And how 'bout we total up those scores.

My mathematical obsessive compulsive brain needed to make a summary of the scores for the year.

Notice that the columns read "WINS" and "NON-WINS". I did this because we play a lot of games with more than two people. A player may have come in a very close second in a game with 5 people. I don't consider this a "LOSS", but just a "NON-WIN".

Also, I added a column for win percentage, and an adjusted win percentage. I added the adjusted percentage to compensate for the number of games played. It's really not fair for a person to come in, play ONE game, win it, and then be credited with the best win percentage in the bunch. SO I simply multiplied the win percentage by the total number of games played. This is a rather simple approach, and I'm certain we can come up with something better, but it'll do for now.

Here's the leaderboard at the end of our first semester...

PLAYER	WINS	NON-WINS	TOTAL GAMES	WIN %	ADJUSTED WIN % (x TOTAL GAMES)
Chris	21	19	40	52.5	2100
Jake	10	29	39	25.6	998.4
Charles	5	8	13	38.5	500.5
Thomas	2	3	5	40	200
Eugene	1	6	7	14.3	100.1
Don	1	3	4	25	100
Igor	1	0	1	100	100
Matt	0	8	8	0	0
Manny	0	4	4	0	0
Christine	0	4	4	0	0
Cathy	0	2	2	0	0

After hours Blokus.

After the game of Scarab Lords described below, Eugene and Jake talked me into running back up to my office to get Blokus. When I returned, they convinced Don to join us for some 4-player Blokus (as I've said before: "The best way to play!").

We managed to get in four games before Jake had to head out for his Microbio final, and Eugene to his business class final.

In the first game, Jake got boxed in painfully quickly. He suggested that he threw the game so he could stop and study his Microbiology notes. But we all know better.

Here's how the game went down:
Chris: -8
Eugene: -13
Don: -18
Jake: -30

Don had a pretty good showing for his first game, really. Maybe we were going easy on him because of it.

No such luck in the second game! In fact, as soon as the inevitable melee in the middle of the board happened, Don blurted out "People are trying to kill me!" We really aren't that vicious, although the slashing of tires was threatened numerous times during the game. Seriously, it was. I mean it. I really do.

Here's how Game #2 turned out:
Eugene: -7
Chris: -9
Jake: -18
Don: -19

Jake decided to get a picture of the bunch of us. Eugene's on the left, expecting to win, Don is thinking hard in the middle, his face blocked as he was trying to figure out where to cram his piece, and Chris is holding up a couple of pieces he really wanted to get rid of. Jake is taking the picture, but you can see the large pile of his red pieces on the table.

Here's some scores from game #3:
Don: -10
Chris: -13
Eugene: -17
Jake: -24

After 3 games, Don is already sitting in the winner's circle. Not bad.

We managed to squeak in one more... just to give you another example of our aggressive gameplay, halfway through the game, as Jake was placing a large piece which would have blocked a couple of players, he decided against it saying, "Nah, that's not enough screwage."

[The chess club has t-shirts which say something to the effect of "Our only goal is to mate!" I'm sure we could come up with a similar slogan that includes the word 'screwage'.]

Results of Game #4:
Chris: -8
Don: -19
Eugene: -24
Jake: -28

---

What the heck, why don't we total up the scores for the four games...
Chris: -37
Eugene: -61
Don: -66
Jake: -100

And, for a little post-gaming analysis: The best score belongs to Eugene with a -7. Chris, though he only won 2 of the games, had THREE games with a score of -8. Also of note: Don, though it was his first set of Blokus games, always scored over -20. We'll just say that Jake was distracted by his impending Microbiology final...

Some after hours Scarabs.

I (Chris) knew Jake was studying for his Microbiology final down in the Math lab. I also knew he was going to need a big break. So I dragged down my copy of Scarab Lords and talked him into a quick game.

It turned out to be NOT a quick game. I think we are both starting to see some of the strategic possibilities of this game. It's rather impressive.

Jake still had a couple misconceptions on win conditions, and thought he had one at least once during the game. He was dominating the board for a while, owning all of the right side of the board (from the point of view in the picture). He had actually run out of cards and was on the verge of losing due to that. Somehow, Chris managed to eliminated his power from two of the regions on that right side, claiming dominance in two regions on each side -- which is the main win condition. The picture shows the board at the end of the game.

