February 20th, 2005 |
I was excited to play my new Mystery Rummy, so I finally got Karla to play it before she went to DDR practice at Jim's.
| Balloon Cup |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 3 Trophies (Blue, Yellow, Green) | 1 | |
| Karla | 1 Trophy (Red) | 2 | |
Notes: We hadn't played this in forever, and I decided that we should try it using the Designer's rules. That is, you can only play on your opponent's side after you've filled up YOUR side for each journey. This keeps it from getting overly nasty and requires a bit more skillful play. It seemed boring at first, but once we started viewing it as an option, it became fun.
Not much to say, other than that. I captured a lot of races while Karla kept losing a little. She had a lot of reds and two grays, but the grays stopped appearing, and the reds were stuck on "my colors", blue, green, and yellow. Karla never did catch up too much and I managed to end the game with a strong lead. I feel as though it was mostly due to luck. I didn't really have too many mid-range numbers.
| Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 94 | 1 | * |
| Karla | 89 | 2 | * |
Notes: The main reason I got this was because it was great for two players and I thought Karla would love it. Well, she liked it okay, but it's no Lost Cities. Still, it's a pretty fun rummy game with a large range of tactics.
The first round was pretty standard, with me winning the vote and managing to get a few more melds of evidence against Montague Britt. I led after the first round, 36 to 27.
The next round I just couldn't get any victim cards, and all my various cards were useless...until late. Then I went for a ton of melds and would have scored a gajillion points (that's an approximation), but as the 5th victim card came out, Karla was able to put down the "Ripper Escapes" card, and all my melds were useless. Karla had one more scene/victim combo than I did, and took the lead, 68 to 40. (That's right, 4 points! The Ripper Escapes card can really mash you.)
In the final round, I had a superb sequence of evidence melds while Karla really didn't have anything. It turned out that she was kind of forced to go into the Ripper Escapes strategy again, but only 3 victims showed up. I had a ton of melds, and even got Sir Gull arrested as the Ripper, netting me 10 points for guessing correctly (as Karla did) but also giving most of the double bonus points to myself. After three rounds, I led 94 to 89, and Karla felt that that was enough. (After all, that's the same number of rounds we play Lost Cities and Coloretto for.)