We had a large turnout for gaming this morning. Ben, Jon, Chris, Michael, and Steve joined Amy and I. We got things rolling with a game of 6 Nimmt! During the first hand, Amy's friends Lisa and Tiffany showed up, so we called the 6 Nimmt! game early. I don't recall who was winning at that point, but it certainly wasn't me.
Ben and Steve went down to the Kitchen for Epic BattleLore while Amy, Lisa and Tiffany set up Cartagena on the coffee table. That left Jon, Chris, Michael and myself to play Goa on the main gaming table. The Goa game was fairly standard: Expedition cards are remarkable potent, Michael complained about poor draws (and they were, in fact, poor). I took my first action on autopilot and did the first thing I always do in 2-player Goa which completely hosed my 4-player strategy, and caused me to spend the next two turns trying to repair the damage (yeah, I lost this one). Jon squeaked out a one point win.
Meanwhile on the coffee table, the ladies finished their game of Cartagena, and also finished a game of Tikal. Tikal was a big hit with both Lisa and Tiffany. Lisa had to leave afterwards.
The Epic BattleLore session ended with Ben on the losing end. He proclaimed the scenario to be unbalanced. I'll leave it up to Steve and him to add any details they feel are relevant and to debate the scenario's balance in the comments.
After lunch we split for Arkham Horror (Ben Steve Chris) and Vegas Showdown (Jon Michael Jeff Amy Tiffany). The forces of darkness, or evil, or chaos, or tax collectors, or something ate our valiant heroes while the rest of us were building profitable casinos. Michael spent the first seven turns or so buying Slots. Just Slots. I braced myself for his degenerate strategy to suddenly explode in a shower of points, but it never did. He won a close, down-to-the-wire game. He admitted afterwards that he'd never seen the "All Slots, All the time" strategy win before (so why was he trying it?) but now I guess it has some validity. Despite the lack of hedgehogs, heads were stood upon.
We got in a game of Frank's Zoo while waiting for the Arkham Horror game to finish. Tiffany called it a day at this point but we sent her away with a ton of websites for gaming reference and purchase. Steve also had to depart.
Ben and Chris played some two player stuff in the kitchen while the remaining four of us (Michael Jon Jeff Amy) dove into
Barbu, the Epic Trick Taking Game. In Barbu, you play 32 hands, with each player dealing 8 times. When you're the dealer, you have to choose which of the eight rulesets you'll be using for that hand (they're all simple - stuff like: standard trick-taking with each trick being worth 5 points OR standard trick-taking with each trick being worth negative 2 points OR standard trick-taking where the King of Hearts is worth negative 15 points and everything else is zero). Each dealer must choose each ruleset exactly once. It took us just over three hours, but the time flew by.
Most everyone called it quits at that point, but Michael and I split a pair of games of Jambo.
Labels: Proselytizing, session report, standing on my head
