McMulti

The group started off with McMulti. Which Ed has never played! And, of course, after we had finished, Ed spots numerous rules mistakes. So sad. But nothing major was broken since all of the players are affected equally. It did have the effect of causing more news events than should have happened. News is almost always a bad thing. And in this game, it really reduced us to the bare bones. But I was eventually able to slowly work my way out of the hole and build up a gas selling economy. I was able to buy cheap gas on the Foreign and Domestic markets and sell it to the Consumer market. I was pretty much unstoppable at this point and everyone called the game.

Tichu

After not completing the previous game, we tried for a game of Tichu. But even this game was not completed. Sigh.

For Sale

Ed held a somewhat spontaneous game day during the holiday weekend. So attendance was rather low. But I didn’t mind since I was able to play games that I liked. I arrived just in time to play For Sale. It is a quick filler game that should not be sold.

Wabash Cannonball

Ed and Susan went off to play some Ameritrash game. But fortunately, Wabash Cannonball was easy to bring to the table. And it is a quick game too. Or at least it can be when everyone has played it before. My only failure is getting this game played immediately again. Apparently, people don’t see the many different outcomes and there are too many other games to choose from for the next game.

King of Siam

But we played this interesting three player game. It was a tight game. First the yellow then blue then red then back to blue factions looked like they would end up on top. Paul backed the red faction too much. None of us could contest ownership from him so we both conspired another color to win. In the end, the yellow faction would win. I needed to get ahead of the other guy so that he would be forced to play his card after me. I ended up out of cards. And he could not play his last card because we would be tied in ownership and the last tie breaker was that the person who played the card last would lose. So he could do nothing but watch the battle resolve and let me win.

Imperial

I was happy when Imperial hit the table. I initially screwed up on the rules explanation and forgot that money is deposited in the country’s bank during taxation. We figured that out when every country’s bank was run dry. Fortunately, we only taxed once this game. So we played the correct way on the next turn.

This game has one flaw to it (ignoring that slow players turn this into a long game): you can lose ownership of any country. You then have nothing to do but watch while others play the game. This should not be a bad thing. As long as whoever takes control of your country runs it correctly, you will not lose standing in the game. You should have money in hand and sit and bide your time to buy any share you want. There are threads on the geek about this. Unfortunately for both Ed and Susan, I wrested control from them towards the end of the game. They went off to play a two player game and I ensured that they could not make enough money to be a threat to me. When the game ended, they both tied for second place.

I hope this experience did not sour Ed and Susan to put Imperial on their trade list.

Viva Pamplona

We finished off the night with a quick game of Viva Pamplona. It is a light and thematic game. And I was lucky enough to be able to roll dice that could ensure that I bully a lot of people around for victory points. The bull was just not cooperating for the other way to get victory points. He quickly ran off at the end leaving everyone but Susan out of the stadium. My hoards of bravery points easily gave me the win.