Gaming Results

Tonight was scheduled for Jamie and Howard. Howard baked a cheesecake he never shared with us while Oliver, Jim, Dan, Jamie, Annie, and I played a few games in the front porch area.

Ivanhoe

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Dan	4 tournaments (Red, Yellow, Blue, Green)	1
Oliver	3 tournaments (Green, Red, Purple)	2 (Tie)	*
Jamie	3 tournaments (Green, Blue, Yellow)	2 (Tie)	*
Mike	2 tournaments (Blue, Red)	4 (Tie)
Jim	2 tournaments (Red, Blue)	4 (Tie)	*

Notes: The game had two main stages, the Everybody Win 2 Tourneys but Dan stage, and the Dan cleans up stage.

Oliver won two right off the bat, but was then depleted and had to wait a long while before winning a purple tournament rather late.

Jamie spaced his victories out, gathering them at about the same rate as me and Jim. Dan had nothing for a long time, being squeezed out of several tournaments.

Then Dan made his move, squeezing me out of a Red Tournament and making me lose my hard fought Morning Star (yellow) chip because I had to withdraw while my girlfriend was watching. I vowed a revenge that never came.

About midway through the game, Dan complained that the Riposte card was too powerful. Really, I think the cards do way too much damage, and I'm not all that crazy about them. Still, they do take some skill to use appropriately, and the game would degenerate into just drawing and playing the cards you have without them. I guess they're just a necessary evil. It still results in a lot of luck, though.

Which is exactly how it happened. Dan started a purple tournament and it came down to him and me. Then he played a crucial Stunned card and laid down 5 or 6 supporters. I was out of any useful cards, so I could do nothing. Part of me was upset that Dan had such great cards (he must have ended up with the last 3 or 4 Ripostes played) but he did play them well.

Usually the "hoard cards" strategy isn't very useful, because you can't count on getting all the cards you want, and someone will be able to trip you up in almost any color. By the way, the only reason I managed to get back to two tourney victories was because everyone already had a Red, so no one competed with me.

Pass the Bomb!

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Dan	0 cards	1	*
Jim	1 card	2 (Tie)
Mike	1 card	2 (Tie)	*
Jamie	2 cards	4	*
Oliver	3 cards	5	*
Annie	6 cards	6	*

Notes: Next up was a game of Pass the Bomb!, which is an oral word game that Jim brought. It entails getting a card with 2 or 3 letters, and making a word that has those letters in sequence in it. No duplicates are allowed, and a die determines some other rules (like if the string can't come at the beginning or end).

Annie had a hard time with it, getting stuck with the bomb several times. As always, there was a bit of controversy as to when the bomb went off a couple times, but I accepted defeat once though it was close, more because I realize that there are problems with this sort of thing than because I was sure I had been stuck with the bomb. Oliver actually played pretty well, but he seemed to have a run of bad luck to get three while Dan (between him and me) got stuck with none.

Pass the Bomb!

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Jim	1 card (won sudden death)	1
Jamie	1 card (lost sudden death)	2
Mike	2 cards	3 (Tie)
Dan	2 cards	3 (Tie)
Oliver	2 cards	3 (Tie)
Annie	5 cards	6

Notes: It was a quick game with some fun to it, so I said we ought to play it again and we did. Annie played better than she got credit for, and Jim won a very tight and tough two-player round. I thought Jamie was going to win it - there's an odd feeling of momentum and inertia in this game, where the person who stops and goes, "Um, uh," buys time for everyone else, and they whiz the bomb around until it gets back to the Umming and Uhing person. Jim was the Um-er and Uh-er for the first 15 or 20 seconds, but he managed to get Jamie caught with the bomb anyway.

Survive!

Results
Player	Score	Place	First Time?
Dan	12	1 (Tie)
Annie	12	1 (Tie)
Jamie	11	3	*
Mike	7	4	*

Notes: Jim had to go as Oliver was taking off on him, so I brought out Survive!, which Jamie greeted with the question: "Is this a kid's game?"

I said it was a kid's game ahead of its time, which I think is accurate. It's also nasty. I must have had more wine than anyone else because I lost track of my 4, 5, and 6 people, all of whom died. I managed to get 4 men to survive and barely beat the 4-person minimum score of 5 with 7 points (a 3, 2, 1 and 1).

Annie lost some big points early, too, but managed to get enough middle-pointers to shore before anyone else did. Jamie and Dan each managed 4 apiece, but they were more profitable. Annie had 5 or 6, I believe, and managed to tie Dan. I had a lot of swimmers, who stayed alive (thanks to about 3 "kill a shark" tiles), but never got very far because everyone else got the "Dolphin carries your swimmers" or "Move a boat 3 spaces" tiles.

I also gave Dan a chance to cooperate with me, but he refused to move the boat, so I smashed it with a whale. It stunk that I lost all my good guys, but that was my own fault.

I think Jamie liked it. It is a fun game.