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Seattle Cosmic Game Night, Saturday, 28 February 2004

Hot Diggity Dog

Who came?

General notes.

--YOUR_NAME?

Puerto Rico (#1 of 2)

Game: Puerto_Rico?
Location: Dining room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 17:50-19:35
Winner: Ben Sklar
Prize: ?

Scores

Ben's notes:

Ben and Jay had factories.

Nat and Michelle had harbors.

Ben ended the game by emptying a lot of building spaces when Jason picked the mayor phase.

Finstere Flure

Game: Finstere_Flure?
Location: Office (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 18:10-19:11
Winner: Marty Hale-Evans
Prize: ?

Scores

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Say What!?!

Game: Say_What!?!?
Players: A cast of thousands
Location: All over
Time: Most of the evening (18:30ish-23:00 sharp)
Winner: Tim Higgins & Jason Kirschten
Prize: ?

Scores

Say_What!?!? is a game that can be played whilst you are playing other games. Each player that is sucked into the game is dealth a hand of cards depicting either a word or an action. When you observe another player saying the word or performing the action, you give them the card from your hand. Likewise, if you say a word or do an action on another player's card, and they catch you, they give you the card. The goal of the game (or this variant anyways) is to have as few cards as possible by the defined end time. This game rewards good ears - if you can recognize someone saying a word when they're playing a game in another room, you will quickly get rid of all your cards.

--Steve_Dupree?

Ricochet Robot (#1 of 2)

Game: Ricochet_Robot?
Location: Living room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 18:35-19:37
Winner: Emily Miller
Prize: honking toy

Scores

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Chess (tutorial)

Game: Chess
Players: Chess Master John Braley, Mark "Grasshopper" Haggerty
Location: Hallway floor (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 18:45-???
Winner: Do you really need to ask?
Prize: n/a

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Traumfabrik

Game: Traumfabrik
Location: Dining room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 19:45-20:54
Winner: Ben Sklar
Prize: ?

Scores

I wasn't paying much attention to anyone's but my own strategy, so I can't comment much on what other players did. I found partway through that I wasn't in a very good position for much of anything, so for the second half I tried a strategy of "do pretty much nothing, and collect a bunch of contracts." It did surprisingly well, leaving me only 4 points from first place. I had 24 contracts at the end.

--Jay_Lorch?

La Citta

Game: La_Citta?
Location: Dining room (Steve & Nat's)
Time: 20:00ish-22:52
Winner: John Braley and Mark Haggerty
Prize: ?

Scores

Marty, as can be guessed from the above score, had a couple of really horrible awful turns. Her more-surrounded city was her primary food-production center, and it was obliterated during turn 3 or 4, driving her population count down to 3. She was doing surprisingly well at recovering, but suffered another round of emigration and starvation in the last round, leaving her with a population of 4. Starvation is -5, resulting in a score of -1.

Dave did much better, but had never played before, and didn't quite understand the specific subtleties of food vs. population. With generous gold production, he took advantage of a "Poll the People" card to pay the extra gold to see all three cards instead of two in the last round, and learned that Culture (white) was Da Bomb. He was rather weak in white, but decided that it'd be better to tip his hand by snatching up the Cathedral rather than playing it coy and probably having somebody else build it on general principles (the visible card was Culture) and putting it too close to him. On the very last turn of the game, he added a Palace to one of his cities, which caused it to not lose one person to a neighbor, and to pull another from a different neighbor. This put his end-game population at 26. Regrettably, even with the Rich Harvest he'd picked up that turn, he still only had 24 food points. So, two people starved and he received a penalty of -5. Had he been less greedy, he could have won the game by a point.

-- Dave_Howell?

Industria

Game: Industria?
Location: Living room (Nat & Steve's)
Time: 20:30-21:30
Winner: Steve Dupree
Prize: ?

Scores

I managed to rope 3 new players in to play my brand new copy of Industria. It was a wild and crazy game, with high bids for some tiles and others getting passed on unexpectedly (at least for the auctioneer). Many people were out of money at one point or another and/or were 1 dollar short at the wrong time. I won with a technology-centric strategy, and Ryan was on my tail with a Tongrube-group (Ziegele, Brunnen, Keramik factory, Zement factory, and the Tongrube to connect them) strategy plus 2/3rds of the oil group. Mark bid high for the Bank and Borse but then was mostly too poor to bid for factory tiles after that. I don't remember what Emily concentrated on.

--Steve_Dupree?

Clans

Game: Clans?
Location: Dining room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 21:00ish-21:35
Winner: Ben Sklar
Prize: ?

Chad's comment when asked about the game: "Ben won by many points. The board came in second." Chad came in last as Blue.

--Ron_Hale-Evans?

Industrial Waste

Game: IndustrialWaste?
Players: Ryan, Emily, Steve D, Ben
Location: SteveandNat?'s Living Room
Time: 10:00 - 11:00
Winner: Ryan
Prize: ?

Scores

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--Steve_Dupree?

I made the mistake of double-inovated on my first turn while I was first. I was not able to fill an order for quite a while which forced me to take a loan to pay my workers. This cascaded into me taking loans a total of 3 times, although I was able to pay 1 load off.

--Ben_Sklar?

