May 2018 Game Night

Gentlemen,

Joe, Paul and Pete joined me for a night of glorious gaming. Happy "hour" started promptly at 7:30; and the games started at 8:00.

We had pizza (half bacon and half pepperoni); corn chips, salsa, and cheese sauce, and cookies. While the corn chip supply seemed small, there were vast reserves in the cupboard. But I've learned that when pizza is served, it seems to crowd out the other salty snacks! So to keep me from having too many chip leftovers, I put a smaller amount out initially. For beer we had some premium beers left from prior game nights and the house Labatt Blue Light.

We tried the "Rivers of Catan" variant and stuck with it through the night. It seemed to open up more avenues than the fish variant from last month, based on the use of gold as a resource; but nobody seemed to have an opinion on the superiority of one over the other. Unless you say the options edge was a vote of superiority.

But I will say that the gold use in the rivers variant opening up the option to trade gold for sheep seems a slippery slope to pimping.

Game one was won by Pete who rode to glory at the head of the largest army. Nobody could stop him and we all had to settle for the hope that all the development cards he had face down were worthless economic cards rather than knights. Indeed, two were worthless (at that stage for him) but one was a knight to give him his third. So none of our hopes to win if he started playing road building or something panned out.

The game seemed pretty competitive although Joe discovered the agony of being stuck as the lone "poor settler" for virtually the entire game. The person with the least gold gets that distinction (ties allowed), suffering a minus 2 victory point penalty. Ouch.

Note that gold is acquired mostly by building along or over a river. Resources can be used to buy gold. And gold can be used to buy resources.

The person with the most gold gets the card marking them as the richest, and a +1 victory point bonus.

An interesting wrinkle in that game was that I was denied victory because to spend the gold to get the resource to build the final point with a settlement would have dropped my gold count low enough to get a poor settler card and so lose 2 points.

Game two was interesting in that after game 1 where spending gold seemed common, people seemed to hang on to gold more. The lure of being the richest wasn't as great as the fear of being the poorest. In this game I managed to get to the tenth point with the wealthy settler card. Was this the game Pete had 2 victory point cards down? Might have been game 3.

Game three was far more violent with robbers being sent to pillage more often. Often against me. In fairness, that started when I had the wealthy settler card, 5 points worth of cities/settlements, and was clearly on the path to having the largest army and longest road with nobody able to challenge me on the latter and the former being difficult unless time could be bought.

Peter bought that time by buying gold, and stealing away my top wealth status (and victory point). That did deprive me of the win that turn as I finally connected my very long road and played the third knight.

But nobody could grab the 10th point before my turn came around again. I thought I was stuck until I realized I could spend gold to buy the resources needed with no worries about getting the poor settler card. So the largest army thundered down the longest road, allowing me to kill and pillage, while hearing the lamentation of the women.

The latter is sadly my usual non-game night Saturday night experience.

Joe and Paul celebrated with their now-near traditional Bailey's on ice.

Anyway, a fun time. All the games were pretty competitive, and each game was shorter than the previous. In one game Joe noted he came within striking distance of winning despite thinking he was doomed early on from the geography. We wrapped up at 12:45 as people needed to get home. So no Game of Thrones. Thanks for playing and come again!

Of note, Pete spent the night without a cold brew due to a "dental problem." Sometimes he had an odd expression as if the rest of us weren't as witty and insightful in our banter as we know we are by the 3rd beer at the latest. All efforts to get him a warm gin with a human hair in it to avoid the cold failed.

None of the engineering types even pretended to collect data for a statistical analysis of the rolls.

We almost had a new Paul rule about being nice to avoid future pain, but couldn't decide if it was more of an axiom than a rule and so let that slide. Isolated and feeble calls for a Beej Rule were quickly and quite justly slapped down with a healthy dose of disgust for even bringing it up. I'm sure Sober Pete remembers that exactly as I do.

I suggested we really need an Anderson Rule which all considered brilliant in its ability to MIRV the pain with one shot.

And Joe took his quest for the perfect dice to a new level with his smallest die/largest die combination. There were many changes. In one of his changes he went non-dots and rolled a practice roll of "7", yet despite that result kept the pair--and promptly rolled a "7" on its one and only game use. I used the standard dice all game and Paul was content to use the golden dice that he oddly kept near his pile of gold (hmm, did he really have as much gold as we thought?)

Also, next month is scheduled to be an "away" game at Joe's in South Lyon. Joe hosted his first last October, so he still has 2 of 3 warnings to go from the association before eviction proceedings may commence. More to follow on that, of course. "That" being the game night and not eviction proceedings, of course.

And please, whoever took a spoon with them, just bring it back next month and no hard feelings.

Beej/Brian