June 27, 2006 |
Game Night was down to four attendees, three when Karla ducked out to "pull a Karla." Jamie's Iron Fist of Band Practice had Lee out of the picture, and with Rakesh and Amanda in England, Scott hosting some out of town guests, and Jim in Greece, only Dan, Peter, and myself were in attendance.
| Ra |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 65 | 1 | |
| Dan | 44 | 2 | |
| Peter | 32 | 3 | |
Notes: Peter wanted to play Ra, and it fucking rocks, so what the hell. Peter had the low bid tiles to start and he kept invoking Ra a lot. This is called the "Mike strategy" and typically gets one yelled at by Karla. With no Karla, Peter was in the clear. He managed to get a few things at low cost, and I had a very modest first round, needing to rely on three god tiles and a gold tile to get me 7 points, as I had ZERO pharaohs. Dan had a bunch and netted around 14 points while Peter got 10 thanks entirely to his set of 4 civs.
In the second round though I was still outscored by Dan (who managed 15 thanks to a big Nile score and his pharaoh lead) I managed to have a fine turn. I also still had the fewest pharaohs, but also finally managed to stock up some goodies, including a bunch of rivers and several monuments. Going into the last era, I had 6 different monuments and two sets of two, thanks in large part to a final greed session I was able to manage when Peter and Dan had bid themselves out. Peter had an average second round, getting Nile points and another 5 (I think) on civs.
In the final round, with final scoring looming, Dan mixed his strategies and got hung up. First, he took a bid where he exchanged a low tile for a high tile and got nothing else, but then he took a couple auctions where the tile was crappy anyway. He ended up with far the worst points on bid tiles anyway, and should have accepted his fate (as I had willingly took the -2 all three times in this game). I had two major goals and a minor one: First, get a civ tile. Second, get up to 8 monuments and get at least one set of 3, maybe more. Third, get a flood tile. I got more than all that, scooping up 8 different monument, a set of 3 and a set of 4. Peter kind of stagnated, getting a couple things but nothing really good. He had more monuments than Dan (7 different ones, I believe), but no sets.
For final scoring I managed an incredible 40 points in monuments, which blew away any sort of max I had ever seen in them. Dan took the -5 for the suns while Peter outnumbered me by 2 or 3 to get the +5. Peter said that he probably overvalued 2nd place in the pharaohs, paying too much to avoid the -2. I think what I did was found the hole in the market (monuments) and, partly by luck, then partly by design, managed to get a huge amount of points from them. I only had two after the first round, but after getting a bunch in the 2nd round, I went for them like crazy in the third, and Peter and especially Dan weren't too eager to stop me, as the monuments weren't as valuable for them.
Dan only moaned once about the fact that he liked the old way we played this better.
| San Marco |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Dan | 67 | 1 | |
| Peter | 66 | 2 | * |
| Mike | 59 | 3 | |
Notes: I pulled out San Marco, my all time favorite 3-player game, and we zipped through it at a nice clip. It was, as always a close game.
There were three keys to the game:
#1 - Mike lost free turns twice and Dan lost one once. This kept me from getting many pieces on the board, as I had only 80% of the turns of Dan and Peter.
#2 - No banishments! There were only three banishments in the whole game, two by the "under 10" rule people at the end of a round. I managed the only other card. This made it all but impossible to get markers off the board, again hurting my possibilities.
#3 - Peter's final turn was spent using a traitor piece in a way I thought was odd. I can't remember what it was, but when I re-performed the move after the game in the way I was thinking he'd use it, he would have won by 1 point. I think it was that Dan had a lead on Peter and me in San Marco by a score of 6 to 4 to 4. What Peter did was "betray" one of mine to his side, making the score 6 to 5 to 3. What I would have done was to change one of Dan's, rendering the score 5 to 5 to 4. That way, he gains 6 points but also took two from Dan, and I still don't get jack.
Another thing that hurt was that my final banishment of the game only took one piece off the board, so I was unable to do much to Dan (or anybody) at all. Had I rolled higher in Castillo, I could have potentially gotten rid of Dan's points - I would have needed a roll of 3 or 4. (That final turn probably should have done Dan in, but he got lucky!)
Still, a good close game that teaches me the meaning of "patience" and "take the low limit points"! Listen, next time, Mike!
| Can't Stop |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Peter | 3 (6,7,8) | 1 | * |
| Dan | 0 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Mike | 0 | 2 (Tie) | |
Notes: How did newbie Peter beat the snot out of two seasoned Can't Stop veterans? Poor strategic dice rolling. I kept saying "One more" and then didn't roll strategically. Dan did the same thing, and when Peter took more than half of 6, 7, and 8 in one turn, we were compelled to push our luck (and roll surreptitiously so we wouldn't upset Karla - another ploy that didn't work, by the way!). Peter mercifully took us out pretty quickly.