Wednesday night at CHG

I don't even know what the game was supposed to be last night. I got a call early in the evening from Dan, saying that they were planning on playing the SJG classic Illuminati, and I was more than happy to jump in.

I have fond memories of Illuminati from High School and College. I remember it as a classic, but haven't played it in years. Unfortunately, my impressions of the game from this play were that if I were to introduce this game some experienced modern gamers who'd never played it, they'd say: "was this playtested?" Honestly, the victory conditions for the factions are totally unbalanced. I was the Network, and, actually, the special ability of this faction is about as big of a benefit to the person sitting to your left as it is to you. That person happened to be Drew, with the Bavarian Illuminati, who had a pretty good victory condition.

Other than that, I don't really want to write too much about this game. We played for a couple hours, during which there were the usual funny comments about stuff like: Oh look, the tobacco and liquor companies control the Republicans, etc.. Unforunately, one of the players got inordinately pissed that someone had jumped in on contesting one of his group takeover attempts, and decided basically to not engage in earnestly playing or participating in conversation. This really killed whatever fun there was to be had from this game, and I quickly decided it wasn't worth playing, and let Tim win. Good job Tim, for speaking your mind and telling it like it is, and playing the Gnomes well.

-One caveat for this post is that I have just finished with the informal wine tasting for my wedding, which is all described in my Myspace blog (hopefully this is legible)-

GG, GL