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. 😉