February 2017 Game Night

Gentlemen,

Thanks for coming last night. We had five players in attendance and dined on taco soup, taco pie (thanks Joe!), and chips with assorted salsas and dips. Plus a tower of cookies, chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzel nuggets, and peanut M&Ms.

Paul had his usual special dietary needs of thin mints.

Our traditional and beloved chicken tacqitos kind of got lost in the plethora of food items. It was kind of sad. I ate a couple just to keep the tradition going.

There were also at least three types of beer. My sink is full this morning. The leftover Guinness that Joe brought will be retained for next game night.

I don't know about anybody else, but I survived the night despite my expectations based on the menu. I put the Pepto Bismal (Note: not the stripper, but the stomach remedy) next to my sink just in case . But it was not needed (Note: the stomach remedy, not the stripper).

We started a bit after 8:00 and managed 3 games, calling it quits at 12:30 in order to watch episode 2 of season 3 of Game of Thrones with a pot of coffee, rather than gut check for a fourth game. It is tougher to finish the bigger board games like the smaller version where some games can wrap up in 45 minutes with the right winds (die rolls) at your backs.

There were rumblings that this episode was more story and less skin than anticipated. Maybe next month.

Kudos to Dave who pulled off a Catan hat trick! 3 victories for him.

To our everlasting shame (and I did mention at least 3 kinds of beer, right?) he won one of those games with the longest road at just the minimum five segments.

Paul in another game had the longest road maxed out and safe from challenge--yet lost that game!

The games were all competitive, with the first two games having at least one challenger vying for the 10th point. I was not in the final push despite having 2 victory points in hand for one of them.

Victory point cards weren't big in the games. Although in the last one, Pete pulled a victory point card right before Joe bought a couple lottery tickets in a futile effort to get his final victory point. I too failed in my effort (it was an epic bargaining session with Paul as Dave tried to undermine my negotiations and Joe and Pete watched and laughed in wonder at the epic struggle unfolded) to buy a lottery ticket point for my final point--and I missed it by a card, apparently, since I looked at the card on top of the deck after the game to see what was there. If only I'd bought two cards ...

That last game had four players with 9 points in a war of attrition for numerous rounds of knights and robbers, trying for the last point that Dave finally got by building a settlement to join his four cities and one victory point card. That was a brutal but fun game. Paul actually had the knights in his hand to make a play for largest army, but lacked the time to play them.

The largest army was established only once in the evening. I can never tell if it is just our game night culture that makes it a rarer event or if it is not an optimal path to victory points. I lean to the latter explanation but I'm not sure.

Also, in the last game Joe could have broken Paul's longest road by building a settlement. But he did not. Given Joe's history of learning about that aspect of the rule, that took a lot of restraint to avoid throwing the game to Dave early on in that struggle!

Of note, in one game Pete broke all the rules of number diversity by banking it all on 5 and 8 in one game (and 10, too, but that was not much of a factor), and thrived on those numbers. Amazing what works sometimes!

Also of note, Dave won the pre-game roll for order of placement all three games, leaving me in the double-placement position all three times as well.

I'm more hazy on game details than usual so feel free to add your notes.

I will be eating taco pie and taco soup (and tacquitos)  all week, it seems. Let's hope the unit next to me isn't sold or rented to a hot single woman in that time. I'd make a bad first impression, I'm sure.

I like the speed of play of vanilla Catan over Dave's seafarers variation (and I looked at other variations to see if they looked worthy of buying, but none do to me), but we'll have to put that in the mix. Perhaps after a couple games of regular we can clear the decks and switch to seafarers if players are interested!

And as always, no worries if we get more attendees than player spots. As host I'd sit out the first game (but not beer and snacks) and take notes on player strategies and weaknesses. Then we can rotate the winner out of games. And if necessary I have other games that handle more than 6 players if anyone wants to try that route.

Weather was great for driving, so nobody took up my standing offer to crash here for the night for safety sake (and leftover breakfast taco pie).

Fun games, gents! We'll do it again in March!

Beej