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.

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.

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. 😉