Last Thursday at Critical Hit

I had planned on playing soccer last Thursday night, but it was wet out, so, I decided to play games instead (there goes Mother Nature, twisting my arm again...). I ended up getting in touch with Tim and going over to Critical Hit. I started setting up the game, and, lo and behold, in walked Dan and Drew, with Eric following not far behind.

I've been sitting on my copy of Lunatix Loop for a couple of weeks, since it came in the mail. I've really wanted to get a session going, as I haven't played the game since it's early incarnations when I was in college in DeKalb. It seemed like it needed certain ingredients, though; a fairly decent period of time to play in, a group of willing gamers (at least 4), and the right mood. Thankfully, Thursday ended up providing all those things (incidentally, it's taken me a while to post this because I wrote a session report for boardgamegeek first, but that still hasn't been published).

We sat down to play, and I ended up with the green car. We used the rules that came with the box, although the designer, Matt Leacock, had provided me with updated rules. I just wanted to get a play in with the old stuff, so I could see how things changed. We used no optional rules. In the first turn, ramming was a popular choice, and people in front of me ping-ponged off each other a little bit, with Dan intuitively hitting the brakes to get behind everyone. I accelerated out of the back into the lead. This made me a nice target for subsequent ramming...

Turn two, the ramming continued, with me bearing the proverbial brunt. The pack was fairly tight as we squealed into the final turn of the first lap, but I had to pit as I'd taken a lot of damage and couldn't risk another lap. By the time I came out, I was well behind and Tim was pulling into the lead.

People continued to ram each other, and began to explore the joy of dropping various items (glue, oil, tacks) onto the track. This made maneuvering a little sticky. Everyone pitted on lap two except me, and so I caught up with Tim a little, putting me second going into lap three.

Dan got out of the pit, but Eric got stuck there when he turned the turbo on, only to find the tank contained only fumes (click!). Drew was stuck behind him, but used the second exit to come out going the wrong way, hoping to head-on ram Tim or whoever as we came around the last curve. Tim had taken a little damage, and I was going pretty fast (100 mph). I pushed it out of the first curve, through some oil, into the second curve, and pulled the lunacy hazard that makes my next turn's action random. Only one of the five pulls was bad for me, so I decided to keep it, even though I had plenty of damage to go, and two luck chips. Basically, I just thought to myself, it might be the wrong thing to do, but it's certainly more fun if I keep it! Of course, on my turn I drew the card I didn't want (u-turn) and I ended up doing an Immelman on the track, drawing several hazard cards, and ended up facing the wrong way going zero mph. This effectively took me out of the race.

So, I accelerated, hoping to come up behind Drew and add to the pessimistic head-on ramfest. Dan gave valiant chase behind Tim, perhaps hoping to benefit from our possible ramming. Tim coolly rounded the last corner, and utilized his jump jets with style, hopping over obstacles and opponents to cross the finish line. We decided to call it there rather than play out the places.

In the end, it was a really fun game. We had a serious laugh when I was forced into my u-turn. People had a good time wrecking others and navigating the track. If anything, we felt the game wasn't dangerous enough, and would like to see fewer non-negative results in the hazard deck. I look forward to the next session of this.

After Loop, we didn't have a whole lot of time, but a few of us wanted to play another game. I had Through the Desert, but the voting went against me, and we ended up hunting and gathering, Carcassonne style.

It was Dan, Tim, Drew, and myself for this game, as Eric had to leave. The game started a little rough, as nobody seemed able to draw tiles that really went together very well. A general feeling I've had with H&G in the past is that due to the tile distribution the game often seems cramped, as though things are always pressuring each other, and it seems very hard to draw tiles you "need." Dan got out to a bit of a lead, and it seemed he would be hard to catch. He pulled some big fish bonus tiles, but never got to build a hut on them. We all built shacks on river systems in the bottom right of the board, only to have them all tie in and basically nullify the points. Dan and I put down some decent sized hunters. I had several (like 9) turns to tie my ultimate control standing stone bonus tile into his big hunting ground, but it was not to be. Instead, on the last turn, he drew a tile to tie into my other hunting area. He ended up with a ton of ponts. I think I finished in third behind Tim.

That was it for the night, and we all took off, just as I should now. Boy am I tired.

GG, GL