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…