April 2019 Game Night

Gentlemen,

Thanks to Joe, Paul, Pete, and Tony who joined me for April game night last night. Dave was supposed to show but instead he told his family he was going to game night and instead hung out on the Diag all day for Hash Bash. Apparently.

We dined on pizza (one with pepperoni and sausage and one with bacon and ham), apple pie-zza, chocolate chip cookies, Peanut M & Ms, sugar-free cookies, potato chips with two dips, and of course the house brew, Labatt Blue Light. Pete contributed a 6-pack of Flamingo Fruit Fight, which wasn't bad at all. Thanks Pete!

And thank you all for not spilling anything on my barely 72-hour-old carpet. One thing I'll say is that after the great emptying out of my first floor for that, I am almost sure the two white road pieces I lost aren't in my home. Perhaps behind stairwell shelf. Or maybe in my car after a transport. Or perhaps in a vacuum cleaner bag I will not go through. But nobody even mentions the replacement roads I made at this point. So we're still good to go!

We began happy hour at 7:00 and waited until 8:05 to start gaming (Dave, you got 5 minutes extra!).

We continued to use the harbormaster variant which seems popular. I'm not sure if this speeds or slows games. Hard to say because last night we seemed to have really odd resource allocation on the maps.

Big picture, I won one game and Tony won two.

Pete's reign of terror seemingly cemented last month was finally ended as the Dice Gods forsake him, bestowing 4s and 11s and other assorted numbers to his foes. But he was reduced to victualing and building obscene sculpture art with his unused game pieces. Paul, don't enable that sort of thing.

There was much rejoicing.

As for Tony? Well I warned you guys he has decades of wargaming experience. That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered gamer you ever set eyes on! Look, that player's got a vicious streak a mile wide! He's a killer! He'll do you up a treat, mate. He's got huge, sharp-- eh-- he can leap about-- look at the dice! I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, he's just a harmless childhood friend from Detroit, isn't he? Well, it's always the same. I always tell them--and now he won 2 of 3 last night.

But I digress.

Game one started with  Tony getting cut off at his initial placement. I got the blame despite being one of three players besieging his settlement. Tony exacted his revenge on me by extending a road to deny me link up for a shot at longest road. Pete held the longest road while Paul seized harbormaster as Joe tried to contest that title. With my only hope being that title I extended to the sea, building on a single resource 11 and then a doubl-11 port. Amazingly I built to 4 harbor points there, claiming the title and winning with 12 points. Huzzah! It was a game of ups and downs. I liked my initial position but then couldn't do anything until I finally made a race to the sea. I believe it may be the first time I had the harbormaster card. Pete had 10 points, Joe had 9, Paul had 8, and Tony, lulling us, had 6. The game had the rocks oddly shielded by deserts and coasts making them less usable than one would think. Development cards weren't used that much.

Game 2 had weak bricks and variable rocks. I staked out the best rocks and good wood hexes but was denied victory. Tony and Paul had near monopolies on brick while Joe staked out commanding positions in the vast plain of wheat somebody managed to construct to support his isolated wheat port. I managed to build exactly two roads this game. Pete at least had a monopoly card but otherwise the cards were little-used this game. With his longest road reaching even into Joe's amber waves (okay, that sounds like a violation of personal space, but it wasn't), Tony took the game with 11 points. I had 6, Pete had 5, Paul had 4, and Joe with his harbormaster card had 8.

Game 3 had really poor brick resources and another expanse of wheat. I used my coveted Double-P placement to stake out wheat plus the wheat port that sadly was a single-sheep resource hex location. But it was worth a shot. This was the game that the obviously bored Pete built his Nazca Lines drawing seemingly to beseech the Dice Gods to grant him favor after his evening-long punishment. Yeah, that didn't happen. My strategy was actually working fairly well until a 7, a Tony monopoly card, and an odd Joe reaction to my building a settlement along his road so I could secure more wheat (it was an 8 hex!). I was a turn away from wresting the longest road from Tony to deny him victory when he promoted to a city and won with 11. I had but 7 but with only one city I would have been in excellent shape if I had grabbed longest road. Alas, it was not to be. Pete had 5, Joe had 9 with his harbormaster, Paul had 8.

Nobody made a play for largest army in any game and I don't think anyone drew a victory point card all night.

And Paul and Joe had there usual Bailey's.

My apologies for not reminding Pete and Paul that there special dietary needs were in the refrigerator and freezer, respectively.

We played but 3 games, wrapping up at 12:30 to retire for season 4, episode 10 of game of thrones. Crossboooooooow. And the evening wrapped up at 1:45. And everyone now knows not to feed me milk products after midnight.

But perhaps I shared too much.

Thanks to all those who attended. You guys make it the social event of the month, of course. If anyone has corrections or additions, please feel free to make this vital historical document reflect reality a little more. I say going from 98% to 99% accurate is well worth your efforts.

Also, I hereby vow to build a dice tower for next game night! We had much talk of this. Really. Why would I make up something that nerdy? Although I will deny it if an attractive women queries me about it. I'll throw you guys under the bus so fast your heads will spin--before dropping out of the dice tower, of course. I don't need no stinking 3D printer or "miter box" you engineer types talk about. You still haven't carried out your probability study of the games, have you?

But I digress and share too much, perhaps.

See you in May!

Beej