Trippples

Game: Trippples?
Players: Nat Dupree & Jason Kirschten
Location: Nat & Steve's office
Time: 20:00-20:40
Winner: stalemate
Prize: n/a

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Ricochet Robot (#2 of 2)

Game: Ricochet_Robot?
Players: Nat Dupree, Jason Kirschten, Tom Powers?
Location: Living room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 20:45ish-21:30ish
Winner: ?
Prize: ?

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Tongiaki

Game: Tongiaki?
Players: Nat Dupree, Jason Kirschten, Tom Powers, Jay Lorch
Location: Office (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 21:30-20:20
Winner: Jay Lorch

I had fun one turn taking everyone all over the seas and crashing their boats onto the waves. But I suspect it wasn't much fun for everyone else waiting while that endless turn progressed. Perhaps future plays of the game will make it less likely someone takes so long on their turn with everyone waiting bored or worried throughout it.

Many games have the property that each turn leads inexorably closer to the end of the game. This game, on the other hand, has the possibility that several turns go by with the end of the game getting no closer. Indeed, theoretically it seems this game could go on forever. This bothered me for some reason, though perhaps it's not really a problem. It also bothered me that the criterion for ending the game (either all 16 land or all 16 water tiles are out) is not readily ascertainable by a glance at the board.

--Jay_Lorch?

Interlude: Voting reform discussion

Wise & Otherwise

Game: Wise_&_Otherwise?
Location: Living room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 20:20-23:45ish
Winner: Jay Lorch
Prize: ?

Scores

What happened during this game?

Comments from the players?

--YOUR_NAME?

Probe

Game: Probe?
Location: Dining room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 23:22-23:55
Winner: Marty Hale-Evans
Prize: ?

Scores

Probe is a word-guessing game (that a lot of people sort of think is like a game with a big tray and a deck of cards, oddly), with the interesting switch that your word length can be up to 12, and you can "pad out" your concealed word with some dots. John took the ill-advised strategy of guessing that Marty had a dot (yes), and then another dot (no), and unlike guessing letters, a "no" to a dot guess is -50. Nevertheless, for successfully guessing Marty's word, he earned back the 50, and for guessing a lot more letters than I did, easily beat my score. The picture above shows the two of them demonstrating a lack of knowledge of wildly obscure musical terms, as only the X in "mixolydian" was covered. It was revealed when a card I drew forced me to expose it, denying them the chance to earn 50 points by guessing it and me even more points for being able to end the game without having my word exposed.

Marty's word was drawn from a study list for the GRE's. When you play Probe with professional editors, you play hard-core.

--Dave_Howell?

Puerto Rico (#2 of 2)

Game: PuertoRico?
Players: Ben, Emily, Ryan, Jason, Steve D
Location: SteveandNat?'s Kitchen
Time: 11:20 - 1:00 AM
Winner: Ben
Prize: ?

Scores

Ben played a factory strategy to perfection, AND sold coffee like a Columbian. He raked in piles of money and ended the game by filling up his building spaces (including 2 big buildings).

Comments from the other players?

--Steve_Dupree?

Gargon

Game: Gargon?
Location: Dining Room (Jay & Michelle's)
Time: 00:00-01:15ish
Winner: Dave Howell
Prize: none claimed

Scores

Fate, apparently taking pity on me for my mistake in La_Citta? and my bad letter guessing in [Probe], put a truly embarrassing richness of "0" score doubler cards in my had for Gargon. John had never played, Ron only once or twice, and Marty hadn't played in a long time, so I had an experience advantage to start with, before I drew (I believe) six of the twelve zeros during the course of the game. I managed to get both blue zeros into my score pile, turning a score of 11 gold dots in blue into 44 points, as well as doubling two other colors. John had claimed a zero in a color where the two other cards had no points, resulting in the annoying (although not uncommon for Gargon) experience of triumphantly doubling nothing. (Last time I did that, it was even sillier, as my green zero was the only green card I'd scored during the game. Whoopty do.)

--Dave_Howell?

Halo

Game: Halo (for the Xbox)
Players: not sure
Location: Jay and Michelle's Living Room
Time: 1:00 AM to a bit later
Winner: ?

Shrieking from Natalie was the most notable by-product of this sojourn into the First-Person Shooter.

Comments from the other players?

--Dave_Howell?

My comment is that Ben is a liar. "I've played a couple times..." Also don't let him get his hands on a sniper rifle.

--Steve_Dupree?

NEXT MEETING

Saturday, 7 March 2004, 5:00 PM at the house of Tim Higgins in Mill Creek (Bothell). Come play for fun and FABULOUS PRIZES from the PrizeBag!

Remember, Seattle Cosmic Game Night occurs every weekend, in one of four locations: Kent, Mill Creek, Seattle, or Tukwila. Email Ron Hale-Evans for a full schedule and directions. If you come, please bring a snack or drink to share (cookies, chips, soda, juice, etc.)

Supporting Seattle Cosmic and Games to the Rescue

GamesToTheRescue is a philanthropic project of the Center for Ludic Synergy and Seattle Cosmic Game Night. The aim of the project is to provide game equipment and a book of game rules to hospitals, for use by patients and visitors. You can support GamesToTheRescue by buying games via our Funagain affiliate program, buying Seattle Cosmic Gear, and in a number of other ways. See the GamesToTheRescue page for more details.

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