We had some old friends, and a bunch of newcomers!
And here's the list of players:
Cathy Willms (Pirate)
Dave (Ninja)
Erik (Pirate)
Faith (Ninja)
Fenwick (Pirate)
Gordon (Ninja)
Heather (Pirate)
Justin (Ninja)
Phil (VICTIM)
Rich (Ninja)
Sam (Ninja)
Sandy (VICTIM)
Sean (Pirate)
Steve (Ninja)
Tim (VICTIM)
TJ (Ninja)
Victoria (Ninja)
Let's break it down... 17 people. 9 Ninjas. 5 Pirates. 3 Victims. Looks like Pirates need to do some recruiting. It's weird, all summer, Pirates were in the VAST majority. No that school is back in... something has tiped the balance.
It was a good day of gaming. There was some rowdiness, and a lot of laughing. Multiple games going on at once. And 17 people there -- FINE attendance. Looks like it's going to be a mighty good year.
2:30 pm
The Great Dalmuti
Players: Cathy Willms (p), Sean (p), Sam (n), Dave (n), TJ (n), and Fenwick (p)
Apparently they play Dalmuti all over the world...
This is a classic Game Club game, especially with a decent amount of people around. Six is a good amount... Here's the places folks were in throughout the game:
| PLAYER | Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 | Round 5 | |
| Cathy W. | 6 | 6 | 6 | 2 | 6 | |
| Sean | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 3 | |
| Sam | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 2 | |
| Dave | 1 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | |
| TJ | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 5 | |
| Fenwick | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
When we total up the amount of time people spent in high-up places will give Fenwick the win on this one.
...even in Asia!
3:15 pm
Quiddler
Players: Cathy (p), Sean (p), Sam (n), TJ (n), Fenwick (p)
Quiddler again. We play it a lot. Feel free to review the rest of the Blog to prove it.
Get your babies brainwashed early! Quiddler is good... Quiddler is fun... Quiddler makes you smart...
We usually play a friendly game, letting everyone have a chance to get a good word. Recently, we have starting playing what we call Cutthroat Quiddler -- just go out as fast as you can -- forget anyone else... We played Cutthroat today, unintentionally, really, we just started doing it.
It causes some bad feelings sometimes. The first quote of the day goes to Cathy Willms, around round 6 when Sam went out immediately after the deal -- "Oh, you idiot." she told him. Hilarious.
End of game wound up like this --
Sam : 202
Sean : 227
Cathy W. : 243
Fenwick : 249
TJ : 252
TJ wins! He claims it's his first Game Club Quiddler victory.
4:10 pm
Incan Gold
Players: Fenwick (p), Rich (n), Cathy Willms (p), Victoria (n), Tim (v), Steve (n), Sam (n), Faith (n)
This simple press-your-luck game has become a Game Club regular. It has some good tension, goes quick, and good for a decent group. Although -- we've never played with 8. Turned out, that might be too much.
This is like the Pudge Pudge Man artifact in the game!
Steve, new to game club, basically ran with a strategy of Get-In-And-Get-Out-Quick. We picked on him each round, but with a group this size, it turned out to be a good plan. Since most of the gold ends up in remainders, if you can get out, scooping up big globs of remainders, you can do well. And he did.
Let's see how everyone did --
Faith : 0
Cathy W. : 5
Victoria : 6
Sam : 6
Fenwick : 7
Rich : 8
Tim : 12
Steve : 24
Steve succeeded in demolishing the rest of us, to be the greatest adventurer of the day.
Actually Incan wastepaper baskets were even FANCIER than the one in the game.
4:15 pm
Blokus Duo
Players: Philip (v), Heather (p), Gordon (n)
This is a two player game, it's true. Four games were played -- Philip played all four. Heather played one, Gordon played three.
It's a very geometric game, very appealing to Phil! He likes those, and adapted to this one quite well.
Phil won game 1.
Phil won game 2.
Gordon won game 3.
The fourth one was a tie.
Some people have names for the bits. We call the one-square "the dinky". And the W is "the wing!!". And you have to yell it when you play it. And make a little w-like gang sign with your hand. "The WING!" It's very, very cool. Seriously. No, it is. I mean it.
OK, it's just geeky.
4:20 pm
King of the Beasts
Players:Sean (p), TJ (n), Justin (n)
The great struggle to elect the King of the Beasts! Simple, short, semi-strategic, and silly, really. Game Club's kind of game.
This quick break-off from the group game went three rounds.
Final scores --
Sean : 11
Justin : 13
TJ : 14
Found this picture accidentally. Don't know why, but the added caption cracked me up.
4:42 pm
Tsuro
Players: Rich (n), Sam (n), Gordon (n), Phil (v), Tim (v), Steve (n), Faith (n), Fenwick (p)
Tsuro has been kicking around Game Club for a while. We're going to try to make a life-sized version of this for the college's Welcome Back Bash in a couple of weeks.
Fenwick ACTUALLY has the dragon from the Tsuro bits TATTOOED on his leg.
Fenwick killed Faith pretty quickly.