I say again -- I like this game. Not just because I have been doing well. There is a lot to it, and you have to cover a lot of ground with little resources. It is well put together. There is a lot to remember -- it sort of helps if you recite your phases and what you can do during each as you play. I think one or two more times through could give me more of the flow. I could see this game being less fun playing against an unworthy opponent, or someone who was unwilling to concentrate on a lot of things at once.

But to me: it's fun. Strategic and vicious and frustrating and beautiful and fun.

Semester 1 - Success!

Well, we are at the end of the semester. Today (Mon., Dec. 19) marks the last official Strategic Game Club gameday!

We had a great semester - we played 15 different games (see the navigation bar at left), and forced about a dozen people to enjoy themselves for a couple hours each Monday.

Thanks to Cathy Willms for coming up with the idea!

Thanks to Jake for carrying it along, as well as designing the web site logo!

I am certainly looking forward to next year...

Blokus-fest '05!

We played a lot of Blokus today... (Monday, December 19, 2005).




The first game featured Jake, Igor and Chris battling it out for supremacy of the Blok! Jake got knocked out first, Chris soon after, and Igor managed to sneak in a few pieces at the end to win.

Final score:
Igor: -11
Chris: -18
Jake: -24

Here's Igor presenting the winning board, and Jake pondering as to how he got shut out so quickly. Notice the way we block off the outer 3 rows of two sides the board to make it less easy for 3 players.




Igor's wife stopped by and swept him away from us. Selena filled in the gap, though... so played continued with game number TWO!

Here's a photo of the board at the end of that game. Selena was shut out quickly, but really did well for her first game. Especially against Jake and me (Chris), who are two rather brutal and aggressive Blokus players. Jake held on for a while, but Chris managed to find some corners to get all of his pieces in except for his 5-in-a-straight-line piece.

Final Score:
Chris: -5
Jake: -13
Selena: -29





Selena's ride showed up right as we finished game number. Eagle-eye Jake saw Eugene drifting by and quickly convinced him to sit in. Game number 3 begins!!

It looked like Eugene was dominating the board from the beginning - at least that's how Jake and Chris saw it. Perhaps that is why he got trapped so quickly -- he turned into a target. This game turned out to have what is probably the most leftover pieces in any 3-player Blokus game we've played. It was really a sloppily aggressive game...

Final Score:
Chris: -19
Jake: -28
Eugene: -32





Jake, Eugene, and Chris jumped right back into another game. We played a little bit better this time. But not much -- the relentless, aggressive block-and-tackle showed itself again in this game.

The picture to the left is how the board ended...

Final Score:
Jake: -14
Eugene: -21
Chris: -23

...a very different result from the last game. It really shows how this game has such great replay value. Decisions made early in the game, though they certainly will not doom you completely, can really affect the end-game result.





Blokus was intended to be played by 4 folks at once. We make adjustments to play with two or three, but FOUR is the best. So, when Pat drifted by, we weren't going to let him get away before we got in a game of Blokus as it was meant to be played. Game number 5 had Jake, Eugene, Chris, and Pat in a Blokus battle royale!

Much cursing was to follow...

The picture here shows not only the end of the game, but also the leftover pieces, as well as one of the most important auxiliary items of the Strategic Gaming Club: a cup of coffee.

Here's the numbers from the last game of the semester:
Chris: -8
Jake: -9
Eugene: -14
Pat: -31

Pat did come in last, but like Selena above, this was his first time playing the game -- he really held on pretty well. He tried to carve out his own corner (he was Red in the lower right of the pic), but Jake (Yellow) managed to infiltrate his corral. Eugene (Blue) tried a strategy of long, thin, sneaky tendrils -- he was all over the board, but couldn't break into and dominate any area very well. Chris and Jake managed to ooze their way across much of the board, trying to always keep escape routes available. It's a tough balance -- once again an indication of the strategy, grace and beauty of Blokus.

Play like an Egyptian

Jake and I (Chris) started with a two-player game called Scarab Lords.

It plays like a collectible card game, but it has 2 pre-built decks -- there's no collecting or deck-building, it's all built for you. So it has the strategy of a CCG, but you can just jump right in.

I enjoyed this game quite a bit. Jake and I only got in 2 games, but I could see it being a quick game with some hearty strategy and a reasonable amount of luck. A game could probably be as short as 3 minutes, or as long as 20.

