June 2022 Game Night (Twilight Zone Detour)

We had game night three weeks ago at Casa Joe's. As an interlude before Joe no doubt finishes and forwards to me his Encyclopedia Catania Volume W-Z, let me add my angle on the oddest game we may ever witness.

Imagine my (this is Beej, now) position in game 2 before things ... happened.

I had 10 points, including the harbor master and longest road. Everyone else had 4 points each. Nobody was close to challenging either of my bonus cards. I had a secure building spot with the required road in place within a safe perimeter and needed to build a single settlement. Or even promote a city depending on my card mix.

Looks good. Right? I am unable to assume victory or defeat. But even I figured that in any reasonable path I had the game. But this was no mere series of unfortunate events.

If you too thought that, you'd be confused and perhaps overly confident in the concept of "probability."

This was ... the Klaus Zone.

When the trade blockade began, the human wave of robber assaults began. At first I disregarded it. Stuff happens. But they kept coming. One or two every round. As the robbers kept coming, I started counting. There were 14! I lost all my cards to robbers, at one point.

And then toss in a few knights. 

All told, I lost 29 cards to losses or failure to acquire. 

It was as if the hand of Klaus reached down, made a fist, and had its way with me. 

And not in a good way.

I remember the moment I said out loud, "I think we know where this is going. I'm going to lose both cards." Mind you, I still tried to win. Like I said, I never rule out victory. Yet it felt like Toronto 2019.

Just saying.

I was unable to do more than build a couple roads to delay losing longest road to Pete while Joe built to take the harbor master. I could never accumulate the cards for a single settlement. Or a city upgrade. Or even a lottery ticket!  

I wasn't even tempted to switch dice. This was beyond that. And my foes were obviously unwilling to do so.

And keep in mind that when I'd lost both bonus cards, the 7s stopped flowing in. I was then able to reclaim the longest road with a guarantee it could not be lost. But it was too late to do more. I mean, if the already long string of 7s had stopped while I still had the harbor master card, I probably could have secured that. And then getting the longest road back would have put me to 11.

Good God.

It was truly fascinating to observe. I think Joe, Paul, and Pete were as stunned as I was to watch it unfold. I honestly wouldn't have believed such a run of bad luck could happen. But we have been playing for many, many years now. Such a thing was bound to happen at the spooky end of the distribution curve with an infinity of games played. 

So yeah, that was great. But I won't lie. It would have been more fun to watch it happen to somebody else. 

Anyway. I went home and burned all the Mega Catan pieces just in case that is what offended Klaus. 

Gosh. I sure hope Klaus wasn't actually upset that game night was held outside of Ann Arbor ...

Oh, overall I won one game, Joe won two, and Pete snagged a win.

And a meme:

It was all fun. Joe was a great host, as usual. Although I'm still having trouble sitting on hard surfaces. 

Next month back to Casa Beej!