No pun session report

I arrived at Casa de Amy & Jeff and chatted with the hosts and Ben as others arrived. We had six, no ... seven. Luckily, we started 6 Nimmt! which could handle stragglers. By the time rules were explained, we had ten. Chad generously started collecting early; but none could withstand Ben The Cattle King, so after two hands it was all over. We then broke into two games.

I taught Die Macher. Numero Uno. The Big Fix. Players try to take control of the the German Federal Elections by managing seven regional elections. It's like being George Stephanopolous, only with a longer name.

Die Macher isn't complicated as such, but there are lots of moving parts. You've got money, trends, media, workers, contributions, shadow cabinets, party platforms, opinion polls. donations, the 'party base' and regions. Dennis had played before, but everyone else was learning as they went. I had a nice match with the first region, Bayern, also the largest single region in play. My early momentum got me nice contributions, which lead to a snowball effect. I also got several 'deals with the devil' Coalition partner offers to join in with a weaker player. A bit of luck, and having played the game before. Die Macher is now in it's third edition (although I don't think anything changed between 2nd and 3rd). Apart from language.

After that we settled in for some cuthroat chocolate making with Shoko & Co. It's an auction/management game. Players hire their employees, then jet off to the glamorous Cocoa auctions (in New York, Paris, London, etc). Then we make the bars and have a reverse dutch auction. The auctioneer names a price ("I'll buy 50 Tons of Chocolate for $30,000") and keeps raising the price until someone bites. Shoko remains the only game I can think of where you also employee salesmen, accountants, and secretaries administrative assistants. (The event cards also have lazy workers, chocolate melting heat waves, and even some sexual harassment). Again I taught several new players, and again I caught a break or two and never looked back. I have to apologize to Chad, I looked at Walt Mulder's translation later and there shouldn't be any event card on the first turn. [Chad lost some chocolate due to a random event ...] One other minor rule I got wrong ... in setting the Cocoa demand, each player can only say as many as they can hold in storage, not sixteen. In thinking about it, I mentioned I didn't like playing with the Express cards (mainly "Take that") but perhaps you do need to stop a runaway leader.

By this time things were breaking up, I pulled out Air Baron. Jeff, Amy and I just played the basic game, but now that I've got a few converts I'm sure we'll be playing again Michael. I'd write up the game, but we'll all be seeing plenty of Air Baron. Oh yes.

And other games were played, too. I know of Ra, Samurai, Power Grid, and the Director's Cut of Crokinole (now with 60 extra minutes of footage!)