As is the case with most Reiner Knizia games, resources are at a premium. You each start with a hand of 6 cards... if you'd like more, you generally have to skip your whole turn. Some cards allow to draw new cards without turn-skipping.

Each turn then consists of 4 parts -- phase 0, phase 1, phase 2, and the Supremacy phase. The cards indicated during which phase they can be played. During the supremacy phase, the power and influence over different zones are investigated, and power shifts back and forth. When you have power, it actually can give you some extraordinary abilities, increasing your power and putting your opponent on the defensive quickly. The power in the game has a lot of momentum... especially if the person behind has a bad hand of cards -- skipping a whole turn to get good cards can be devastating.

Chris won two quick games against Jake, but then other players started to arrive, so we moved on.

Apparently, a sequel has been created: Minotaur Lords! And the games have the same rules, so you can crossover the sets of cards. Now it looks a little more like a CCG... *-sigh-* I guess I'll have to buy that one, too.

Quick update for Jake

Jake and Chris and Thomas jumped into a game of Torres. We only got through 2 of the 3 rounds, and Jake had to go fill in and teach a review class for a sick professor.

Here's a quick lowdown of the score at that point -- I know Jake was dying to know how it turned out...

Chris was in a sad last place with 78.

Jake was scored next, and his score was 89.

Then Thomas scored his pieces -- he also ended up with 89. Torres rules state that there is no tie, the last person to obtain the tie score gets an extra point to break the tie. Thomas wins with 90 points on a TECHNICALITY!!

That's gotta hurt.


Actually, to be honest, this score isn't very kosher, because we interrupted the game with a whole phase of the game left to play.



But, still. A technicality. Thomas had never even played the game before. He was even still kind of fuzzy on the rules. And HE got the extra point.

Ouch, man.




Ouch.

Buncha Blokus

After a quick game of Ingenious (described below) Jake started hunting for some more players, because he was itching to get in a game of Blokus. I (Chris) usually don't like to play games where there is no random element. Chess or checkers, where everyone starts with the exact same pieces and has a predictable amount of moves tend to bore me. Give me a tile picking game like Scrabble any day.

Even though Blokus has everyone starting with the same 21 pieces, it seems to have more of the feel of a Scrabble than Chess. So I like it.

Jake managed to round up Thomas, but everyone else was worried about their final projects and exams (bunch of whiny slackers, if you ask me). We VERY quickly brought Thomas up to speed, and jumped into the game.

Blokus is really built to be a 4-player game. In order to make it more for 3 players, we took the red set of pieces, and used to block off the outer three rows on two sides of the board. Otherwise, it would simply be too easy to get all the pieces on the board. This was sort of an experiment -- we played the game, and got some results.

Blokus, Game 1
Jake	-14
Chris	-18
Thomas	-25

We decided that we had constricted the board a mite too much, and used the red set to simply block off TWO outside rows on two sides of the board. This seemed to be just about right.

We played three more games -- here are the results (remember, you receive a negative point for each leftover square in the blocks you have remaining -- you get a positive score if you use all your tiles, but none of us managed to do that today).

Blokus, Game 2
Thomas	-5
Chris	-15
Jake	-19

Blokus, Game 3
Chris	-11
Jake	-19
Thomas	-24

Blokus, Game 4
Chris	-8
Thomas	-13
Jake	-13

Analysis: Jake did a lot better with constricted table, soundly winning Game #1. Thomas won with the widest margin, and with the lowest score in game #2. We all won at least one game, and Chris finished strong with 2 wins at the end -- but that last game was close, with both Jake and Thomas being only 5 points (probably only one playable piece!) behind, the closest spread of all the games.

We all spent a lot of time trying to really box each other in. That is a big part of the cleverness of this game -- trying to keep yourself in the clear while trying to trap your opponents. By the last game we were all trying to increase the 'you suck' factor of this game as much as we could. And we were fairly successful. The satisfaction of really good block is only outweighed by a really slick escape -- this game has boatloads of both.

Blokus is a top-notch game -- beautiful, tactile, simple and strategic. It's tough to find an abstract strategy game that has it all (especially for me -- I'm a sucker for a theme!) -- Blokus manages to effortlessly win you over.

Another off-day game

I bumped into Jake in the hall, right as I was thinking about finishing up for the day and going home, but he convinced me to stay and playa game or three (it was not hard). He and I played a game of Ingenious.

