May 5, 2006 |
I had ended up being incredibly sick on Wednesday, so I had to cancel game night at the last minute. In hopes of making it up, I sent out a feeler to see if anyone wanted to play this weekend. It turned out that everyone in town wanted to except Dan and Scott.
We managed to get up to 11 or so. Jamie and Howard were on their way to Hawaii, so we settled for Amanda, Rakesh, Kaveh, Anne, Lee, Mark, Jim, Annie, Karla, and myself. We had lots of Margherita fixin's, and everyone was constantly drinking them in honor of Cinco de Mayo.
| 1000 Blank White Cards |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Rakesh | 2100 | 1 | * |
| Amanda | 1300 | 2 | * |
| Karla | 1000 | 3 | * |
| Mark | 500 | 4 | * |
| Mike | 100 | 5 | * |
| Lee | -400 | 5 | * |
Notes: I read about this game and decided to give it a go, as it's pretty easy going and silly, and I thought it'd make for a good party game.
You basically take a bunch of cards, draw on them, make up silly rules, and play them. The winner is the one with the most points. At first everyone was taking a while making new cards during their turn, but within a round or so we had a pretty good speed going.
There were several spur of the moment cards awarded, such as a bonus for having the biggest earrings (won by Amanda), which was punished by Rakesh's "ear wrings" card, which warped the earrings. Then Rakesh was hit with a "red shirt penalty" which made him lose all his turns and points.
I had decided for a goofier and more incoherent stock of cards. I made a "Medical School Rules!" card, with a cadeuces drinking from one of those beer hats. That card gave +100 points to any cards with syringes or cadeuces on them. That led to a bunch of syringe cards being played. Amanda started getting a lot of points, so I hit her with my "Oh No! Syringe in the Cheeto's!" card.
Karla played a lot of bunny cards and made an "Animal Lover's Bonus!" card. I made a "Laser Guided Tongues" card, which was just about the weirdest out there, and Mark played "Lee Drops the Kids Off at the Pool" (with accompanying drawing), which cost me "Poohundred (200) points."
Cato and Moonie were also a big theme for the night.
In the end, Rakesh played a big card right before the last turn and ended up winning.
Everyone enjoyed it - it got fun and silly, as I'd hoped - and after the game we kept a bunch of cards, some of which I took a picture of:
| The Top 10 Game |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | Head of the Class | 1 | * |
| Lee | Lost tiebreaker 7 to 6 | 2 | * |
| Karla | 3 spaces back | 3 | * |
| Amanda | 4 spaces back | 4 | * |
| Jim | 7 spaces back | 5 | * |
| Mark | 12 spaces back | 6 | * |
| Rakesh | 13 spaces back | 7 | * |
Notes: After that we played a trivia game, The Top 10 Game. It's kind of hit or miss. Some of the questions aren't very clear, and ended up costing us a big wasted minute.
I took a moderate lead, thanks in most part to getting an early advantage on a couple of lists. The Top 10 States with the Most Lawyers one (which inexplicably had Washington D.C. in there!) and the first one, which was, Name 10 Games Mike has here.
After that it was pretty up and down. The Name 10 Things to do with Ice Cube trays (but not freeze them) was very controversial. We all did poorly on the Top 10 Singles of all time and a few others. I tended to move forward on the factual ones.
We ended up going about 7 rounds, and I was 3 away from the Head of the Class, and Lee was 4 or 5 back. I could only get 1 answer though on the "Garden Pests" question (it was all bugs, and a lot of us listed animals like rabbits and mice and moles). Amanda won that round with a whopping 3 points.
Anyway, in the next round, Lee and I both made it, and then I lucked out in the tiebreaker by listing the deepest oceans or seas in the order Pacific, Indian, Atlantic rather than the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, as Lee did. He caught up a point later by adding Mediterranean Sea (which I hadn't added), but I held him off for the victory.
| Villa Paletti x2 |
There were then two games of Villa Paletti played with mostly the new folks: Anne, Kaveh, Annie, Mark, and Karla. I have no idea who won these, as no one told me.
| Cranium |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike & Jim | Winners | 1 | Jim |
| Rakesh, Amanda, & Lee | 3 Spots Back | 2 | * |
Notes: Everyone kept rejecting everyone's ideas, and we came very close to playing Pirate's Cove. Rakesh wanted to play Formula Dé, but Jim wouldn't let us. Amanda wanted to play 6 Nimmt!, but we'd been playing a lot of that lately and she got a lukewarm response. Jim was up for Pirate's Cove, but Amanda didn't seem up for it. It always boils my blood, so I was hoping for something else, too. For some reason we went with Cranium.
We decided on teams, and I had Lee go with Amanda and Rakesh. Since I've played before I figured Jim and I would have an advantage.
Well, Jim and I kicked butt. We only got one thing wrong - right at the end, when the other team picked a Star Performer card we couldn't complete because Jim didn't know who Ed McMahon was.
Lee, Rakesh, and Amanda were tripped up getting things wrong at the various Planet Craniums. Also, Jim and I were able to get all the Club Cranium competitions when I hummed "Close to You" by the Carpenters and Jim managed to draw Baby's Breath before Amanda could. (Her picture ended up looking like Baby Projectile Vomit.) There was some mild controversy when Lee and Rakesh were trying to look at Jim's drawing. I had to shield his picture from them.
The only other hiccup Jim and I had was when I did some charades for "Body Boarding" but Jim said "Body Surfing." Amanda said, "That's the same thing" and we got the roll. There was also a bit of controversy when Amanda (who had to do almost all the sculpting and drawing for their team) had to sculpt a dam and the hint was "place." Dams are certainly places, I suppose, but Rakesh and Lee were anticipating things like San Francisco.
The funniest thing that happened was Lee finally gave Amanda a break from drawing and sculpting and everything to do some charades. I said it was a Place - a rodeo. I added that "it's more of an event." Jim thought I gave them too much info, but what the heck? we were kicking ass. Anyway, up jumps Lee and he goes, "YEEEE-HAAAAA!" I laughed and said, "It's supposed to be charades, Lee." He said, "Yeah, well, they would have gotten it anyway." I then added that this was the quietest game of charades we'd ever played.
As it came down to the end, Jim and I had a nice lead, but Lee, Amanda, and Rakesh were getting over their mid-game floundering and managed to get to the inner circle. Amanda complained that we were linked robots, and so I made a robot voice and said a bunch of stuff that made everybody crack up.
The joke was on me, though. When Jim and I had another chance, I did a sculpture. It said Stonehenge, which, funnily enough, was something that Lee guessed for Amanda's sculpture early in the game. I put down my very first stone post, and Jim said, "Stonehenge!" He was right, and I did my robot laugh and we slapped a cyborg high five.
After that I was wearing out, as I felt kind of lousy and didn't think I could make it through another game. Mark made some noise about playing Circus Flohcati, but it never happened, and after a bit of sitting around, everyone headed out.