January 2020 Game Night

We had game night last night despite threatening weather that nearly led to cancellation. Which would have been a first for game night.

We dined on Cottage Inn pizza (bacon and pepperoni plus sausage and ham), potato chips plus green onion and ranch dips, chocolate chip cookies and sugar-free lemon wafers, plus the house brew Labatt Blue Light. I also bought a 6-pack of Bass Ale out of guilt for those making the trip in the less-than-ideal weather. Tony brought a unique porter based on peanut butter. It is the Devil's brew. Thanks Tony!

Paul and Pete had their usual special dietary needs available but Paul did not consume his--not even the Baileys!

We played with the harbormaster variant which is pretty much the default now. So victory requires 11 points. That's ELEVEN points.

I was orange, Tony was blue, Paul was white, Pete was red, and Dave came in late as brown.

This is the end of game 1 on the small board.

This was a wheat-challenged board, as you can see. One result was that nobody bought any development cards. Bricks and rocks were good. Sheep was adequate.

I blame that robber spending so much time on my woods 6 for denying me the win. I got ahead and the Pete Rule was invoked. I needed to defend my longest road from Tony who could have topped my 9-road stretch if he wanted to. I extended to 11 which meant he could only tie me. But my only hope was to build one more city, build a settlement (which Paul killed with a build that cut my road by one), or buy a point card. And what are the odds of that Unicorn appearing?!

I had lots of rocks in the game, often trading 4:1 at bank rates. But when I needed them at the end?

I lingered in front too long, and Tony stormed by with his harbormaster card and 11 points. I had 10. Paul had 7. Pete had 6.

Of note, I tried to promote a city to a city and the honest bunch demonstrated a preference for mockery rather than letting it go and perhaps commending me on my good choice.

I blame the Devil Beer. For that and an unfortunate ability to say things I meant to just think.

This is the end of game 2 as we switched to the big board expecting Dave to arrive. With good timing he did arrive as we were still in set up.

Resources were reasonable this game. I struggled to find room to expand, as did Pete. My major move was expanding to the coveted 12, 12, 11 vertex. On such a foundation I was unable to ride the dice to victory.

Dave marched across the board and I thought his road was unmatched. Tony's road was longer than it looked, actually, despite the side spurs. And despite that it looked like Tony was driving to victory with his harbormaster card. At that point Dave and Tony each had 10 points.

And then Dave made the classic desperation play of buying a development card sure that nothing he could do during Interstellar Build phases could give him victory before Tony could get the 11th point.

And he drew the victory point card. That's living the dream Dave! Who among us hasn't hoped for this! He's not the first to achieve that, but it is a rarity.

Tony finished with 10, of course. Pete had 7. Paul had 7. And I had 5. I think I had a year of plenty card unplayed. And did Dave play the only knight card of the entire night in this game?

This is the end of game 3.

Let me just say that Dave sincerely believed that the wheat port I settled (and placed first, I'll add) was within his nine-dashed line, so to speak. He even sent the robber at that hex early in the game when I think I had 4 points! The outrage! And when it left finally, Pete put it back. Even though I had no resource cards to steal! JUST TO MAKE THE NEWSLETTER AND GET A CHEAP LAUGH!

I shouldn't reward that sort of thing, but who would I be kidding? I live for such things in writing the newsletter.

Eventually I moved the robber to one of Dave's hexes and our feud petered out.

Meanwhile as this played out, Paul was vewy, vewy quiet. And then Dave said, "Does anybody notice that Paul is close to winning?"

We had not. He had 9 points.

Which worried me, because I had 2 victory point cards, amazingly enough. I thought I had a shot at winning this game with 8 points showing on the board, including my longest road. But I was about to waste that kind of luck strategic foresight in buying two development cards?

And so like every other victor this night, I came from behind to stop the frontrunner. I built my city to have 9 on the board, and flipped my two victory point cards. Huzzah!

Paul had 9. Pete had 9. Dave had 8 with the harbormaster card. Tony had 6.

We wrapped up at about midnight in favor of watching Game of Thrones Season 5 episode 6, which lacked certain ... attributes ... that we have come to expect. But some of us  who have watched the series already recognized one actor who in the next episode would meet our expectations.

Funny enough, Paul won every pre-game die rolling for first placement honors during the evening, even when it went to three tie breakers. And Pete must have set a record for building with multiple 4:1 and 3:1 trades. Inexplicably, I was the only one to use the dice tower.

And as Dave noted, at least my subliminal messaging kept Pete from repeating his running the table a couple months ago.

And here's the latest addition to the Catan slide show from Dave.

And finally, for Dave who had never heard of Bif Naked:



Thanks for all who came to Game Night! It remains my social event of the month. Nobody ever takes me up on my offer to spend the night (story of my life) in case travel is not advised for weather or other reasons related to Devil brews (hey, I wasn't the only one oddly affected!).

I assume Joe will want to host next month. And Dave is eager to host as well.

I really need to clamp down on this horrible trend of making me drive to game night.



Take advantage of the comment function to add your own perspective or to correct my misconceptions (any errors are the fault of the Devil Brew, I swear!).

See you next month somewhere.