Today was not a good day for travelling. I went home early to avoid the rush hour (working at home is just so easy and convienent). I stop by the bank to deposit a check and come across this mess. An eighteen-wheeler overturned when it tried to do a U-turn. 79 was blocked off. But, fortunately, I was able to weave around and still access the bank.

Doug later tells me that 620 was shutdown west of IH-35 because of a gas main rupture. So we figure that Peter and Francesca were not coming. And on the next day, I read that there was an accident on IH-35 southbound caused by the stupid rubberneckers trying to look at the first accident. They really should erect large tents to cover these things up…

Tichu

While we were waiting for Peter and Francesca to show up, we played some hands of Tichu. Later, we figured that they were unable to make it here and finished out the game. And what a long and close game it was! Our heroic team only lost by 100 points! Thats a Tichu call! Newbies John and Doug increased their abilities this game by making Tichu calls. John even over Tichus Doug’s Tichu call. Getting agressive there, John. Way to go…

In the above picture, my partner calls Tichu before the pass? Um, huh? What cards you holding there, Doug? I pass my Dragon, and Doug makes it! Cool beans.

Tempus

Another playing of Tempus. And this time, we corrected two big rules problems from the last game. The first was that cities cannot be built on mountains (we got that right) and they cannot be built next to another city. This creates a Settlers of Catan type of restriction. And really narrows down the real estate of valid locations. The other problem was that Government does not give you a free action. It only allows you to pass or combine two turns. This makes that card less powerful. It was only played once during the game.

In the first round, I has one farm land with two pieces on it. Everyone else had more than me. So I chose the “have ideas” action and drew a farm backed education card (+2 to farmlands! how lucky!). This allowed me to pip Adam, much to his disappointment (its a rare card after all). John was agressive as usual. I was leaving everyone alone until I introduced Doug to the religion card. Of course, I knew Doug was going to retaliate. Fortunately, I had enough defense cards to stop his first attack. And when he was gathering forces for another attack, I went back down to three stacks which made me untouchable. I had built enough cities by now. Since I knew city spots were scarce, I made an effort to secure them. I built a city before John could when his stack was right next to mine. And I moved one of my three stacks by ship to one of the last spots on the board.

When the game ended, I was able to secure flight (+3 victory points). Unfortunately, I was not able to build one city. And I was left with my four city. Also, I could not spread out to secure some more points because many of Doug’s pieces were sitting next to my cities and I knew he would attack them since he had nothing better to do. Adam was able to win by three…

Tempus

Ahh, Tempus, the highly-awaited and long-delayed Martin Wallace game. Mike and myself placed an order at Thought Hammer, but the order arrived too late to play it at Ed’s (it probably arrived when we were playing another copy of it). Fortunately, John ordered it from Boards and Bits. They shipped it to him on Friday.

I would think that with all of the delays that this game has suffered, there would be no production problems. We had to spend some time trying to figure out what areas the table on the board was refering to. Hills, Grasslands, and Farmlands look different on the board and cards than the on tiles. It seems like two sets (with different resolutions) were used. Also, in dim lighting, it is hard to tell the difference between the black and purple pieces. I will give credit to the rules and player aid sheets, though.

You can tell by the board, above, that purple and yellow have a huge advantage. And, unsurprisingly, purple won the game. I, being lite blue, expanded out a little to the grasslands that would be contested between myself and red. During the game, I forego drawing cards and this hurt me. You see, cards give you technoligcal abilities (ignore stacking limits, extra babies, extra movement, etc) or attack/defense bonuses. So, John opened up hostilities by playing a religion card on me (damn you religion!) which removed one of my tokens (a solitary one on the grasslands) and gave him a token. Later on, he then attacked me. Since I didn’t have any cards, there was nothing that I could do. This took me out of the running for the game. So I decided to fight back. However, there is a rule that if a player has only three stacks of tokens, then he cannot be attacked! Since he never grew beyond three, he was untouchable. Seems pretty one-sided to me…

Indonesia

There is not many meaty players at Ed’s game sessions. So when we suggested another meaty game, we had trouble filling it. Fortunately, Adam joined us which gave us enough for a three player game. In this game, my shipping line was useless, there always seemed to be competing line during the game. So I didn’t make that much money with it. Adam proved to be the master of spicy-rice and shipped a lot of it during the game. Which gave him enough money to win it. I was worried that Mike would surpass me in the end. Adam kept prefering Mike’s ships to mine and would always give him more money than me. But fortunately, I kept my lead over him in the end.

Ed and Susan won Cleopatra and the Society of Architects at Gulf Games recently, and brought it out. It is full of plastic bits and looks interesting. Notice how the wide aperature of f/2.8 gives a razor-thin depth of field to this picture…