June 2, 2004 |
Ebbin made his first appearance tonight, and Jill came for the first time in quite a while, leaving Sam to watch May. Only Dan and Annie came early enough to play Traumfabrik, a copy of which I had finally finished by today.
| Traumfabrik |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 81 | 1 | * |
| Annie | 67 | 2 | * |
| Dan | 49 | 3 | * |
| Karla | 44 | 4 | * |
Notes: In Traumfabrik, each player owns a studio and tries to make copies of movies. Each movie requires a certain number of actors, cameras, effects, music, and a director, and may or may not have a guest star included. The actors, cameras, directors, etc. all have different values, as does each movie. Some movies have a base value of 4 (Gone with the Wind, King Kong), and some have a base value of two (Sea Hawk, Three Musketeers). There are six bidding phases per round, one where you bid on one of the 4-star directors (Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Michael Curtiz, or George Cukor), and then 5 randomly picked groups of 2 or 3.
Each studio bids on the chips with contracts. Each player starts with 12 of them and when someone wins the auction, the player pays the required contracts to the pot. The pot is then divided evenly among the other players, leaving the remainder in the middle for the next auction payout. Thus, every time someone wins an auction, he's essentially putting money in everyone else's pocket.
Finally, there are 2 "Party" spaces, where the person with the most actors in all his movies gets first pick from a selection of chips, followed by the person with the second most, etc. When you complete a movie, you get a point marker, and there are awards for the first movies made in each genre, best per round, and (at the end), a best overall, a best for each genre, best directed, and worst movie.
It was our first time, and after I acquired Michael Curtiz to direct North by Northwest, Annie quickly made a pretty decent movie. She had the most actors throughout the whole game, and picked first in the party phase all 8 times. She was always sure to keep the lead, and always took actors in the party zones, too. It was kind of aggravating, and kept me from finishing one of my movies, since there were so many missing actors.
Annie had the best movie of round 1, but I managed a 17 pointer when I completed North by Northwest, and I managed the best movie of round 3. Dan was going for the worst movie, and with the Mike Nerdahl guest star chip in tow (worth a wonderful -1 points), he managed to make a miserable version of the Three Musketeers that was worth 3 points. He then made an excellent 19 point movie, but Annie had the best film of Round 3 with a 20 pointer, featuring Humphrey Bogart in Gone with the Wind.
Karla had some good films, and Dan managed to get a few more mediocre movies made (I believe he had an 8 and a 5 made as well), but I had some quality films, including a 12 pointer and a 10 pointer. In the last round, it looked like I wasn't going to finish a movie I needed desperately, but the final party phase was kind to me (I picked last). Annie needed one chip to finish a movie, Karla needed another, and, as I needed some effects to finish my film, all that was left were an agency and an effects chip, so Dan couldn't keep me from finishing it.
Annie had the best movies, but I had 4 done after all (and they were of much higher quality than Dan's paltry films). Annie won for best Entertainment movie, but I had the best Adventure and Drama (thanks to completing the movie on my last turn). Dan had the worst overall movie, and Annie had the best overall. I managed to grab the best Direction award, as I had two 4-star directors and just enough completed movies to get the award (11 to 10) over Karla, who would have taken it had she completed one more film.
Best Entertainment: Annie (20)
Best Adventure: Mike (17)
Best Drama: Mike (12)
Worst Film: Dan (3)
Best Direction: Mike (11 stars)
| Bang! |
| Results | ||||
| Player | Role | Character | Place | First Time? |
| Jill | Sheriff | Jourdannais | Lived | |
| Karla | Deputy | Calamity Janet | Lived | |
| Scott | Deputy | Rose Doolan | Lived | |
| Dan | Renegade | Lucky Duke | 4th Killed | |
| Ebbin | Outlaw | Bart Cassidy | 3rd Killed | * |
| Mike | Outlaw | Sid Ketchum | 2nd Killed | |
| Annie | Outlaw | El Gringo | 1st Killed | |
Notes: With 7 players, the situation was screaming for BANG! Sadly, Ebbin, the first time outlaw, did the most damage to his own cause, as he killed a weakened El Gringo with an Indians! card. (El Gringo had foolishly been wasting bullets on Lucky Duke, which led to constant griping from Dan - I really have to keep Annie and Dan from sitting next to each other in this game) After this, he lit some dynamite, and Sid Ketchum, who had been unloading effective barrages against the Deputies and Sherriff for two straight turns, was hurt bad by dynamite, and didn't have the cards (we play second edition but with 1st edition cards, and in the first edition Sid needs 3 cards to get a life back, in the 2nd, only 2 - I had forgotten this) to survive another round. Down went the second outlaw.
Ebbin was simply not skilled nor close enough to get Sherriff Jourdannais, and didn't do a good job of picking at the other outlaws. Calamity Janet eventually took Bart Cassidy out, after he was left in an increasingly weakened state of affairs. Lucky Duke was anything but, as he tried to hide behind his barrel, and despite his double "draw" ability, it never worked, and he ended up getting killed within a round or two after Bart got his. Thanks to some misplays, the sherriff and her deputies cleaned up.
| High Society |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla | 12 | 1 | |
| Scott | 10 | 2 | |
| Mike | 7 | 3 | |
| Jill | 6 | 4 | * |
| Ebbin | OUT | 5 | * |
Notes: With a mere half-hour to go in game night, and with the disappearance of Dan and Annie to have dinner at a friend's, we played High Society. I bought the penthouse apartment early on, and then we had the three penalty cards in a row, and it looked like I was going to run away with the game, as Jill had the -5, Scott the 1/2, and Karla had to pay off the thief with her sports car.
Ebbin was almost completely out of cards, despite owning 11 points worth of goodies - including the boat and the plane, as he had overspent on his luxuries. Scott had a 2x card (as did Jill, who bought the basketball team) to help compensate for their penalty cards, but it wasn't enough, as Karla's early acceptance of the thief ended up working out for her - she managed to get 12 more points (castle & painting) to edge out Scott's island.