This Saturday, Pete and Michelle showed up first and Pete had a "hankerin"
for a game of "Lunch Money". I was immediately dealt no defense cards, and
got picked on like the poor girl at a country club. I quickly went home
crying. Then, the girls turned their wrath to Pete-etta. And what a
wrath. They had seen how she had pulled my dress over my head, not to
mention peeing on one of the other girls. The were merciless and he
quickly was vanquished from the playground. When the dust settled,
Michelle was bloody and Jen unscraped. It was then just a clean-up mission
for Jen.

Tom and Jenette arrived and Jeanette had to play "bean game". So, once
more into the breach. I was quickly regarded as a big target of anti-trade
propaganda. I was consigned to collecting the more rare stoner bean and
kidney beans, mostly due to a run of stoners in my hand. Pete on the other
hand, collected wine-o beans for the entire game! P.s. he won. Although,
I did come in third.

The last game of the night was Medici. By now, I had had 5 pina coladas
and was raring' to go. Medici is currently Tom and Is favorite game and we
hoped the others would take to it as we had. We were not disappointed.
There are 3 game turns, and everyone had mastered the rules after turn 1,
Michelle stomped ahead of the other beginners on turn 2, and at the end of
the game finished 2nd behind your humble narrator. It was great fun
chanting "dump it in the river!!!" and (to the south park tune "chef's
salty balls") "put it in your boat!". Jen had a penchant for filling her
boat fast, whilst Tom and I ended up haggling over the leftovers each day.
I think there is no doubt that everyone enjoyed the game and that Jeanette
will order herself a copy. We dropped the "ass-pennies" moniker for the
most part and returned to "Florins".

I was disturbed to hear about the "ass pennies" bumpers on Comedy Central.
Sure enough I saw one today and obviously Tom and I were not the only
people who thought that was the only good sketch. CC used it the promote
the entire 2nd season of sketch comedy. And so it goes.

Until next week, here's hoping that no one ordered "Tutankammen".

Saturday brought Ed, Johnny, Phil and I to a game of "Tikal". This is a
four player game that involves more time than other games. The rules were
simple enough (they passed the 4 pages or less rule), but the game is time
consuming. Each turn (we estimated there were about 11 total) you flip a
new tile. These tiles build paths through the Mayan jungle. They have a
"cost" marked on them for moving across their border. After placing your
tile, you get 10 "something's" to spend. Moving, building temples, garrison
a temple (2 garrisons max), treasure collection. You know, it reminded me
a bit of other games in many ways, yet unique enough to warrant thought.
I liked this game, but 2.5 hours was too damn long. Also, The winner had
110 points, Well this is the same as just collecting your 10 points each
turn and sitting like a bump on a log. Evidently we didn't use our points
defensively enough and instead blew them all like a kid with his first
paycheck.

I think we'll enjoy playing this again when we need a meatier game. Oh
yes, Johnny and Ed came in first and second. Then there was a gap, a big
gap, more like a chasm, followed by Phil and I. Argh.

Until next week.



Game Night: Saturday 6-19-1999

Well, we took a sabbatical this Saturday. Its Ed's "long" weekend (every
other one), Tom and Jeanette are moving, Phil is moving, others had guests
or plans. Jen and I took advantage of the time to try the now infamous
"Dark Side of the Oz" experiment. This entails renting a copy of the
"Wizard of Oz" and turning off the sound in favor of Pink Floyd's "Dark
Side of the Moon" album. You start the album at the 3rd lion roar in case
your interested.

I just have to say this... "big deal". There were a lot of amusing
coincidences and it drove home for my how much soundtracks enhance movies.
But, we were not impressed. Your better off reading about the coincidences
on a web page. Simply do a search for both title and you'll find about 2
dozen web sites to choose from.

I just talked to Funagain.com and my new copies of Union Pacific and Money
are in stock and shipping Monday. So, I'll have a "boatload" of new games
for the 26th. By the way, there are 3 "boatloads" in a "shitload", and 7
"shitloads" in a "fuckload". Just in case you forgot your measurements
table from high school.

If any one else has ordered anything, keep us all up to date.

Until next week...

Happy Father's Day.

New games!! Neal and Laura decided to stay after dinner and see what the
"hype" was all about. So, knowing Neal's hatred of "rules", we broke out
"Liar's dice". There are basically 3 rules. Each player starts with 5
dice and a cup. They roll their dice and peek at them and make a bid like
in liars poker. 5 sixes for example. If there are 5 sixes or more among
ALL the dice on the table, the bidder would win a challenge. So, the next
player can bid something higher or challenge (rule #1). Stars (replacing
the number 1) count as wild (rule #3) making the higher quantity of numbers
seem more probable. If your challenged, the loser of the challenge losing
the number of dice equal to the difference. So If I challenge Ed's bid of 5
sixes and there are 7, I lose two dice (rules #2). So, eventually your out
of dice and out of the game. It reduces slowly to a mano-e-mano (sp?)
situation, often one die vs. one die. What a hoot. We must of played 10
rounds of this accompanied by much laughter. Almost everyone won a round,
mostly by being bold faced liars. The favorite was to bid 4 of something
you had NONE of to throw off the other players. They would often increase
that bid and become trapped into thinking others had some of what they bid.
Ha. This would make a great drinking game.

At about 11:15, we pulled out the new "Big City". At first we were
intimidated. It came with 3 trays of plastic pieces (buildings, street
cars, etc) a pile of boards pieces, cards, a scoring track, and 8 pages of
"instructions". We learned as we stuck with it that 4 pages of the rules
were just building clarifications. The basic game passed the 4 pages or
less rule. Anyway. It is hard to describe play sequence without showing
you the gorgeous playing pieces. But, the idea is the 5 of are the 5 land
development companies at the start of a new city. You decide were to build
what, and each think you build you get points for. Bonus points are for
bigger buildings, being near a street car line, or building a difficult to
build building. To do the latter, takes EXTREME planning. A church
requires a special plot of land adjacent to both a residential and
commercial zone for example. Don't have the cards you want, instead of
building that turn, you instead build out the street car line to where you
do have cards, get different cards, or place a new neighborhood grid (there
are 8 total).
We screwed this up strategy wise every way possible. We were haphazardly
playing neighborhood grids and cards for 3 full turns before we understood
how important PLANNING was. We also learned a new item. Playing a "open
hand", actually means: "use the knowledge of seeing all the cards to screw
Ray". I never knew this before. Team "God loving, tree hugging, neighbor
loving Pete and Michelle" pulled way ahead with the additional of there
"700 clubs" in the last two turns and won by a LANDSLIDE. Meanwhile, Team
"Screw Ray (Jen)" Built a factory on my prime real-estate. If that wasn't
bad enough, she put a streetcar line through our district that severed my
connection between two plots. Sequential plots are one of the keys to big
points, demographics being the other. She screwed me on both, mostly
because of the "open hand" I was playing. Still, a little bit of luck
placed my in second by a narrow margin, which I attribute to the 4 turns I
skipped scoring attempts and instead manipulated the demographics of my
cards and the streetcar path through town.

Definitely will be a great game now that we know the rules. Turns go
quickly and are not difficult to work out. I can't wait to play this again.

Our prayers go out to Robert, who may or may not have swallowed a tack nail
Saturday night, preventing the Lemenses from attending. We all hope it is
a false alarm. If anyone hears and update, please let us know.