Triangle Games Meetup New Member Night, Saturday, August 5th, Cary, NC

One of the second things I did after finding out that Kristin had gotten a job in NC was to google for my various interests (the first thing was to check out the teaching jobs situation). I had a lot more luck with my hobbies than with employment, and I quickly joined the TG Meetup Group. Since then, I've watched their message boards, and learned a little about the group.

To my good fortune, Larry, the group organizer, had decided to host a "New Member" night the Saturday after our arrival in Durham. We've spent the last few days cleaning, unpacking, settling in, and taking care of various move-related necessities. It was with relief, and perhaps a hint of nervousness, that I left the house on Saturday, bound for my first social encounters in NC.

My first stop was All Fun & Games, a retail store in Cary, about half an hour from our new home. AF&G is a nice store, clean and well lit. The have a mix of products, including a pretty good Eurogame selection. Other than that, they sell some M:tG singles (pretty cheaply, actually), and have a small seletion of Games Workshop Miniatures and some RPG books. They also have a pretty large, clean gaming area, and a fairly sizeable library of games that can be checked out. Regularly scheduled gaming events make this a very likely destination, for me, in the future.

After visiting the store, I ran across the street to the Harris Teeter (grocery store) to pick up some snacks. From there, I made a few wrong turns but eventually made it to my first destination, a bbq gathering for Triangle Soccer Fanatics, another web-based group I'd joined months ago. After a nice time watching Ajax vs. ManU, and a little bit of Chelsea/MLS All-Stars, I was back on the road.

I wrote down the directions wrong, but still managed to find the house. Cary is a meandering miasma of circular streets, full of nice houses. Affluent and popular, it is, apparently, a very nice place to live. I grabbed my box of games (I'd selected Thurn & Taxis, Nexus Ops, and Ingenious), and headed for the door.

Larry and Carlee have a nice house, and did a good job of making space. When I arrived, unfortunately a little late, there were two five-player games about to start. I sat back to wait and see if anyone would show up. As fortune was with me, I was not a spectator long. I hardly had a chance to meet the Railroad Tycoon and Shadows Over Camelot players before three more players arrived.

Johna and Carole are new to Eurogames, and we chose Ticket to Ride as a handy and reliable introduction. We were joined quickly by Rob, described by one of the other attendees as a "TTR Shark."

I went through the rules, and dealt the cards. I ended up keeping all my tickets. I had a big seventeen with San Francisco-Atlanta, and then a couple smaller tickets involving, I think, Oklahoma City, Dallas, New York, and Sault-St. Marie.

I went into card-hoarding mode, and, to my chagrin, I wasn't getting the cards to go along with my plan. There was a lot of drawing off the top in this game. My unease was furthered when it became evident that all the players were commiting to routes in the same area that I was hoping to go through. I took what I thought would be a couple key connections, and deliberated on an alternate plan, deciding to use the tickets I had to work North from Frisco, and then around and down the East Coast.

I wasn't taking this game too seriously, as I was mainly there to meet people. Shortly after starting my new path,though, I decided to do a quick count of my remaining train cars. It turned out I was a car short of being able to complete my tickets on the current plan! Oops. Time for a new idea. I reorganized my cards and started to work from Oklahoma City through the remaining route to the East, where I could complete all my tickets by forking.

During this time, John was leaping to an early lead, clearly having figured out how to play. He efficiently collected groups of cards and claimed routes at a steady pace. Rob was taking new tickets like wild, and ended up with, I think, seven, the most I have seen someone take. I was thinking he was going to get busted, but he looked pretty pleased with himself, so I figured he must have drawn into something. He didn't get anywhere near the West coast, though, so I figured he hadn't drawn anything gigantic.

The turn after I started East, Rob, sitting immediately to my left, took the other fork of the path I needed. This meant that I could only complete all my tickets if I somehow conjured up 5 black train cards out of nowhere. Sitting on Seven blues (all that drawing off the top, remember?), I decided just to trigger the end game and take the blue six that was lying just off the tail of my aborted first alternate plan. I figured the 15 points and the chance to bust some people on tickets was worth the negative nine.