It's nice, now that we have built up a solid foundation (almost an entire semester!) of game playing, to be able to whip out a game, silently, diligently set up the board, and just get into it. Ingenious is a nice simple game, with plenty of strategy and randomness to make it ultimately replayable.

Here's how the scorecards looked at the end of this game:

Ingenious Score Card (a "+" means the score went off the card)
player	red	green	blue	orange	yellow	purple
Chris	+	9	11	12	9	+
Jake	+	9	6	6	3	+

The reds and purples flew off the board quick, but Jake just didn't have the luck of the draw to move his yellow very far.

Remember, in this game, your score is your LOWEST total on the board. SO: Chris' low of 9 in both green and yellow DEMOLISHED Jake's yellow 3.

An off-game-day find

Yesterday, I (Chris) had to run off campus for a bit, but when I was coming back I ran into Jake in the parking lot (literally! He was walking, I was driving, and I just swung my car right in front of him. He was unhurt, but complained about how dirty the car was...). We both had some time to kill, so games must be played!!

I have owned Torres for quite a while, and have never gotten to play it. The rules seemed rather complex, but it has won all sorts of awards in the US, Germany, and around the world. I knew it had to be good.

So, Jake and I pored over the rules, got the gist, and dove in.

It's great. Just great. Really fun. Really tactical.

You play as princes trying to build the best castles for your king, in order to inherit the crown. On each turn, you have a limited number of blocks you can build into your castles, and a limited number of action points to move knights around, or do other actions. Because of this limit, strategy abounds!

The game is played in three phases of a few turns each. At the end of each phase, each castle is scored. You take the surface area the castle covers, and multiply it by the height of the highest knight you have in that castle. So you have to sort of think and strategize in three dimensions. It can cause brain pain -- but is ultimately satisfying.

I can highly recommend this game. The first playthrough will seem a bit awkward (at least I thought so), but it does have a nice flow. There's a bunch of funky special rules, but they seem to make sense in an odd way once you've played the game.

I didn't record the exact scores, but I do recall -- Jake KILLED me in the first game. I won the second game by a less, but still comfortable, margin. The third game had me winning for most of it, but Jake was sneakily cranking up one of the castles I built the foundation on, and he eked out a nice strategic win.

The Game that Changed the World

As the new millennium rolled in, so did a new board game... Carcassonne is credited by many as being the game that brought back board gaming. It won awards all over the world the following year, including the "Spiel Des Jahres", the "Game of the Year" in Germany. The thick cardboard tiles and colorful wooden pieces (WOOD! Not Plastic! What a refreshing change...) gave this game a visual and tactile appeal that no other game has had in a long time. It takes a little while to get used to the rules, but learning them is quite rewarding. As you play the game, it as satisfying to be watching the world unfold before as it is making big scoring plays.

You are placing tiles to make a map where roads, cities, and fields unfold. You have a sort of god-like control -- you place the land tiles wherever you want, as well as populate the world as you see fit. As roads and towns are completed, followers on those areas score points. When a cloister is completely surrounded, the monk in the cloister obtains points for the influence they exert on the surrounding areas. Farmers in the fields score points at the end of the game for the towns to which they sell their wares.

This is the map at the end of the first game, played by Jake and Chris. Here's how the turns went down...

• Jake broke onto the scene with a 2 point town
  
• Chris got a 6 point town
  
• Jake got an 8 point town
  
• Chris got a 2 point town
  
• Jake got a road for 6 pts
  
• Chris surrounded a cloister - 9 pts
  
• Jake finished a town for 8 pts
  
• On his next turn, Jake capped off Chris' large town - giving Chris 22 pts!
  
• Chris finished another cloister - 9 pts
  
• Jake finished a town for 10 pts
  
• Chris finished a road he had been sitting on since the start of the game - 12 pts
  
• Jake got a quick 2 pt town
  
• Chris completed an 8 pt town, and got a 2 pt road at the same time
  
• Chris finished another 8 pt town on his next turn
  
• Chris got a 3 pt road
  
• Chris got a 5 pt road
  
• Chris got ANOTHER 2 pt road
  
• Jake got a 4 pt road
  

All the tiles were placed, so we went to the endgame...

