November 20th, 2004 |
After May's birthday party, a bunch of folks stopped by to play games and play Karla's Taiko drum game. Kaveh and Ann showed up to play Bohnanza, and then Jamie and his brother Bill came to play some Ticket to Ride.
| Blokus |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | +20 | 1 | |
| Karla | -1 | 2 | |
| Dan | -3 | 3 | |
| Annie | -12 | 4 | * |
Notes: Everyone played pretty well, except Annie, who didn't rush to the middle of the board like the rest of us, and she ended up getting pinched in her own corner with little chance of escape.
I managed to strike a nice balance between going into Dan's and Karla's strongholds, and I kept a couple "safety" areas that I was able to keep safe until the end of the game, helping make sure I got all my pieces out there - AND my little bitty piece last for the highest score! Yahoo!
| Ra |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 45 | 1 | |
| Mike | 37 | 2 | |
| Annie | 32 | 3 | |
| Karla | 22 | 4 | |
Notes: Dammit! Dan won again. He wins this damned thing about 80% of the time. I had two things that kept me from winning. First, although I got Dan to use up his pieces for little effect in the first round, I didn't get all that much either - although I managed 6 monuments in the 1st round.
Next, in the 2nd round, I only was able to use 2 of my suns. Dan could have kept the 13 sun (the highest), but decided to squander it on about 2 mediocre tiles. If I had gotten the tiles, I most assuredly would have won. Well, probably. It would have given me a 3 of a kind for one of my monuments.
Finally, in the last round, I had by far the three crappiest tiles, and I needed to get rid of them to avoid the -5 penalty for having the worst tiles. Unfortunately, every time I invoked Ra, there was some pretty good stuff out there, even if there were only 3 things. Annie also used up her tiles on stuff I didn't think she'd want. So, in the last round, although I managed some good stuff, so did Dan. Dan, in fact, luckily got 3 different civs - he was going to bid on it anyway, and he got lucky on the tile draw - and I managed to get 10 points in the last round.
Also, Dan once again managed to get the lead in pharaohs, and, in the last round, Annie was going to take the lead away from him, but lo and behold, an assassin showed up, and she was forced to take tiles that wiped out her pharaoh lead. So, I lost this time because:
1) Dan got lucky on a tile draw
2) Annie got unlucky on a tile draw
3) Dan hosed me
4) I got unlucky on about 6 straight tile draws
Karla was way behind all game, taking the -2 points each turn and not gathering many monuments. My monuments gave me a bunch of points (and my civs), but I also missed getting a flood tile in the last round which really would have helped out.
| Bohnanza |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 14 | 1 | |
| Dan | 13 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Anne | 13 | 2 (Tie) | * |
| Annie | 12 | 4 | |
| Kaveh | 11 | 5 (Tie) | * |
| Karla | 11 | 5 (Tie) | |
Notes: We played Bohnanza next, and Anne and Kaveh both had slow goings had first, but after Kaveh started giving Anne too much advice, she let him know that she had figured things out and she made a nice run at the end.
Dan went for a third bean field pretty early, but didn't really manage too many good fields after that. He started off great. Annie did okay, but never really had too many great deals. Karla was a stickler - perhaps too much of one - and never managed to get too much going.
Dan, Kaveh, and I had a nice three-way deal going throughout much of the game. We were very civil too each other and tended to give each other deals. My Bohnanza policy is to be as nice as possible to everyone. This means that a lot of times when people have to get rid of cards rather than lose a field that's not ready I get to receive cards. Also, it's good to donate one or two cards once in a while.
At any rate, it worked out in this game, though I thought it was way too close to call. I never really had any big fields, and I was stuck harvesting Black-eyed, Soy, Red, and Green beans all game. A late gathering of 4 red beans is probably what did it for me.
| Ticket to Ride |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Annie | 119 | 1 | |
| Karla | 108 | 2 | |
| Mike | 91 | 3 | |
| Jamie | 86 | 4 | * |
| Bill | 77 | 5 | * |
Notes: Next up was Ticket to Ride, a nice and easy game to teach. Three of us started out west (me, Karla, Jamie), Annie was in the midwest, and Bill started out east. Bill kept drawing the face-down cards, which is usually a bad sign. Karla had the early lead, building the most often. I had to go around a couple places in the west to connect my territories, and it also kept me from really making a nice long route.
Annie fell behind early, then really kicked butt about 2/3 of the way through. She had only connected her original two tickets, then went on a crazy connection spree, basically just making really long connections and making them hook up with her cars. She was WAY ahead in the longest route thing and I figured she'd kick butt.
At about the halfway marker, I went for one extra ticket, which I connected without fanfare, but then never got any colored cards I wanted. I kept having to spread the wealth with cards, which kept me from doing what Annie had done - namely, just make long connections for extra points. In the end, I must have spent about 8 turns getting cards rather than making connections, simply because my longest set of colors was only 3, which hardly seemed worth it.
Bill and Jamie both had cards that they couldn't connect, and Karla made a huge run at Annie when the routes were counted at the end, but fell 1 point short. Then Annie got the "Longest Route" card and expanded her victory by 11. She played great.