Games So Nice, We Played Them Twice -- 7/17 Session Report
I arrived at the apparently late time of 6:20pm to find one group wrapping up Indonesia, and another playing 10 Days in Africa (after having already finished Transamerica). Those 10 Days games look like fantastic game show prep material. While the games finished, I scooped up the lone copy of Storm of Swords (the Game of Thrones expansion), which includes an all-new better-balanced game for four and must-have event decks for the original game. I'll have it prepared for Friday gaming for sure.
Both games finished at the same time, leaving ten of us to divide up. Ben and Ted went off to play Wilderness War and were never seen again. Brian and Mark broke out War of the Ring, leaving six of us for...well, what else do you play with six?
Cash and Guns
Two rounds were played, using both special abilities and the cop variant. The first game was my first time as the cop, and I managed to get two calls in on the first two rounds while still keeping Simon and Chad as suspects. A lot of gun-pointing and grenade-brandishing later, I was forced to reveal myself in round 6 to get the third call in. With two wounds already, things looked grim. But after fleeing in round 7, I was lucky enough to have everyone turn on each other in round 8 and snuck out with the win.
In the second game the cop was quickly narrowed down to either Chad (the real cop)or myself. Deaf to the unerring accuracy of Werewolf Logic, the rest of the table gunned for us both to avoid any chance of failure. Chad went down in a hail of bullets, and I again slunk away with two wounds, though nearly flat broke this time. Jon nipped Michael $95k to $90k for the win -- had I died, Michael's special power (+$10k per death) would have given him the game.
I'm the Boss!
Two more rounds of this one. In the first game deals were opened on nearly every turn, and people quickly ran out of cards to interfere with them. Thanks to an entire hand of Stop cards and nearly soloing the final deal, Chad pulled ahead of me $33 mil to $30 mil for the win.
In the second game there was a lot more drawing and saving for the bigger deals...but once the cards started to fly, it was hard to resist. At one point an entire sortie of jets (four Trip cards) were simultaneously flung at Chad, who Stopped them all like a Jedi master, only to then lose the deal to an I'm the Boss. Amidst the carnage Jeff pulled down two nearly-solo deals of $12 and $15 million for the easy win, $10 million ahead of second.
You Must Be an Idiot!
The War of the Ring folks rejoined us for this party game, which featured much harder questions than our previous play. I had a horrible run of Idiot cards on hard questions that I knew (seasons Star Trek was on the air, author of "Sleepy Hollow") and normal cards on questions I didn't know (Moops, the only US state with a diamond mine). Brian got big genius bonuses for being the only correct answerer early on, and ran away with the game with accurate Idiot pronoucements.
Classic moment: everybody missed the question, "What trivia answer did George Costanza argue about with the Bubble Boy?" After Simon read the correct answer of "Moops", Michael yelled, "Of course it Moops, haven't any of you......GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!", and ran into the bathroom. Had this been a bluff, it would've gone down in history, but alas, he was in fact an Idiot.
I think with that many players, the award for being an unaccused Idiot should also increase -- getting past *seven* potential accusers should be worth more than four or five. Also, it looks like I was right about a card error. Check Wikipedia for "American Top 40"; Casey Kasem was replaced by Shadoe Stevens, not Ryan Seacrest. My pride in catching an error is tempered by my embarrassment in knowing who hosts "American Top 40".
6 Nimmt
Mark and Chad left, to be replaced by newcomers Jordan and Steven. (Or is it Stephen? My brother's name is spelled that way, and my mom gets bent out of shape if you use the "v".) 6 Nimmt with eight people turns out to be complete madness, as a row will often get scooped, refill, and get scooped again. At one point I played a 10 to cover a 1, only to see the 2, 3, 4, and 5 come out ahead of me. And befitting such chaos, first through fifth were separated by only 7 points at the finish (roughly one sweep of a typical row).
See you all for Game of Thrones goodness on Friday.
posted by Dennis Ugolini @ 10:54 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Another leaves our ranks... good luck Kendahl.
Great session report. Although I prefer more traditional strategy euros than "party euros" (losely used terms), these sound pretty fun.
See you all on Friday.
Just to expand -- Ben, Michael, Jon and I played Indonesia early. It took ~2 hours (we've all played before) and Ben crushed us. He scored more in the final round than anyone else ended up with. Controlling all the shipping and the gigantic rubber company probably helped.
Mark and I played a game of War of the Ring. An impressive run of luck (like the turn when Mark rolled no eyes on seven dice to let the fellowship jaunt merrily through Middle Earth ... and two blue fellowship tiles appearing vs no shadow tiles) let me dunk the ring while the shadow had only gotten Minas Trith, Rivendell, Lorien (and Osgiliath).
I'm still hoping to play with the expansion.
And DL really needs to get better air conditioning. I was sweating after WotR.
You were sweating, too? I thought it was just I'm the Boss! doing that to me...
I was sweating over the moops blunder.
Ben and I played a learning game of Wilderness War, a wargame based on the French and Indian War during pre-Revolutionary War north america.
Like almost all wargames, there was a significant learning curve, and the first game took us longer than subsequent games will (I hope).
I was the French, and Ben took the English. The British have more trained troops (powerful but ineffective in wilderness), while the French have more Indian and trapper units (mobile and canny but not so powerful). Leaders play an important role since they are the only way to gather and move large chunks of units at a time.
Neither of us really knew what we were doing, and we played a few rules wrong, but I think we managed to figure out the mechanics. I had mostly poor rolls, but I still managed to do OK where it counts: victory points. Now that we have the mechanics figured out, I hope to play several more times this summer so we can focus on the strategy in the game.
We called the game about the 1/2 way pt because it was getting late and we both had to go home.
Kendahl: sorry to hear that you are moving, but I'm sure the job offers more opportunities. I hope we're able to see more of you in the next few weeks before you take off.
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