Hanging with Chris Lackey last Saturday night

My good, old friend Chris was in town this past weekend for a funeral. We don't get many chances to see each other, as he lives in California, so whenever he's in town, we always make a special effort to get together.

I loaded up a carload of games as I wasn't sure how many people would be around, or what Chris would be interested in. The drive to Moline sucked, dark with pouring rain. I got there without problems, though, albeit a little frazzled. Chris and I headed over to Theo's Java Club in Rock Island to get some coffee.

Caffeine intake commenced, and we broke out the pair of two-player games I'd brought in my bag, Fjords and Lost Cities. Chris chose Lost Cities, and we set about laying down some numbers.

This was my first time playing LC since last week's introduction to Battle Line. I think playing BL actually made me a little better at LC, as I think I was more cautious about starting expeditions and was a little more into the confrontational aspect of this game, providing/denying the opponent with cards. These were Chris's first plays of LC, though, so it took him a bit to learn. The first three games, I hammered him. This, I think, was due to a variety of factors. For one thing, the first game just shouldn't count. Over the next two, it was clear that Chris was learning more about when to start expeditions, when to discard, and when to jump values. By the end of the night, I would say the thing he had the most problems with was discarding, as he probably didn't do it enough, preferring instead to just lay cards down and try to make the best of it. The negative points from unfunished expeditions really hurts. Another thing that contributed to my early success was drawing a copious quantity of high value cards. It's much easier to confidently lay down investment cards if you have a ten in your hand. The only drawback was one game in which almost my whole hand was 9s/10s of different colors, forcing me to play out expeditions that ended up being worth only 0-3 points. I had a lot of cards, and specifically a lot of valuable cards, on the table, but few expeditions that had investment cards/went over 20 points by much. The fourth game, Chris managed to win. He played well this game, and was really the beneficiary of one very strong turn, in which I struggled to get anything going and he had one very, very strong expedition. this basically won the game for him, as I won one hand and the other was very close.

We had been in the booth for a while, and had some fun watching the hip youngsters of the QC come in on their way to/from prom. All beverages had been consumed, so we headed back to the Lackey residence for sandwiches and further gaming.

Chris had played some Warmachine at a con in CA, and wanted to get a little more familiar with it. I had borrowed Jerod's Khador box, so that we could play two-player, so we sat down and went box-to-box, Cygnar/Khador.

This is a tough matchup, that I haven't played before. The Khador 'jacks have very high armor value, which means Cygnar pretty much has to use bonus damage focus to get through. They also have a longer range (14 inches) weapon, which means you have to get a little closer to them, and can't run-and-gun at all. We had OK games, but me failing to hit vs. a 5 on several occasions (5-6) really put things out of whack. Also, I think Sorsha's power is broken the way we played it, as it basically took away my whole turn. In the second game, it certainly took the game from being quite winnable for me, to having very, very little chance.

After two WM games, it was time to call it quits. We relaxed and talked for a while about games, writing, politics, and the world. After a half an hour or so, I went to sleep on the couch, with the kind of satisfaction that only a good talk with an old friend can provide.