Slightly incomplete

Blokus rounded out the gaming for the day (November 28th). There were four of us: Manny, Jake, Chris, and Charles.

If you look at the last entry for Blokus, you'll see that we were missing a piece. It's really quite unfair to play with one person having a missing piece (definite advantage!). Last time, we used a piece of a napkin to fill in for that, but it was a horrible workaraound. Jake came up with the idea of having ALL the other colors remove the same piece.

This is the piece that is missing. So, we pulled that same piece from all the colors, and played with a slightly smaller set. I guessed that this would make the game too easy; that we would ALL be able to get all our pieces on the board. This turned out to be far from the case.

Here's how it went down:
Jake got blocked in first -- that turned out to be OK since he needed to get to class.
Manny got blocked in on the very next turn.
Chris managed to get his last piece down.
Charles had one piece left, but couldn't find it a home.

Blokus results
Chris	15 points for going out!
Charles	-5 penalty for leftover squares
Jake	-18 penalty for leftover squares
Manny	-25 penalty for leftover squares

Hopefully the missing piece will be in the mail today, and we shall be intact again! Blokus is a good game. We do get rather aggresive at times, though... we enjoy a disturbing schadenfreude of totally blocking a person in. Proof of this: Charles suggested, "I say, 'You suck' when playing this game more than any other one we play."

King Tut!

Our next game on November 28th was a 5-player version of Tutankhamen. Manny, Cathy, Jake, Chris, and Charles played.

The game takes a little while to set up -- you have to make a meandering path to a pyramid. While we placed tiles, Charles went to buy some food. Manny and Charles had never played the game before so we had to explain it to them. We had to do it twice, since Charles was fetching food.

Once the path is laid out, each person takes a turn moving his/her pawn along it. You don't roll dice or anything, you just move as far along the path as you want. You take the artifact tile on which you land.

You are trying to make sets of tiles, some tiles are in sets of 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8. Whomever holds to MOST of a set when it is fully collected gets to give away gold pieces equal to the number of tiles in the set. Whomever holds the second most gets to relieve herself of half that value. You are trying to be the first to give away all your gold.

With 5 players, you each start with 16 gold pieces.

The game went like this...

Manny completed the first set with a scarab (value=1).
Manny and Jake then split a set of cats (value=2), so they each got rid of 1.
Manny completed another scarab set (value=1).
Cathy completed a set of cats by herself (value=2).
Jake completed a set of Jackals (value=6). Chris had a couple and got to toss in 3.
Charles and Manny split Jackals (value=6), so they each got throw in 3.
Charles (I think it was Charles) bought a Burial Mask from Jake, so Jake got to get rid of a coin.
Cathy grabbed the last Green Burial Mask. She had 3, Jake had 2, Charles had 2, Manny had 1. It looked like she won that outright -- but Jake had 2 wild cards that he applied to the set -- he then had 4 making HIM win outright -- he got to toss in his last 8 coins, winning the game.

Here's how we ended up:

Tutankhamen final results
player	coins left
Jake	0 (winner!)
Manny	7
Cathy	8
Charles	13
Chris	13

Nifty game. Clever strategies.

The Buzzard gets Beaten

A 4-player game of Beat the Buzzard ensued -- it was the 2nd game played on November 28. Manny, Prof. Cathy Willms, Jake, and Chris played.

We've played this before (see below), and it's always a fun time. It's really a simple game to play, with some psychological strategy that can make your head hurt.

We actually ended the first round with 2 pairs of tied bid cards -- the "-2" card didn't score during the first round. We had a bunch of ties, and actually had a full four-way tie at least one other time. The tied cards are what makes the game both fun and frustrating at the same time.

Here's how the game went down:

Beat the Buzzard Scores
First round	Jake	15	Cathy	13	Chris	11	Manny	3
Second round	Chris	20	Jake	18	Cathy	1	Manny	1
Third round	Cathy	23	Chris	17	Jake	9	Manny	-9
Fourth round	Cathy	20	Chris	15	Jake	3	Manny	2

Starting another game session!

