What a painfully slow starting Tichu game it was. Perhaps the worst one ever. The score should not be 185 to 215 after six hands!

I took advantage of Traci’s mistake when she tried to go on top of my eight high length 6 straight. After everyone had passed, I played the Mahjong and wished for a 4. Unfortunately, she had another four in her hand. 🙁

Oh, and by the way Dougie, I have now seen for my own one as long as yours…

Alhambra: The dice game

We started out tonight with a new dice game. This one is built on the Alhambra franchise. It is not that bad, actually. If you can get over the fact this is a dice game after all. There are six areas: one for each of the colored building types. The game is played over five rounds with scoring opportunities for the first, third, and fifth round. For each round, people try and compete for buildings that show up. There is one of each type guaranteed and five extra drawn from a bag. In a four player game, you get four opportunities to roll high in a color. You place your marker when you are done rolling. There are three chances to roll the dice. And you can carry over dice in later rolls by not rolling them again. The only problem is that the number of dice showing has three levels based on how many times you rolled to achieve that result. So six of a color on the third roll can be beaten by another person who rolled six of that color using two rolls.

After everyone has rolled, we go through the buildings and hand them out. The first player in the line gets first choice and must place the building using the usual rules or place it in the holding area. Which is not that bad, because you can decide after rolling the dice one or two times to abort and move a piece from the holding area to your board.

As you can see from the above, John built a walled in garden of Alhambra (with only one mistake noticed after the fact. Mike was even worse with the mistakes…)

Taluva

Next up was Taluva. Which is not a bad three player game. The game has some pretty short rules. Although the rule set did pose a problem with our group.

To Court The King

And to finish out the night we played another light dice game. This is another interesting game where you try and get certain combinations of dice that match personalities. These personalities will give you either more dice or a power to alter the dice. This process snowballs during the game until you can successfully roll seven dice that have the same number. And then it enters the final round. It is not that painful to miss rolling for your target personality. You can always get at least one personality.

Wikinger

Another playing of Wikinger for me. The first time I played, the game was a little broken. But that was because we got a rule wrong. This time, the game played okay. Maybe a 5 or so.

Antiquity

Kevin and Debra Nunn showed up for Ed’s game day. It was good to see them again. Unfortunately, I could not play with them because this ultra meaty game beckoned. And it took a while to play since we had a new player with us. I love this game. The theme is great and the rules fit almost perfectly. The only down side is maintaining hundreds of tiny, little cardboard chits. We ended one turn early when I claimed the win. With five cart houses and a bunch of food, I could easily surround poor Paul. He was already feeling the effects of not being able to dump pollution in his homelands once I made the run into his territory. Jon said he would have won as well, but I had much more unpolluted territory than he did.

Ed dutifully takes pictures of every game that is played for his photo gallery. And, because of that, you almost never seem him in a picture. One word of advice, Ed: tripod. Another amusing moment was when both Ed and I were taking multiple pictures of a game in progress. It made for a paparazzi moment…

Ra

Last up was Ra — one of my favorite Knizia bidding games. Unfortunately, the Egyptian gods were not with me. During the first era, the person on my right kept pulling Ra chits. Which stopped me from getting small groups to bid with my 2 money. And, during the second and third eras, I scored zero points! Ras came up awfully quick. And there was no way for me to bid on anything with my middle money.

Thebes

The monthly The Central Texas Boardgames Meetup Group A.K.A. First Friday Fluffers was held today. I brought Thebes, which is the commercial reprint of Jenseits von Theben. Which is a nice and thematic game with only a little bit of the luck of the draw in it. This printing is very pretty. You get five individualized draw bags, spinning wheels to show columns in a table of dig data, and a nice game board. It is very different from its first edition. And it makes that first edition look like a prototype. Also, the rules have changed somewhat. I kind of miss the scoring for most well rounded knowledge. And the way the exhibitions are held…

Tichu

Jon was late as usual. So we played a couple of practice hands of Tichu. Which some how turned into a real game. Of pain…

Age of Steam: Korea

Picking a game for five players is hard. Well, if you want everyone to agree, that is. We decided on Age of Steam and for a variant chose the Korea map. This was a first playing for every one. So no one would have an advantage. The map is rather mountainous. But, fortunately, mountains only cost 3 dollars to build on. Also, there are some spots where you can’t build through that are marked with thick black lines. I guest those spots exist to make the map look more like the country that it is trying to represent.

The big difference here is that cities are not the color of the tile. Rather, a city will accept any colored good that is currently on top of it. This makes for a very changing game. One where you have to play tactically and over the short-term. Because other people will change your plans by delivering goods.

For some reason, the starting player bid was rather low. I got second place for 2 dollars. Jon was first and chose deliver first to allow himself some protection. Which is clearly more powerful in this game. I was very lucky to get locomotive! Doug chose build first, John chose turn order, and Ed chose engineer. Jon built off in the south east of the board. Doug built in the south west. And I built in the middle which allowed me to make two length two deliveries on the first turn. Ed built in the north east and was trying to set up a length two delivery by going through another city to get to his intended good. John chose a route in the north that connected to Ed’s target city.

When it got around to John making his first delivery. He chose to deliver one red good from the northern-most city to Ed’s target city. I quickly pointed out that he should have done that the other way. He should deliver the good in the target city to the northern-most. So that in the future, if someone were to deliver that good, at least it would have to go along his rail for one length. Unfortunately, I did this quickly and without thinking. After I said it, I realized that, if John were to change the move, it would hose Ed and leave him unable to deliver any goods that turn. Of course, in general, that is what you are supposed to do in this game. Now some people were clamoring for John to do exactly that. But, in the end, he chose to be nice to Ed. Ed later on in the game makes a delivery that helps himself and hurts John.

And this happened again in the game. John wondered whether he should build tracks and I replied that at least it would get you victory points even if you do not use those tracks to deliver goods. I then pointed out some cheap spots to build a track. And then realized that it would cut of Ed’s southern route from his northern route. Doh! I really should keep my mouth shut at this point. John picks somewhere else to build.

In this game, you can’t really compete with someone else over the same goods. Not without knocking both people out of the running for the game. However, after having a couple of rounds of loosing victory points for not having enough income, John was able to climb out of a death-spiral by delivering a number of length four goods. He was doing this in the middle of my territory. But I was occupying myself with longer deliveries.

Suicide Tichu

And finally we wanted one more quickish game to close out the night. Tichu, of course, came up again. We seem to always play this game — perhaps too much at times. But it is relatively easy to get all four people to agree to play it.

This time I wanted to try out a variant. I think it was Adam and Rehana that had mentioned suicide Spades. We discussed how it would work in Tichu and came up with the following, simple, rule: One person on each team must call Tichu (before they play their first card). I found a reference on BoardGameGeek called Chaos Tichu here. But it is a little more chaotic, so to speak.

I like this variant! It intensifies the gaming experience. You feel like you are in a crucible. You must make hard decisions with little information. When you pass a card to your partner, you pass your best card if it is clear you are not going to call Tichu. But what if they then play some cards without calling Tichu? Well, you are screwed and you have to call a doomed Tichu. There is more calling of Tichus before the pass. And the Mahjong is a little more powerful in this variant. If I am going to call Tichu and I have the Mahjong, then I wish out an Ace. If it doesn’t backfire, then the person on the opposing team must play an ace and then be forced to make a less likely Tichu call (or hose his partner).