Mehr! und Mue!
Last night Jonathon, Jeff, Jacqui, Je and the J-Less Micheal got together for a session. We capped it off with the old Doris & Frank trick taking card game Mue. (There are quite a few other games in the box, hence the name "Mue and More"). Sadly, I didn't have the english rules, but I remembered 99% of them. The basic idea is that you bid for tricks by laying your cards face up in front of you. The more of your hand you expose, the higher your bid. The high bidder picks a partner from the other players. Except, the second highest player can't be picked, and gets to name an "under trump." So, unlike a normal game, two suits are trump. (There are five suits). Players can also pick numbers as trump, which leads to two numbers being trump (or a number and a suit, with that suit re-arranged so that the trump number is highest). It was a nice closer, and I prefer it with five.
I stormed off to an early lead, which isn't surprising since I've played it before. After brief lull in the action (including where I sacrificed points to end a hand without scoring), I held on for the win.
Prior to Mue, we romped through another game of Stage II. The game seems to have relented a bit, as we probably only missed three or so themes altogether. Jeff crushed us, although I insist he was helped along by my guessing a theme correctly several cards before it came up.
The evening opened up with a screening of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. ("Still better than Barney"). Meanwhile the table had Union Pacific. We expanded trains, claimed stock and played it for control of companies. (Michael didn't do that last part, which made him a mortal cinch for last). I'm not exactly sure what the 'quintessential' Alan Moon game is, but UP has a strong claim for the title. Turns have a simple choice, you draft cards from a number of face up cards (or face down), and there are several scoring cards shuffled into the deck. His trademarks, as it were.
Jon won this game by controlling the Union Pacific, a close fought affair with 1st through 4th ranging from around 125 to 109. That was just the excuse I needed to bring out a trivia game published before he was born.
Undoubtedly there will be more Friday evening games as we head into the highly anticipated 7 Ages weekend! Stay tuned!
[And the 1% of Mu I got wrong? The high-bidder (Chief) leads to the opening trick.]
posted by Brian @ 9:16 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Just FYI, I think I'm going to start deleting the original announcement (assuming the comments have nothing more than "I'm attending." for Friday night. That way our archives will be more useful for those wandering by (and us). We may want to consider that as a guideline for other game nights....
Great report. Sounds like a really fun game session. Fridays are kinda tough for Meredith and I, but one of these days I hope to make it out to your place.
Regarding deleting invitations, I'd actually rather not. I prefer to have a record of everything we did and tried to do, even if it was a bust.
I have no idea what we could ever do with our logs, but it takes little space to save an empty invitation post, and it has a nonzero (if small) historical significance. When I was in an undergrad fraternity, I was fascinated to read the minutes of meetings from the 1960s. Any detail, any scrap was precious to me. It's tempting to delete "irrelevant" posts, and increase our SNR. Thing is, our vantage in the present moment isn't the best to judge what is or isn't irrelevant.
Just my $0.02 worth. Please follow your own North Star. I won't complain either way in the future.
Hmmm... I see Brian's point, and that's why I set up the group Google calendar, which has commenting capability for each event. I haven't seen any negative feedback about the calendar, but not everyone seems to be using it.
I do enjoy the session reports, though, and I hope these continue to be posted. I don't mind a brief announcement post, but if everyone used the Google calendar they probably wouldn't be necessary.
I'm sorry I missed the session on Friday. Like Ted, Fridays are tough for me. I can commit to one solid night of gaming per week, and right now it's Monday nights (though Mondays are going to be toast for me starting in a few weeks).
I've heard good things about Union Pacific. We seem to be on a railroad game kick. Brian, if you ever want to bust out some 18XX, I'm game. 1830 will always be in my hall of fame.
Hey, I love session reports. Keep them coming.
Personally, I prefer to see the announcements on the main page. But the calendar does give you "the bigger picture".
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