Chris and Jake started November 28th's session with a game of Continuo. Jake was there waiting at the table when Chris came over.

Continuo is a simple tile-laying game, where you are trying to connect as many squares of the same color together. You can make long lines for big scores, but, often, that leaves your opponent with even greater scores. It's a nice balance of luck and strategy.

Manny drifted in, as well as Prof. Cathy Willms... SO, Jake and Chris agreed to cut the game short -- we had about 10 tiles left to play when we decided to cut it off so that others could play.

The score:
Chris - 308
Jake - 278

Note: Chris had the highest scoring play with a 43!

A Square Deal

We ended our Monday, November 21, 2005 game session with a 4-player game of Blokus.

Blokus has a bunch of tiles that look like they've been ripped from a game of Tetris. Players take turns placing their pieces on the board. Any new piece you place must touch a previously played piece only corner-to-corner. Two pieces of the same color can never be side-to-side. Each player is simply trying to put down all of his or her 21 peces of different sizes and patterns.

When we began, Chris was horrified to find that one of the yellow pieces was missing! We used a piece of paper to fill in the blank. Passers-by couldn't help but pick on our ghettoized replacement. (Follow-up note: He called the manufacturer Educational Insights... a new piece is on the way! They have AMAZING customer service.)

Here's how it played out:

Blokus Scores
player	squares left
Charles	9
Chris	9
Christine	31
Jake	42

So, Charles and Chris tied with 9 squares left -- they were able to get the most on the board.

After the game was over, Jake noticed that Chris could have finshed if he played a 5-square piece instead of a 4-square piece on his final turn! But alas, due to his foolishness, the tie stands...

Fun, Fast, sometimes Frustrating

Also on Monday, November 21, 2005, we got in a game of Beat the Buzzard. It started with 3 people, ended up with 5.

This is a game that has a lot of other names -- it's been remade many times. It's a simple concept -- each person has a hand of 15 cards, numbered 1 through 15. There is a deck of cards in the middle, valued 1 through 10, and -1 through -5. On each turn, players secretly use one of their cards to bid on the center card. For positive valued cards, the highest card claims it. For negative cards, the lowest bid card gets it.

The twist - any cards that tie cancel each other out. So, it's often not good to play your highest cards on the highest values - it might end up being eliminated accidentally by another player.

The psychological implcations of this are huge. If I play a high card, will someone else cancel it out? If I don't, will someone outbid me? Is everyone else thinking exactly what I'm thinking? It can cause some serious brain pain.

You simply add up the values of all the cards you got.

The first couple games had three of us. (Scores are listed in order, winners first)

Beat the Buzzard Scores
First round	Chris	42	Charles	6	Jake	-8
Second round	Chris	19	Charles	16	Jake	5

Then, Matt joined...

Beat the Buzzard Scores
First round	Chris	23	Matt	14	Charles	4	Jake	-1
Second round	Charles	29	Chris	9	Matt	7	Jake	-5
Third round	Charles	13	Jake	12	Chris	11	Matt	4

THEN, Christine joined...

Beat the Buzzard Scores
First round	Charles	23	Matt	16	Christine	10	Jake	0	Chris	-9
Second round	Jake	23	Chris	14	Christine	4	Charles	2	Matt	-3
Third round	Jake	11	Chris	11	Charles	10	Matt	8	Christine	0
Fourth round	Jake	14	Matt	10	Charles	8	Christine	6	Chris	2

Check this out, Charles is the only player to NEVER come in last.

Beat the Buzzard is probably the most outrageous fun we've had in a game. When you get stepped on by other players, it's annoying, frstrating, and really, really, hysterical. The game goes very quickly -- it has a great "Just one more!" appeal.

Possibly our favorite game

The next game played on Monday, November 21, 2005 was Samurai... there were 3 of us.

We brought this one out as Charles finished a game of chess next door -- he was dying for a run through of this beautiful gem of a game. We do love playing Samurai. It's another Reiner Knizia designed game. The game board is actually a map of Japan broken up into hexagons. There are three kinds of pieces on the board - Tall Hats that represent the military, Buddhas that represent the religious groups, and Rice Fields that represent the farming community.

