August 4, 2004 |
Karla swore she wouldn't play tonight, but then she played a game with us anyway. Sam and Annie showed up right at the end of Oasis, and then Lee, who surprised us with his first appearance in quite some time, had to head out. See you at the BBQ, Lethal.
| Oasis |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 150 | 1 | |
| Lee | 82 (#2) | 2 | * |
| Mike | 82 (#4) | 3 | |
| Karla | 79 | 3 | |
Notes: Lee felt like playing something new, so we went with Oasis, which is really pretty easy to teach. Dan went for an early balanced attack, and Karla had a large camel contingent while Lee went for a lot of oasis areas. I had some early oases, too. Lee kept offering very little, and kept getting stuck with the #3 or #4 tile throughout much of the game. Dan was almost always #1 or #2, though that changed later on, when he ran out of cards.
It was a poorly played game, by my standards. There is a bit of a psychological ploy that this game does. The rock tiles only come 1 at a time, so they don't look as appealing as the steppe, camel, or oasis tiles (which come in 2's or, in the case of the camels, 2's or 3's). The single tiles are made up for by having double multiplier tiles, which the other areas do not have (or only have 1 of them). So Dan kept taking rocks and actually amassed 96 points worth of rocks by the end of the game, blowing us out of the water.
Dan also hoarded the steppe multipliers. I had a nice sized steppe area, but no multiplier for them, so that took away at least 10-15 points. Once again, my camel contingent was blocked off - by Lee and Karla - and instead of getting some nice bang for my camel buck, I had to start over in a new area. This deprived me of about 20 more points. Lee made an attempt to hamper some of Dan's progress with his rock and steppe areas, but it was too little too late. When Dan picked first, he kept picking rocks, and when Dan was last, the rocks kept falling to him. Next game I'm going to stress to everyone the danger of letting somebody run off with a monopoly in one area.
I made up my own variant while we played. When the card stack was almost done - maybe 5 to 8 cards left - I re-shuffled the discard deck into the unused cards. This randomized the draw deck a bit, giving the card draws less structure than usual. I liked it, as it made the game end a little quicker, and you can't necessarily count on a certain card coming up.
Dan had picked yellow this game, which is Annie's color, so when Annie showed up Dan told her he won because he chose yellow.
| Modern Art |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | $600,000 | 1 | |
| Sam | $371,000 | 2 | |
| Annie | $367,000 | 3 | |
| Dan | $322,000 | 4 | |
Notes: Sam listed a bunch of games he wouldn't mind playing. Among them were Citadels, Clans, Coloretto, Ra, Liar's Dice, Illuminati, Royal Turf, and Modern Art. Dan was anti-Citadels, Clans, Coloretto, and Royal Turf, Annie was anti-Liar's Dice, and although I like Ra, we hadn't played Modern Art in a while, and I like it just as much. Plus I made it myself, so I want to get as many playings out of it as possible.
It's kind of a tricky game if you think too much about it. I heard Sam say once, "I don't know what the hell I'm
doing." There's not that much to it, Sam. Basically, do the following:
The Tex pieces took 2nd or 3rd in every round of the game, and the Peter Sharpe's went #1 the first three rounds. The Polke's were worth $20,000 by the end, and Lukshina was worth $70,000. Not one Gonzalez was worth anything, though Dan did purchase two of them in the third round, costing him $22,000.
Dan went mostly for a selling strategy. He went at least one round with 0 paintings bought. I went for an early purchase strategy. Basically, I tried to buy paintings that I knew I could influence their value with later on. That is, if I had plenty more of, say, Tex's paintings, I'd buy a Tex painting for as little as possible, then inflate his paintings' value later by selling more of them. If I couldn't influence the painter's popularity, I wouldn't buy it. This strategy resulted in a few early, very profitable purchases, but very few purchases later, when the other buyers had overvalued certain things, Annie in particular.
Annie went for an all-out purchase strategy, and it seemed to go well at first, though she started to overpay for things later. In fact, at one point, Dan and I had to convince her that buying a painting for $70,000 when it's maximum value was going to be $70,000 was a silly idea. That would have given her $0 profit while giving Sam all that cash for profit (and making one of his own paintings more potential value). Eventually she listened to reason, and Sam was very clever to try to take advantage of Annie's overzealous purchasing. Had he listed it at $68,000, it would have worked.
I think Sam started to pick up on it as the game went on. He was more careful about purchases, and very clever when it came to selling. Everyone thought that Annie was going to win, because she had all those paintings at the end of every round. The only trouble was that she paid so much for them. When the cash came to be counted, I had coasted to an easy victory. The only surprise was that Dan did so poorly. Normally he does pretty well.
| Vom Kap bis Kairo |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 8 | 1 | |
| Sam | 7 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Annie | 7 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Mike | 6 | 4 | |
Notes: Dan then played a masterful game of Vom Kap bis Kairo, and I was forced late in the game to make a very expensive purchase of track in order to keep Dan from winning the game straight out. This crippled me, and halted me in my tracks, though it gave Annie and Sam a chance to catch up. Had Dan had a bit more bad luck at the end, Annie might have won.
Sam made a few early boo-boos, as he went for terrain in the auctions that had no track on them in order to get the most money back when he crossed them. Near the end he realized the error of his ways, though. At one point, he was stuck behind a river tile and he could no longer collect on bonus tracks because he already had 5 of them. Eventually he had to pay to cross it, just to get over it.
Dan made a nice hose move on me at the end, taking a mountain piece with 3 tracks on it and leaving me (with 3 terrains to go) with a track-less terrain that was just as easy to cross. This, along with my lack of funds, and Sam and Annie using the track on the cards to speed along, left me in last place, though I was in second when the final round began. Dan auctioned well, paying top money for the stuff he wanted and benefiting from Sam's early mistakes. Annie got stuck with a lot of mountain terrain, but almost overcame it all to claim victory. Had Dan had some incredibly bad luck on the final card draw he would have lost (probably).