Game Night

Friday Oct. 19, 2007
My wife and her friend took our oldest children out for the evening, leaving me to watch our youngest. After seeing them into bed with a story, I sat down with Mike Garrett and Justin Easley for a bit of gaming. We were deciding between Age of Steam vs a couple of other games, and decided to skip Age of Steam with only three players (Mike didn't seem to care for it with three). We started the night with High Society, a Knizia filler that for some reason I had never tried before. Mike explained it and off we went. In the end, Justin ended up having spent too much cash, and my -5 put me too far behind Mike, despite his having the IRS audit (1/2). Next, I introduced the two of them to San Marco. This is a great game that doesn't come out much since it really shines with only three players. Its a pretty straight forward area control game, where the actions for each turn are determined by a hand of cards. The trick is that the cards are divided by one player, and the other players get to pick which of the cards they want to use first. It makes for some delicious decision making. Finally, we ended the night with a game I've been wanting to play again since I was first introduced to it - Vinci. My buddy Matthew Frederick once said this is a great game while you are playing it, but the ending sucks. He was quite accurate about this, so I wanted tot try out the variable ending rules (roll a die to randomly determine the end of the game). Of course, as soon as Mike hit 120 pts, we start rolling and ended the game. At that point, I could only get within three points of Mike, whose civ had just started its downward spiral. Another turn and Mike might have been out of the game. C'est la vie.