And there it is. I finished in second place a mere 40 pts behind the winner. My gut tells me that the other two players were not very experienced due to their actions (or inaction in this case) that allowed black to run away as far as they did. I'm as much to blame as well. I failed to notice the crazy advantageous setup black had on the left edge of the board until it was too late. By then, the others had already given up on stopping black and we simply raced to second. Black scored an obscene 50 pts in the last round, a good twenty-ish more than any of us...
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.
After a bit of confusion on what we were going to do tonight, I headed out to the Game Shoppe in Bellevue. My only real plan was to meet up with Steve Wicklund to try and get in some Power Grid. As luck would have it, when I arrived, Mike Garrett was at the store when I arrived, so things looked good. Bob Huntsman and his lady friend Isabelle were there waiting for their group, so we all sat down to play No Thanks! while we waited for folks to show up. My copy was new and Mike didn't do a great job of shuffling the cards, so there was a lot of grouped cards that first game. Bob and Isabelle weren't impressed, so Scott and Sam joined us for a second game. Mike easily won both games. 
I sort of pushed him into the deep end, but he seemed to grasp everything really quickly. We played the American map, with the most eastern (cheaper) areas. What made this game really strange was that nuclear power came out early and often and Steve and Scott were fighting over it. There was at least one turn that Steve wasn't able to power his 5-city nuclear plant because he had no fuel. I stayed away from that, but ended up with a couple expensive oil plants. Coal and garbage were not seen much, nor used much. In fact, we had a lot of expensive plants early (a bad sign that the mid game would stall with bad plants) and sure enough, things stagnated right after we jumped to step 2. At this point, I could power 12 cities, so I kept plowing ahead in my purchases of cities. I grabbed a garbage plant to power 3 cities and when the others stalled, I simply built to 17 and ended the game powering 3 cities in more than the others. Scott and Steve were new and the weird plant battle the had going on hurt them a lot, but I give a lot of credit to the AZBoardgamers for my success - playing with that ruthless efficient bunch really honed my PG skills and it showed - I was able to pour it on when they slowed down. For the record, I started with the #06 (garbage) plant, not the #04 plant. The Noah garbage strategy wins again!
After we finished up, we had time for another game, so I pulled out Mykerinos - a neat little area control game that I'm terrible at. This game was no exception. I only got a couple guys into the museum and I failed to notice that all of the red patron cards were gone before the final round, eliminating my chance to get the full set of patrons. I scored a load of boards the final round, but it was too little too late. I easily ended up in a last with Steve pulling out the win. This game is fun, but there is a lot going on to try and think about, and I'd need to play it a lot more to really get a better handle on it. 
Ok, so here we are at the start of round 5. Roughly half way through the game. No volcano this turn, which means a lot of positioning, because its likely we'll see one next round. Scores are pretty well tied up. Jendi made an expensive move to cap the temple, but that should pay off. This round has a level 5 temple out. I'm in a good position where it may pay to bid 3-4 to grab that tile, move a guy on it, raise it to a 6 and cap it. That would help me to mitigate the guaranteed 21 pts that Jendi is going to see from his the rest of the game. 4 pts might hurt, because it would leave me short to bid on the volcano the next round. We'll have to see how the bidding goes. This is a game where it pays to have a really strong bidder in front of you. When scoring comes around, someone that will take the volcano will give you scoring second, which is often just as good and doesn't cost you anything. I really hate bidding just so that the slob after me doesn't win the volcano. There are only 3 artifacts to grab this round, so I'd be hard pressed to see them, plus I'm not really in a position for them to help me. If I get really lucky, someone will pull the matching mask to mine, so I can get a 3-piece set.
Ok, so here we are at the end of round 2. The first person to win a tile was Jendi, who did not place the volcano. Since Jendi won for 1 pt, I immediately bid 1 the next round and won it - and I took the volcano. And like I indicated in my last posting, it made no real difference. Here I sit exactly 1 pt in the lead. Whoooopee-do.
Here's a shot after round one. Pretty standard stuff. Jendi was the only player to bid at all in round one and took the masks. Big lot of good it did them - all it really did was start them a point behind. So now, after round one, nobody is really "ahead". Pretty standard stuff. Interestingly, we start round two with a volcano. Jendi bids first. What would you do? Jendi bid one. I think it makes not an ounce of difference when only 5 tiles are on the board if you get to play that volcano first or not. But, if you really really have to go first, don't you think the correct bid is 2? This early in the game, 2 makes everyone else who might really really want the bid sweat a lot, because they'd have to say 3. Is first position (or even not last) really worth 3 for the 5th tile in the game? I don't think so - I don't even think its worth 2, so I passed. The reason the auction variant make Tikal better is that it adds another delicious set of choices to consider and another level of confrontation, while eliminating the randomness that can cost you the game through no fault of your own. However, if you are going to play in the auction, don't give the winning bid to another player - bid the correct amount.
So I'm in this Samurai tourney on MaBiWeb. This post is because I'm bored and these guys don't play super fast, so it might be another 8 hours before I find out if my master plan works or not.
My analysis of the situation is this: Blue cannot win. He doesn't have the pieces to get that last Buddha, unless yellow swaps and "gives" it to him somehow. Since she has a lock on it now, Yellow isn't likely to give it away. Blue has no wild and no rice influence tokens, so shouldn't be able to take my majority away either. So, as far as I can tell, I should be able to win this game. However, there is one small chance I don't win. If Yellow has the swap and were to move rice such that blue could win it, I'm pretty sure Green would win by grabbing a hat majority :( - let's hope she doesn't play kingmaker.
