Save yourself!

We had a reasonable turnout last night, albeit not the expected one. Scott beat me there, but we played a game of Jambo while waiting. After all the buying and selling was done, I won by about 10 gold nuggets.

Chris turned up straight from NYC, and so we whiled away the next few minutes with a game of Race. This time I ran away from it, instead of with it, and both Scott and Chris crushed me. Scott, moreso. By this point Sean and Dennis had arrived, so Scott and Dennis went to famous back-room field for beisbol, and I broke out Air Baron. Michael has mentioned before how his group takes 7-10 metric hours to play this, but we did the rules and game in about 60-90 minutes, as Don Greenwood intended. It's a simple game, with some skill but lots of luck. For example, Chris went into fare war, took over about as many spokes as he could pay for, then went out of fare war on his next turn, having lost no income. Later on I went into fare war, crapped out on my first roll, and then lost $60 (when DFW, DFW's foreign route, Charlotte, and one of the my chits) showed up.

That was, as they say, poor planning on my part. Chris' strategy worked better, so he won.

We still had time, and three players, so we tried Lost Valley again. I'm enjoying this more, now that we're speeding up. Winning didn't hurt.

At this point, Beisbol was called on account of darkness, so Dennis joined us for Rette Sich Werr Kan (aka Lifeboats). Many people were thrown to the sharks, shenanigans were invoked and, at the very end, everyone told Sean there was an island just over the horizon, and his two sailors should swim for it. He believed us, so he lost. Since Dennis and I were the early leaders, that meant that Chris won. That's how negotiation games work.

After that, it was lamarkian poker for a few hands. I kept winning, to the disbelief of all (including one hand where I won by having 8-8-8-4, when nobody else had better than a pair). Finally, on the last hand the others had tired of having their tails cut off repeatedly, and Dennis won.

You've got a day or two left for lists, and don't forget to bid on my stuff for sale (no link, because BGG is down).

The new and improved Monday

Why New and Improved, you ask? I point you to the planning thread for monday so you can listen to the excuses:

• Can't make it
  
• Work
  
• Sleep
  
• Rule #1
  

Despite all of you nattering nabobs, we had seven people show up!

Larry showed up and I taught him Jambo. This resulted in me quickly losing another game of Jambo. Sigh. By this point Ted, Rob (and his wife, whose name I undoubtedly heard) had arrived. But only Ted could stay. After considering the potential for Starcraft (or Through the Ages) we figured there just wasn't enough time. So we broke out Caylus Magna Carta. As we were setting up Travis arrived to make four. So off we went with four.

It took a bit longer than usual, being a first game for everyone but me (I think). Still, it didn't stall out. With 2 turns left, Larry had to bow out but was replaced by Jon. This was the highest scoring game of CMC I've seen, with plenty of cubes, money and gold for everyone. All the prestige buildings were built (and several more could have shown up, if they existed).

After that we broke out everyone's favorite Board2Pieces character, Ra! Despite it being Travis's first game, he was only one point behind the eventual winner. In this game, however, that was only good for 3rd, Jon taking the honors.

We ended the evening with the contractually required games of Race. No real surprises there.

So, if we can get 5+ people on a night where nobody can make it, all I can say is "We're back, baby!"