slight bloggy gap...

Hey there!

We haven't been posting in a while. This is the busiest time of year for students and Astronomers (me!), so we have only had time to squeeze in 10 to 12 hours of gaming a week, with no other time for Blogging.

I thought, since I had 10 minutes to spare, that I would get some game reports up.

This morning, April 10, Jake stopped by. We had about 20 minutes to play a couple games. ONLY 20 minutes?!?! No problem. We played Lost Cities twice, and Gobblet twice.

Lost Cities is one of the first games we ever played, and remains a favorite whenever a 2 player game is needed. It was my first introduction to Reiner Knizia, who has turned out to be one of my favorite game designers (as well as the favorite of millions of game players throughout the world). The gameplay is very simple, but the strategy ends up being deep.

Each player is embarking on virtual archeological expeditions. Once you start an expedition, by playing cards, you have to cover your expenses (get at least 20 points - numbers on the card tell you the number of points). Only cards with a greater value than a card already on the table can be played (i.e. -- you can put a "5" on top of a "3", but not the other way around).

It's really a very simple game mechanic -- play a card with a greater value than one you've played before of that color (or just discard a card), then draw a card. The key is deciding when to begin an expedition -- rarely will you have 20 points worth of an expedition when it begins -- you just about always have to take an educated gamble. Before you begin an expedition, you can also play multiplier cards, which multiply your score at the end (whether your final score is positive OR negative -- those can come back and cause you real pain!).

Jake did quite well, winning both games...

	Jake	Chris
Game 1	38	12
Game 2	42	35
TOTALS	80	47

You have up to 5 expeditions to work on. Jake got his highest scoring game (42 points) using only THREE.

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Our other, somewhat more recent, favorite is Gobblet! It plays like tic-tac-toe on steroids. I'm amazed at how simple it is, but provides an incredible amount of strategy. We're pretty evenly matched. It's impressive how we can each start with an advantage in a game and it just swings back and forth. You can feel supremely confident at one moment, and with just one gobble ("KRRROOOOWF!" <-- I make that chompy sound every time I gobble a piece. It never gets old. Really. It doesn't.) the advantage switches back.

In what may be a great illustration of the balance of our power in this game: Chris won the first game, Jake won the second.

Jake will be posting text of yesterday's HUGE game day soon!! And I will then post the pictures!


Here's a preview: the quote of the day was...

-- "It's between My Body and Michael Jackson?"
-- (horrified tone) "WHAT is between your body and Michael Jackson??"

Cheers!