Happy Birthday, SABG!

Once upon a time, a lonely geek posted a thread looking for friends in San Antonio. It was just before Easter in 2005.

First, he met Rob (v1). Rob said "We should get more people and we should play on more nights than just Monday." The lonely geek said "Nah." [2 pts for Rob, 0 for lonely geek]

Rob decided the lonely geek was crazy, and Rob kept looking.

Soon, Rob introduced the lonely geek to Kendahl, and now they were three.

At this point, the lonely geek's memory gets fuzzy. Soon thereafter appeared both Patrick, a game designer, and Brian, a famous game player/reviewer.

Soon, Ben showed up, and he brought this blog along with him.

Soon, the lonely geek couldn't keep track of all the new game players in the SABG.

Shortly, Patrick and Kendahl moved away, and the lonely geek was sad to lose gaming buddies.

Eventually, the lonely geek had a baby (well, his wife had the baby...), and that distracted him from games and SABG.

Then Rob (v1) moved away, and the lonely geek had lost his first gaming buddy.

Eventually, the lonely geek started to figure out the whole parenthood thing, and he started playing more games again.

The lonely geek had lots of game buddies, all over the country.

And he was happy.

"Race" indeed...

It turns out that 6ish means 6:30, unfortunately for Dennis who thought it was much closer to 6:00. Everyone else apparently was well versed in this convention, and showed up much closer to the designated time. I was the first of those who arrived at the correct time, so Dennis and I attempted Shear Panic again, this time as a two player game. It definitely works much better with two rather than three players, but this game sadly does not live up to it's incredible production values. And I'm not just saying that because I lost. I'm not seeing too much "plan ahead" ability on this, so it's really more a matter of timing when the scoring hits than positioning for said scoring. It's too bad - I WANT to like this game.

Chris and Brian showed up mid-game, and so they played a quick game of To Court The King, which I think they consider superior to my "it was only a buck" Knights... I must admit I've forgotten much of how to play that one, so I'll leave comments to them.

We followed that up with Race For The Galaxy. Race is a bit of a misnomer, as my galaxy resembled the black hole sucking and spewing radiation in the photo... No, it's not that bad. I love this game, and I'm getting better and better at it, which means I don't make the same mistakes I did ten games ago. That doesn't always mean my scores improve, but it's something. My one complaint is that the card draws can be infuriating... the card you need, the card that has to be there SOMEWHERE in the deck, has a nasty habit of coming into your hand the turn AFTER you've abandoned your losing strategy and gone for a thumb-in-the-dike move instead... I guess that's what they like to call "interesting decisions". Dennis and Brian kept trading wins, and I don't remember who won that last one, but after a few more "just one more game"s we finished up the night at post 11pm with seven? games of Galaxy under our belts...