Mini Monday

Dennis and I started with the one-game playoff for the NL pennant. Cards (with Chris Carpenter) vs the Mets (John Maine). As you would expect, not many hits in this one. Tied (1-1) going into the seventh, when the wheels came off for the Cards. After Valentin whiffed, Shawn Green got on base, so I pinch hit for Maine (with Cliff Floyd) who singled. Jose Reyes singled and drove in Green. This fatigued Carpenter, but even so he was better than relieving him (especially as he batted first at the top of the 8th. Needless to say the "Strikeout (if not fatigued)" result hit, scoring another run. The Mets advance to the World Series on a 4-1 victory.

Sean had shown up, so then we played Phoenicia, Acquire, and a new game called "Fast Figure." In that one the answers are all numbers (0-100). When you answer you drop your card between the numbers already used in previous answers. So a round may start with 0 and 34. The question is "Name the number of amendments in the bill of rights." So you throw your card in ten and first scores a point. Now the #s are 0, 10 and 32, and the next question is worth two points. A reasonable game, although we should definitely play with an extra starting card (or two) at the begining of each round.

After that Sean and I played a learning game of Blood Bowl, with Dennis offering advice. I took the Norse vs Sean's Orcs. The first half saw the Orcs score, and then Norse failed a 5/6 shot to score on the final turn of the half. The second half was much more chaotic, with more missed rolls (which end your turn, usually). Despite some horrific rolls, I managed to get a touchdown, but had to score faster than I'd hoped, leaving enough time on the clock for the Orcs. Sean got the ball and built a cage around his runner, I managed to stun two of his three black orks (strong brutes who dish out the US Recommended Daily Allowance of Pain) so with them down he couldn't cover everywhere. His cage had a weak spot and I had an advantageous blitz, only to fail with snake eyes (double-skull) and no rerolls! However, on the next turn Sean had to blitz with the ball-carrier to excape and returned the favor (snake-eyes, no rerolls left). So the ball bounced around to a dead spot, at which point there wasn't enough time for either of us to score, so we just inflicted a few flagrant fouls and called it a night. Sean ended up inflicting 3 serious injuries, to my 1. He was a bit unlucky to not inflict more (the Norse have poor armor), but on the other hand he only had a few blocking turnovers (two die blocks without the blocking skill should fail 1/9th of the time)