"Stay Right There."

I arrived around 6pm to find Steve and Brian playing Roma. I can never tell what's happening in this crazy game, but I think Steve won by repeatedly making Brian pick up half the cards on the table. After an egregious Rule #1 violation, Steve left, to be replaced be Sean.

The three of us tried the winnable version of Pandemic, a cooperative game of saving the world from germy teenagers infecting each other. At least that's what it was in my head. I liked the mechanism of periodically reshuffling infected city cards and placing them at the top of the deck, so that the same cities get repeatedly hit, and some planning ahead is possible. But the cooperative part had the same problems as Shadows over Camelot (no personal goals, too much incentive to share all information), and the decisions didn't feel difficult. We lost one turn shy of victory when the Blue Death erupted in Toronto -- God's punishment for being Canadian.

Jon arrived, and as we reached for Race for the Galaxy, one of the guy's behind the counter said, "Someone just called and asked if the San Antonio Boardgamers were here, and then said that he'd be right over." Hmmmm. Do I owe someone money? We played three games of Race while waiting for the unknown embittered crazy guy to come blow us all away. I had two respectable showings with New Sparta (32 and 40, both only good enough for second), followed by a catastrophic failure with Alpha Centauri when I drew only one nonmilitary world in the first six turns.

The embittered crazy guy turned out to be Larry, an Army Reservist newly arrived in San Antonio from living in/being stationed at/smuggling artifacts from Mali. He dove headfirst into Vegas Showdown and put up a good score, a tie for third with my Slots-O-Fun budget casino. I need to stop concentrating so hard on filling my casino (I came one square away from filling the entire board) and worry more about the finer things. Brian and Jon ran nearly 20 points ahead of us, but I can't remember who won, because I was busy coughing up a lung.

Jon left, and we finished with Phoenicia. In my previous two playings, I went all out for clothmaking based on Michael's recommendations, and got crushed both times. This time I decided to concentrate on dependencies -- I'd either scoop the city centers or the shipyards, and follow the discounts all the way to the end. After an early Prospector/Smelter boosted my income, the City Centers presented themselves, and I was off and running, eventually winning by 6. I'm still not sure I like the game, since my later actions felt entirely determined by my early ones, but if the game played as quickly as Race for the Galaxy, I think I might like it more. I also began to suspect that Michael gave me bad advice, so to punish him I took Ryan Perrilloux to a casino.

Good to meet you, Larry, and I look forward to being healthy for Saturday.