Monday report about games and our new overlords

Roll call -- Me, Scott, Sean, Pat and Jeff.

Scott and I started with San Juan and Race. By the time those were done Sean and Pat had arrived so we tried Ausgubremst, which is like slightly advanced Ave Caesar. I think I want to play with a slightly less fiddly version, but I'm not sure how to do it. Differences:

• It has 8 tracks instead of Ave Caesers 2 (16 if you go clockwise /anti)
• You can customize your deck (which we didn't do), choosing a "slow", "Medium" or "fast" deck (I think they have the same pips but I haven't looked). The slow deck has fewer sixes, so less likely to get stuck.
  
• You remove cards from your deck for the shorter tracks
• Pitting is optional, but adds back enough cards to pretty much ensure you'll make it.
• You split your deck into four parts (of your choice) and can pick from either deck, but you only have a two card hand.

All of these sound pretty good in theory, but add a fair amount of time. And I don't think the deck is quite lean enough (compared to the tracks). Also, four decks (with only six units) is clearly too many. I think just playing with a single deck (and three cards), but being a bit more brutal (making sure that the deck has enough points to finish if you don't get bumped outside too often) would work. And maybe we just played a care-bear track. Like I said, I'll have to look. But maybe tweaking some of these rules for Ave Caesar.

Anyway, the robots crushed us pretty well. They go first (not last) and one of them kept it almost until the end, when Pat raced by for the win. At this point Jeff had shown up, so we broke out Puerto Rico. Technically that makes it a theme night (with SJ and Race). So there.

After that, Scott bailed, so we settled in for a game of Phoenicia. Despite Sean's dada-esque luck (receiving roughly 1 '6' a turn and no fours until later in the game) I managed to pull out a win by getting an early City Center and public works. Sean's grotesque production (6 cards on the penultimate turn, I think, and seven on the next) couldn't overcome the 7 VP lead ...

After that the group broke up, Sean and I played Race and discussed implementing a genetic algorithm for a computer game. (Thanks for the tip).