• We looked at Jake's partials first:
  
  
  
  • 8 pt cloister
    
  • 4 pt road
    
  • 3 pt road
    
  • 4 pt town
    
  
  
• The Chris' partials:
  
  
  
  • 4 pt cloister
    
  • 8 pt cloister
    
  • 4 pt cloister
    
  • 3 pt road
    
  • 4 pt town
    
  
  
• Then onto the final bit of counting the income from farms:
  
  
  
  • Jake had 2 farms -- one had 2 towns (for 8 points), the other had 7 towns (for 28 points)
    
  • Chris simply shared Jake's 7-town farm (for 28 points in all).
    
  
  

The final score saw Chris winning with 138 points, and Jake with 98 points.

Tic Tac Toe Times Twenty

Today, December 12, 2005, was a day perfect for learning a new game! Chris taught Jake how to play Mindrings, billing it as a good 2-player brain warm-up. We played a quick game for learning purposes. Chris won quick -- but just because Jake didn't quite see the finesse and nuance of this quirky little battle of wits.

Here's how the game goes: There is a board consisting of six concentric rings with holes that radiate from the center to make spoke-like lines. Each player alternates, playing a peg on the board. The object: get 4 pegs of your color in a row. Here's what makes it differ from Tic Tac Toe: When you place a peg, you then rotate the circle that peg was placed in -- you can either rotate clockwise one position, or counter-clockwise TWO positions. So, the board is changing every turn.

BREAKING NEWS BULLETIN: Chris brought his camera in today! These are ACTUAL pictures from the games!

The first picture shows what the board looked like after Jake won the first round. Notice the 4-in-a-row line of red pegs at about what would be 4:30 on a clock.


Jake also won the second round. Notice the 4-in-a-row line of red pegs near what would be 1:30 on a clock.

What Jake doesn't know (until he reads this), is that we were playing the "basic" set of rules for the game. If you are really bold, you can play the advanced version -- play is the same, BUT if, at any time, a player can surround two opponents pegs with two pegs of his own, that player can remove those two pegs. EXAMPLE: It is yellow's turn. Yellow places a peg and rotates the board so that, on one of the spokes, there is a line of Yellow, Red, Red, Yellow, in that order. Yellow may then remove those two red pegs from the board.

Next time we'll play the more vicious version.

It's not an easy game to find -- it's made by a company in Canada called "Vantex Corporation" -- I think it's the only game they make. If so, it's a good start for the company. I will be keeping an eye on them for other simple, clever, challenging games.

More Psycho-strategy Gaming.

The next game played on Monday, December 5, 2005 is one that I (Chris) have been itching to play since I heard about this club. We played Citadels with SIX players: Chris, Manny, Cathy, Jake, Matt, and Charles.

You are trying to build a city. There are cards in the game which picture different buildings (they are called districts), and cards which portray characters.

Each turn of the game is played in 2 parts. Each person first picks a role to play -- Assassin, Thief, Magician, King, Bishop, Merchant, Architect, or Warlord, from the character cards. The King chooses first, and then the cards are passed around the table for each of the other players to choose.

Each of these characters has an ability, that sort of makes sense -- the Assassin can kill another character(they lose a turn), the Thief can steal all the money from another character, the Architect can build his empire faster than others, and the Warlord can destroy buildings. Other characters can provide you income from your buildings.

The second phase is where you can get money or more building cards, and build a building -- as well as use the special ability of the character card.

As the game progresses, different people will tend to gravitate towards using certain cards -- you don't want to do this because you will become a target of the Assassin and Thief. The neat thing is -- you choose your character in secret. The Assassin and thief target a CHARACTER not a PLAYER. So, for example, the person representing the Assassin announces that he or she is targeting the Merchant or Warlord. You don't know which player that is -- it's a sort of guess. You may have just killed a player unintentionally.

Once a person succeeds in building 8 districts, the game is scored, with a bonus for being the first to that, and bonuses for a variety of different kinds of districts.

Here's how the game went -- at least the killing and stealing parts!

• In the first turn Manny killed the Architect (which turned out to be Charles).
  
• Matt stole all the money from the King (it was Cathy).
  
• Matt killed the Thief (Jake).
  
• Matt then killed the Warlord (Chris).
  
• Matt attempted to kill the King, which turned out to not be chosen.
  
• Charles stole from the Merchant (Cathy).
  
• Manny ended a turn as the King, which means he calls out the orders for the characters to do their turn next. He called for the Bishop to come forward repeatedly, and no one claimed the turn. We got done with the round and realized Manny hadn't played -- he was the Bishop! It was funny if you were there...
  