I also had the holes to patch - which of course inspired me to just use dry wall spackle. After mostly leveling everything off and painting the result came out pretty decently. So, what do I think about this project? Well, its pretty simple to put together both time and effort wise. Does it work? It works great - for about 5 dice. I think I'm going to go back and redo the templates at about 50% larger size. The other thing I'm considering is eliminating the dice catcher. I have a tray from a Yahtzee Deluxe game (which I bought from a thrift store solely for the dice tray). I may try and figure out a good way to have the tower sit on the lip of the tray - this should allow for more dice in addition to the the bigger size. I'd also at the very least like to find a way to make the "mouth" look better. I like the way this one looks, but I'm not keen on the idea of trying that in foamboard. The other thing I'm considering is trying this out using boards like you can get at craft stores - 3/8 (3/16?) thick boards that are easy to cut with hand tools or small power tools. If my template works out well in foam, I may progress to wood next...
They arrived very quickly, so I set about to finish before something else could go wrong. There was only one small problem - two of the three sheets they sent were not cut. I didn't care, and a ruler and Exacto knife later, I was sticker-ing away. I had originally intended to put the armies into separate Plano boxes like the ones a number of guys have on the BGG. My friend Jason Maxwell did this with his set and it makes setup very fast. However, in between the time I got the game and I finished, I got my Plano bag for BattleLore. Since BattleLore only took up two of the 4 boxes inside, I decided to see if I could get C&C:Ancients into one box. I had to hack up some dividers and tape them in place in some of the lower areas to divide them up enough, but I was able to get all the armies in! Now I can take the bag and play either game.
Or: To Court the King. Tonight I talked my wife into a quick game of To Court the King. 
This was the first time either of us had tried this, but I had traded for this because my wife likes Yahtzee. I've read the basics of the game, and really, the game comes down to this - roll the dice and try to get a pattern that matches the cards available (one card might be the total of the dice is at least 15, the next might be a three of a kind, the next might be two pair). After you get cards, you can use them in the future rounds to influence the dice. Each card has a special action that can be used once a round (one action lets you add more dice, one lets you modify a dice, etc). When someone gets a seven of a kind, they can call for a final round, and everyone tries to roll their "best". At any rate, its interesting with a neat twist. I can see where it gets compared to Yahtzee, though its not really like that game at all (other than there are dice and rounds of rolling). Its a bit luck based, but the luck is really mitigated by your cards, which let you "fix" bad rolls. It also plays faster than I thought it would. A nice quick two player game, To Court The King also plays up to five. Stephanie and I played pretty randomly, and in the end I won with 7-5s.
I got there about 6:00 and had planned to play a quick introduction game of Twilight Struggle with Justin Easley so that he could get a feel for the game. We played through the first couple turns while we waited for the rest of the gang to show up. I had a crazy first turn as the US, gaining 6 VP. My hand only had a single USSR event, which Justin forced me to discard right away. I tried to point out a few things I thought were relevant to how the game usually plays, but mostly was just hoping to give him a feel for the flow of the game.
I had brought Antike in case 6 showed up, and everyone agreed to try it out (Antike is not new to me, but was to everyone else). I explained the rules (which are not terribly complicated, except possibly for the conquering a city part) and we got going. I picked the "German" side (i.e. the side with contiguous water) and we all drew our starting positions. Playing were: Steve Wicklund, Adam Wisniewski, Justin Easly, Mike Garrett, Bob Huntsman, and myself. This game started as a rush for units to feed city expansion. Interestingly, nobody took any advances for a long time. I pushed to an early lead through cities(10), sea zones(7), and an advance. Everyone (as is typical) kept pace, except for Steve, who look like he was going to do really well getting to 10 cities very quickly and having a lot of territory. Steve somehow got stuck after his initial push and never recovered. Bob started building temples and scoring a huge amount in resources - his temples were fueling marble and he started a building spree, only spending money to double up his city defenses. Adam looked like he was going to be hurt the worst, as he had grabbed 6 zones, and then ended up stuck in his corner of the map. However, he had gold, and started spending it buying up all the advancements and took the lead near the end of the game. Being on the opposite corner of the map, I could do nothing to stop him from building more temples to score the last point he needed for a win. I've played this game a number of times now, and its been different each time. A lot of people on the BGG feel like this game becomes a stalemate as people build up huge armies and won't risk fights. In our game, there wasn't much combat, because we really hadn't gotten to the point that anyone was ready to start going after temple kills - we were still busy picking other low hanging fruit when Adam won with what was pretty much an advancement victory strategy (albeit a strategy he had been forced into). I'm thinking about upping my rating on this one again - like Age of Empires III (see how I work in a reference to the game despite not playing it) there are multiple ways to win and you cannot focus on only one nor can you go after too many.
After the heavier game, we elected to play the lighter Hoity Toity. I have not ever played this (despite owning a copy as well as a copy of Adel) and was interested to try it. Mike likes this (which is a bit of a surprise given his take on most Euro-fare) and agreed to explain it to the rest of us. The game has often been described as a bit of a rock-paper-scissors game, which is as good a description as any. You have a hand of artwork which you have to "exhibit" at a castle to score points. Of course, when you get to the castle, you have the option of trying to show (score points), play a thief (steal cards from someone doing an exhibit), or playing a detective (to catch a thief). The detective scores points if he catches a thief, but gets nothing otherwise. A thief that is caught still gets the goods, but is taken from the player an put in jail, limiting the player's choices later. Most of the game is about guessing what another player might do. I started the game doing nothing for about three turns. Bob's first show caused him to lose two cards - hosing him for the rest of the game. The rest of the guys raced around the track, with Justin being the eventual winner (easily I might add). I suck at these games, but this one is light and not terribly long. It still won't be one I up and suggest, though I'm ok playing it.