I managed to play all my cars, and all in a contiguous chain, so I had uncontested longest route (everyone else had several cars left). I jumped up to a final score of 100, which I consider pretty low. Carole came up close behind, at, I think, 97. Rob completed all but one of his tickets but, as I suspected, they weren't very big, and he finished in the high eighties/low nineties. John, it turned out, hadn't made a simple connection, and didn't complete his 20 point ticket, which, it turned out, he was taking for granted that he had done. That forty-point swing took him quite a way back, when he would have tied for second with 97 had he been tied in.

I really enjoyed this game. It was a nice, friendly yet competitive group, and the game was tense and tight with a lot of interaction. In the midgame, I really didn't expect to win, as blocked as I was, but I think biting the bullet and pushing for the game end helped me a great deal.

I went to watch the ends of the other games, and Rob, John, and Carole played Set. There was no traitor in Shadows, and the Knights were victorious. I joined the Shadows players for Tsuro while Railroad Tycoon ended.

I've not played Tsuro before. A decent looking little game, I especially liked the tiles. In this game, you play tiles with paths on them that your piece must follow as far as possible. If you hit an open tile edge, you stop. If you run into the edge of the board or another player, you're eliminated. The player to my left failed to move into the center, deciding to come up the side toward me, and I cut him off and eliminated him on the third turn. Two turns later, I eliminated the player to his left, and another player was eliminated, I think, by Larry, the host. The next turn, Larry didn't have a piece that would let him survive, so he played one that would run him into me, taking us both out of the game.

I thought Tsuro was all right, an extremely quick game that would work as airy filler. It really felt like you didn't have too many choices though, and were, in effect, just following the path laid before you. Probably decent for non-gamers, it's a game I think I would quickly tire of.

Railroad Tycoon finished, and we congregated in the main room to re-divide. Chris expressed interest in Thurn & Taxis, but, as we had ten left, and five wanted to play Puerto Rico (with new players at 11 pm), we had to get in the market for a five player. I realized I'd only brought four players with me (if only I'd ordered Santiago...), and we ended up with Ra.

I've never played this, but am aware of how highly it's regarded. I own more games by Knizia than any other designer (I'm sure this is true of many of us), and have been curious to check it out. Sadly, I am commonly terrible at auction games, apparently lacking the skill set necessary to analyze bid timing on the first play.

Well, unhappily I must report that this game proved no different. I passed on the best auction I had a chance at winning with my 15 (about half full, with, I think, no civilization - which I needed), and ended up not getting to use it that round as we drew several Ra's. A terrible round. I went into the next epoch with the 15 and 16, and was sure of great things. I acted early, trading in my 3 for a couple tiles and the 14. After that, I couldn't seem to get much going. I managed one decent auction win and then, again, the Ra's started flying. With the final round, I really didn't have a chance, but hoped to at least pick up some points. At that point, Chris was in the lead, with the young man I eliminated first from Tsuro in second. Chris managed to solidify his position very nicely, and points were picked up all around. Larry somehow went out somewhat early, although he certainly finished ahead of me. It came down to heads up between myself and, I think, Becca (not sure on the name?). Interestingly, I think I was heads up in each round, and it never really paid off for me. We each had one sun tile left, me having the higher, and I decided to spring for an auction that was full but for one piece, which would gain me a few points, but nothing huge. Becca hit the big free auction that I had been hoping for previously, and filled up nicely with monuments that gave her bonus points, two gold, and an extra pharaoh that put me tied with her for last. In the end, that big auction had just the stuff she needed to put her on top, when she had been second to last going into that round.

Ra is certainly a fun game, and it's very interesting the way you have to manage your bids. I felt like I had very little control in this game, though, with the tiles drawn in relation to your seat position being a big factor. I'd like to play it a couple more times to see what I get out of it.

After that game, it was past time for me to leave. I discussed the local gaming scene with Chris and Larry for a while, and got back on the unfamiliar roads of Cary, headed back to my new house. Reflecting on the day during the drive home, I couldn't help but be happy about how things had worked out. Honestly, I've been a little disappointed in the move, as Durham is nice but, at first blush, not that exciting (it's much larger that Iowa City, but, somehow, it seems like there's less of interest here - at least for me). I certainly miss my friends, and I'm very happy to have made these initial contacts.

Looks like I'll have gaming as regularly as I'm willing to drive to Cary or host events.

GG, GL
JW