Each player lays tiles down in order to exert infuence over an area. When the area is surrounded by influence, whichever player has the mst influence wins the piece(s) in that area. (There's a little more to it that that, but it's easier to explain if you actually are in the presence of the pieces.)

To win, you need to have the majority of 2 of the 3 different kinds of pieces. So, -just having a lot of pieces is not good enough - you have to try to balance the pieces you are grabbing to make sure you have more of each kind. If no one has the most in 2 out of 3, you see who has the most of 1 of the sets. If that is only 1 person, that person wins. If it's more than 1 person, you compare the total pieces aside from each of their winning sets. Who ever has the most of those OTHER pieces wins. Deciding the winner can take a few moments!

Here's how our game went down:

Samurai Results
player	high hats	buddhas	rice fields
Jake	3	5	3
Chris	3	1	4
Charles	3	4	3

Charles usual does quite well in Samurai, but this time did not fare well at all. Let's look at the results: No one had the most high hats. Jake had the most buddhas. Chris had the most rice fields.

So, now we have to see who wins between Jake and Chris. Apart from Jake's buddhas, he had 6 other pieces. Chris had 4 other pieces. Jake won!!

A Truly Ingenious Game

The second game we played on Monday, November 21, 2005 was Ingenious -- 2 of us played.

It was just Chris and Jake for ths game.

Ingenious is a great tile-laying game created by Reiner Knizia - who is among the greatest game designers working today. The game came out last year.

The board is basically a honeycomb of hexagons. The tiles played are two conected hexagons. When you lay down a tile, you recieve points for any like-colored lines of hexagons the radiate from that tile in any direction. There are six different colors, and they are scored seperately on a scoring card in front of each player.

Knizia always throws in a twist -- in this game, your score is equal to whichever color you have the least of. So, you are constantly trying to beef up your lowest scores, while also trying to block off lines of colors of your opponent's low scoring colors. If you get more than 18 points of any color, you get to lay an extra tile, so it can be beneficial to work on your high scores, too.

Here's how the scorecards looked at the end:

Ingenious Score Card (a "+" means the score went off the card)
player	red	green	blue	orange	yellow	purple
Chris	12	+	+	16	8	8
Jake	6	7	8	9	12	+

Chris won with a lowest score of 8, vs. Jake's 6.

WordSearch - first entry!

The first results posting is here! We've been playing games in the club for a while now, but we hadn't been recording the results. We kicked ideas around for a while, and have landed here. We'll see how it works.

The first game from Monday, November 21, 2005 was WordSearch, we ended up with 3 players.
It started with just Jake and Chris, but we flagged down Manny, and roped him into the game right after we had each gone once, making it a perfect time to sneak in a third player. We explained the game quickly to Manny, who'd never played it before, and he caught on quickly.

WordSearch is a game that's been around for a while. It's sort of like Scrabble turned on its head. The letter tiles get randomly placed on the board, and on your turn you attempt to form a word by sliding the tiles in a straight line so they end up making a word. That word gets scored, and removed from the board -- it leaves less tiles to choose from, but more room to move the remaining tiles. To score, just add up the value of the tiles and multiply by the number of letters in the word. So, longer words can increase in value quickly.

The game is paced well -- the beginning has few moves, so it starts out slow and challenging. When there is an equal amount of letters and space, letters fly furiously all over the place. The possibilities for big words are quite likely here. Then, the game comes to a slow halt as you run out of letters.

Here's the result!

WordSearch scores
Chris	205
Jake	136
Manny	108

Chris had the highest scoring play, "WRECK", worth 45 points.

Welcome!

This is the web site and journal for the NEW CCM Strategic Gaming Club.

We formed in September 2005, and are dedicated to playing new, innovative, strategy board/card games. There's no Monopoly here, folks. No Yahtzee.

We are using this web page to record the results of our Monday game sessions - both the winnings, as well as anecdotes of the game play.

We will also be posting reviews of the games. And maybe some profiles of the players. And anything else we can conjure up. The sky's the limit.


Welcome to game central!