this golf ball sitting in a puddle of water. I hope that golfers are not targeting our vehicles!

Marty brought two of his new, expensive, game purchases. He has apparently been getting some good bonuses in his new job. Pictured above is a rare Dorris and Frank game. And the first time that I have seen it. Hopefully, he will sell it sometime to me... He also brought the 3-D Settlers. But sadly, we had five people so we could not play with it.

Bunte Runde (John says its 5:25 on Bunte time)

Another playing of this light weight Knizia game. It seems to be a favorite of John's since he is always bringing it out on the table. This time Marty was to my left and he was working against me. I was also worried that I might not be able to score my orange items. But I was able to and get 6 points from it. Which was enough to give me the win.

Antike (Mark's innocent looking fleet looks at poorly defended Carales and Neapolis)

Next up was Antike. I decided early to take the research path to start the game. Jon, who was on my left, and the start player, also chose that strategy. So I was doing the same moves that he did for quite a while. But we eventually diverged.

I was the ancient Carthagenians located on the shores of North Africa. No one was pushing towards me or even threatening me and Marty was my only neighbor. I initially focused on getting a defense bonus, 10 cities, and then 7 ships. I felt that getting the defense first was hurting me financially. Jon, who had gotten trade, and Marty, who was building temples, were getting more resources than I was. However, I persevered and eventually built three temples and occupied 10 cities. So this was giving me a decent production. Then, I turned to conquest. I researched both ship movement technologies which Marty seemed to overlook. Unfortunately, for Marty, he was the only person who had not researched defense and my only neighbor. And he was concentrating on defending the scary looking wall of Doug's yellow men. So, on one turn, I destroyed two of his temples. This got me within one point of winning the game. After that, I realized that I had enough materials (both marble and coins) to build two more temples which would give me my final victory point. And luckily no one could do anything about it. Which gave me my first win!

Mu

We brought Mu to the table again which made me happy. I did make one error though. I had 5 sevens so I was bidding for chief. Marty showed seven support making him a likely partner. Jon did not want to let me have it easily and he really bid me up. When he raised it again, I could not continue the battle with my cards. But Marty then overtook Jon by one by dropping more sevens and some nines (which I needed for my bid ;-). So it was me and Marty. The mistake that I made was not keeping track of the secondary trump. I led my last trump when I did not need to (it was the only trump left). I should have kept it to rough a trick and lead my winning cards. So we were set in the end. Still fun though...

Tichu

Doug was complaining again, but he played Tichu. He did, however, limit the time to thirty minutes. When Doug was set in his Tichu call, I called GrandTichu on my next hand. It was a little risky. What was painful, though, was when Doug passed me a Jack! I was hopping for a Phoenix or Ace from him. So my weak hand was set. On a positive note, we did not finish the game with a positive score. ;)

On the third hand, I did what I normally rail against. I made a random wish for a 3. And this time it took out Mike's bomb (and stopped him from calling Tichu). Ed was on fire today. I think he made a record four Tichu calls and made everyone of them. On one hand, I had three of the Aces and Ed still calls Tichu. What a risky guy ;).

Wow, our team was pummled in the last half of the game. On my second GrandTichu, I called it blindly since Ed did not call it. And I had some really great cards. Sometimes, I love blind GrandTichu calls! However, I was still set. I got down to three cards (A88). I knew that the Phoenix was still out (the Dragon had been played earlier by me). So I lead the pair of eights. Unfortunately, Adam went over them and never played a single card before he went out.

When Marty blogged about eating at Boomer's, I had to try it. I originally tried to get our sushi-eating lunch to go. But trying to get them to attend was an excercise in herding cats. So I went myself.

They have quite a variety of selections. And they also had a special on buying four frozen pies for $15. So I bought one Southwestern Abode Chicken pie with "made fresh" kettle chips. The pie was good but the chips were cold and greasy. I will definately buy the salad for the next time. And, to take home with me, I bought a Spicy Mexican, Mexican Veggie, Texas BBQ, and Mediterranean Veggie.

The store is not located very well. It is on the opposite side of Guadalupe Street. Driving south, I saw the sign for it. But it was located on the other side of 31st street. There was parking in the rear. But no sign on the exterior of the building nor on the door. Those red signs on the umbrellas had some other name on them.

And what looks like a spot to turn in for parking is actually where guests sit!

I was able to eat here and then stop by Central market for shopping. And I was able to return to work in an hour and a half. So, just going for lunch should be doable! I definately plan on going again.