Game Night Sept 29, 2006

Friday Sept. 29, 2006
This Friday, we gamed at my place. Jason and Hope Maxwell, Matt Cullinan, Matthew Frederick, Steve Bauer, Dion Gardner and Rob and Tammy Smolka attended. Jason and Hope were the first to arrive, so I pulled out Tumblin Dice, which I knew Jason was interested in trying. Steven arrived shortly after and we all played. Tumblin Dice is something of a dexterity game, in which players push dice shuffleboard-style off a ramp onto platforms. Each platform further down increases the amount the face value of the die is worth (x1,x2,x3,x4). Off course, any die not on the board (forced off or due to your ineptitude) is worth nothing. Though no expert, previous experience and a load of luck let me win. Dion had arrived, so I pulled out Pitchcar and the expansion (action set), which Dion wanted to try. Again, experience with playing helped me pull out a win. By then, Matt had joined us, so Jason pulled out GemBlo for us to play. I've played Blokus many a time, but not this game. While similar, its quite a bit different and take a little getting used to - its definitely not as intuitive as Blokus. I realized early on that there were two big pieces that I wasn't going to get in play and they were the only two I had left in the end. However, Matt had only twol small pieces left for the easy win.
Matthew and Rob and Tammy had arrived, so we ordered some food and broke into two groups. I joined Steve, Tammy, Matthew, and Dion for a first play of Matthew's new Age of Steam map - Ants of Steam. <EDITED> DETAILS SOME OTHER DAY. It only took about three turns to realize we were going to be screwed (no problem - it was a playtest). Matthew upped the deliveries to 3 per turn, which worked out well. Unfortunately, we had already been bidding too much as a few turns later Tammy went bankrupt and Dion hit zero. Steve and I had maxed our credit/shares and were only profitable the last turn of the game. We all seemed to like it and agreeded it probably only needed a few tweaks (that and a slightly different approach to playing than our group normally goes for).
Rob and Tammy left after that, so we all sat down for a game of Citadels. I was between Hope and Steve, Hope was willing to take the King, Steve was not, so I pretty much had bad choices a lot of the game. Not unexpectedly, I was pretty close to last. Even though it was fairly late, everyone felt like getting in a game of Tichu. I teamed with Hope and Matthew. Though the first few hands were good enough for us, the third hand did not look good. I wroted **SCREWED on the scorepad before we started and sure enough, the other team went 1-2-3 to pull ahead. They beats us down again the next hand to go over 500, so we called it a night.