We started off the night with a filler game while we waited for everyone to arrive. It was not much competition. Doug and I were fighting for first and the others were fighting for any points.
We still didn’t have everyone yet. So we brought out another “E” filler. This one was tense towards the end. Everyone had two of the goals in front of them and were fighting over the final one.
Since we have already played two E games, we decided on another E-named game. This is one we have never played before. So Ed was already in a bad mood. He doesn’t like learning games on the fly. Fortunately, this one turned out to be easy to learn and play. It is essentially a bluffing game. You want to mine for victory points. And you have to decide if the markers on your spot contain a broken shovel on them. If they do, then you loose your equipment and get no points. Otherwise, you can either get the points on the space with a shovel or twice that many with a pick ax (which costs three dollars to buy versus the one for the shovel). I was able to guess correctly most of the time for the win. Amusingly, at one point in the game, Mike was out of money. So he was unable to bluff in where he put his bad marker. Since I went after him in turn order, I was able to dig where he dug on the spot which only contained his marker (which he knew was good).
To finish out the night’s E-theme, we picked out another E-named game by the same designer: the classic Elfenland. This appeals to the computer programmers because it involves the traveling salesman problem. You want to visit every spot on the board without duplicating stops. Susan was fond of Unicorns that night.