Her first turn. It was mean, but it taught her a lesson...
Phil took a few hours to take his turn, as usual -- Analysis Paralysis has set in. There's gotta be some medication for that! He tends to do well, but we're here to play games... he got better as we went along.
Gordon died. Rich died. Phil died. Tim caused a major accident between Sam and Steve -- neither survived.
Then, through no other options available, Tim drove himself and Fenwick off a cliff...
Tie game: Tim and Fenwick.
Another quote of day: TJ had bought a hamburger and a Dr. Pepper. Sitting next to us to eat it, Victoria asked him, "Can I sniff your burger?" Everyone cackled and at that moment TJ was opening his unknowingly shaken soda, and it exploded, as if in response. We all laughed a LOT harder. It was SO perfect. Maybe you had to be there....
4:52 pm
Tsuro
Players: Tim (v), Victoria (n), Justin (n), Gordon (n), TJ (n)
WAIT!! You just blogged a Tsuro entry!! True, but we kind of split off into different groups.
Victoria (TJ added "vile woman that she is"), killed TJ and Gordon in one fell swoop.
Tim then valiantly avenges their deaths by ruthlessly slaying Victoria.
And, after a long and vicious battle, Justin emerges vivtorious by hitting Tim on the head with a shovel. Or running him off the board. SOmething like that.
This is not our picture, just found it on BoardGameGeek. This cannot end well. I'm guessing it was a five-way tie...
5:00 pm
Tsuro
Players: Tim (v), Victoria (n), Justin (n), Phil (v), Gordon (n), TJ (n)
Eright KNOCK IT OFF! The LAST TWO ENTRIES were Tsuro!! True, but Phil joined in, so we'll keep one more separate entry.
Tim, the victim, was quickly killed by a ninja. A stealthy, sneaky, unidentified ninja.
Victoria, backed into a corner by Justin and Phil, took all three of them out at once, with a kamikaze-style attack!
Gordon had no choice at the end, but to kill himself and take TJ with him... they tie.
5:15 pm
TransAmerica
Players: Sandy (v), Fenwick (p), Rich (n), Sean (p), Phil (v), Dave (n) [There was also a dinosaur on the score sheet, listed as a Pirate. I think I would have remembered THAT.]
TransAmerica is up there with Quiddler, Dalmuti, Tsuro, and Incan Gold as a Game Club standard, regular, we-play-you-a-lot game.
In TransAmerica you build railroads. Just like these guys. Except without the slave wages, 20 hour work days, tetanus, and death. Other than that, exactly the same.
Two rounds was enough to finish the whole thing.
Round 1: Sean won. Dave lost 6, Sandy lost 10 (it was her first game!), Fenwick lost 3, Phil and Rich each lost 7.
Round 2: Fenwick won. Phil lost 6. Rich and Sean lost 1. Dave lost 4. Sandy lost 3.
Phil and Sandy fell off the board, triggering endgame.
Dave had 3.
Rich had 5.
Fenwick had 10.
Sean had 12.
Sean wins!
Last quotes of the day...
Our 8th grade minds found the following exchange HILARIOUS.
Dave was trying to figure out where to place his starting hub...
Dave: "Where do I want to put my thing?" (everyone else giggling)
Sean: "It's not your turn, so just keep it in your hand!" (everyone else CACKLING)
Geez, we're immature. But it was funny.
5:55 pm
Spy
Players: Rich (n), Sean (p), Sandy (v), Fenwick (p)
This is a set collecting game we've played a few times in Game Club. It's by Reiner Knizia, and he usually stays away from something this simple -- the twist (standard Reiner) is that sets get harder to collect the further into the game you go. As usual in his games, it's all about timing -- you can play little sets to just sort of putter along, or try to save up for big moves, possibly allowing others to sneak in and take stuf away in the mean time. Not my favorite Reiner, but good fo a simple quick game.
You are trying to get rid of your spy tokens first -- at the end of the game, Fenwick and Rich had 3, Sandy had 2, and Sean got rid of all to win the game.
I did an image search for "spy" and this came up. It frightened me, a little bit.
6:55 pm
Mission: Red Planet
Players: Tim (v), Erik (p), Fenwick (p), Rich (n), Sean (p)
This was a new game last week, and we liked it. Cool sci-fi concept. Plenty of screwage available. 10 turns. 3 chances to score. Almost always exactly 1 hour to play. Pleanty of tension. Plenty of choices. Simple enough to dive in fairly quickly. A near perfect game.
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids...
The brave settlers of Mars ventured out... and here's how they found value on Mars --
Fenwick : 27
Sean : 27
Tim : 29
Erik : 39
Rich : 42
Rich wins.
Game day's over -- Bye bye!
One of our better game days, and one of our BEST for the start of a semester. Enrollment at the school is up, and there were bunches of folks milling about. I think attendance will be good this year...we are off to a tremendous start.
Weird thing I just noticed -- I think this is the first game day where we didn't try any new games for Game Club. Some people in the club played games they hadn't before, but all the games had been played at least once at another Game Club session.