• On the very next turn, Charles assassinated the Warlord. When you are assassinated, you are supposed to just be quiet and sit out the turn. Manny moaned loudly, and showed everyone else that he was the Warlord. Again, it was funny at the time.
  
• After laughing at Manny's mistakes, Chris, who had picked last so he knew what cards went unused, picked the Thief, and announced that he was stealing from the Merchant -- a card he had, just a few moments ago, laid unclaimed on the table.
  
• Manny used his Warlord power and 5 gold to destroy Charles' School of Magic.
  

At this point, 1:00 was swiftly approaching, and both Cathy and Jake had class to attend -- they left, and the rest of us finished up.

• Matt tried to steal from the Warlord (who went unclaimed).
  
• Chris used his Warlord power to destroy Charles' Watchtower -- being a one-gold valued property, it was destroyed for free. Chris laughed maniacally.
  
• Matt killed the Merchant (he assumed it was Charles, it was Chris).
  
• Charles rebuilt his Watchtower, one turn after it was destroyed. He also laughed maniacally.
  
• At this point, both Chris and Charles have 7 districts -- one away from completion.
  
• Matt killed the Bishop (he assumed it was Charles, it was Chris -- sound familiar!?!?).
  
• Manny decided to kill the Magician (which turned out to be, of course, Chris again).
  
• Charles built his last of 8 districts as a Warlord -- destroying one of Chris' properties to make a wider margin of victory, and, in my humble opinion, also for spite.
  

Here's the final value of the cities of the folks who finished:

Citadels final scores
Charles	Matt	Chris	Manny
26	26	17	16
+4 for 8 districts first
30 point winning total

It's just as interesting to see who committed which felonies, and who fell victim... here's the leaderboard for that:

Assassinations
Assassins
Matt	5 (1 was unsuccessful)
Manny	2 (note: it was his very first and very last action in the game)
Charles	1
Victims
Chris	4 (ouch!)
Charles	1
Jake	1
Manny	1

Robberies
Thieves
Matt	2 (1 was unsuccessful>
Charles	1
Chris	1 (and it was NOT successful
Victims
Cathy	2

Districts Destroyed
Warlords
Charles	1
Chris	1
Manny	1
Victims
Charles	2
Chris	1

So, in the dark side of Citadels, we can see some trends -- Matt liked killing, and Chris liked dying. Most of the time it was announced that Chris was really not the intended target, he just happened to be in the wrong place making the assassinations more like drive-by shootings.

Also, the thieves were spread around, but Cathy must have been walking down a dark alley with $20 bills hanging out of her pockets, being the only victim of the crime.

New Games!

This week, we got in a couple new games. The first was Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, which was played by Jake, Manny, and Chris.

We didn't get to play the entire game... Chris showed Manny and Jake had to play, and as we were playing, people wandered by, and we wanted to include them, so we cut it a bit short -- probably didn't even get halfway through.

The Carcassonne series is sort of a modern classic. These games are great balance of ease-of-learning, interesting and varied gameplay, and strategy. Funagain.com lists five Carcassonne games among their top 33 games sold.

Basically all the Carcassonne games involved playing tiles to build cities/rivers/forests/meadows and other things. You place characters on the board to gain control of those to get points when they are completed. Some characters remain on the board to be scored at the conclusion of the tile-laying.

Here's some things that happened as we played:

• Manny claimed the first points with a quick river claim for 4 points.
  
• Chris next claimed a 7 point river.
  
• Manny got another 4 point river quickie.
  
• Jake broke onto the scoreboard with a 3 point river quickie.
  
• Manny got a 4 point river.
  
• Chris got a 4 point forest.
  
• Jake completed a large forest, AND got a quick forest on the same turn for a nice 12 point play!
  
• Chris got a 5 point river.
  
• Manny, picking up his fourth river/lake tile in a row, claimed another 3 point river quickie.
  
• Jake got a 5 point and a 4 point river back-to-back....
  

And then we called it quits to get some other people involved. Jake was comfortably ahead, but there was a lot of game left to play...

Intact Blokus!

Educational Insights has sent me the replacement piece for Blokus. We can play the full version again! Seriously, they were very friendly and helpful -- everyone should buy Blokus (or Travel Blokus for two players). It's a great game, and seems to be made by a great company!