Friday: TGBT, Day Two

I took the day off today, primarily in order to sleep in from last night's moonlight adventures. I got up, took care of some business, snagged food and coffee, and was at the hotel about noon.

There were plenty of games going on, but not too many people looking unattached. I spotted Chris working on one of the puzzles, and sat down with him. We talked about starting a game, and soon had added Fitch, who was browsing the prize table. I needed the game to be fairly quick, as I had to leave by two pm to coach soccer. We put Through the Desert and Princes on the table, and none of us seemed anxious to make up our minds. During this time we were joined by Mike, and we decided on TtD, at which point Jake, who had been hovering around the table, sat down noting that he didn't play Princes of Florence. So, we suddenly had five.

Some of us (myself included) hadn't played for a while. We went over enough of the rules to get started, and got our caravans going. I must admit, I, as well as, I think, some others, had forgotten quite how the game end was triggered. Consequently, it snuck up on us, as several people worked the green stack. Before I was even awake, the game was over. One of the longest caravans was a three way tie, at three camels. On the other hand, I was beaten out of longest caravan in green by one camel, by Chris, when I had ten camels in it. This was certainly the quickest game of TtD that I've seen, and it didn't even really properly warm me up for gaming. Jake won handily, Chris and Mike tied for second, I was fourth, and Fitch brought up the rear, having forgotten entirely about area control scoring.

The players dispersed quickly to play other games that were forming, leaving just Fitch and myself. We were soon joined by Dwayne, and we scouted around for another "quickie." Hey, That's My Fish was discovered in David's game stack, and Dwayne agreed to teach me.

I grossly misinterpreted the penguin movement rules in the first game, and put myself in terrible positions. After Dwayne took all the fish, with me finishing far behind in last, we decided on another game. This one was quite different, and I was able to carve out a couple solitaire areas and win the game. I hadn't playe this before, and it was fun and wonderfully quick. I'd like to pick it up. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, you lay a bunch of tiles that have 1-3 fish on them. You put your penguins on the board. You take turns moving, in a straight line, removing, to your scoring pile, the ice floe that you leapt from. You can't jump over empty space or other penguins. You keep going until nobody can move, then add the tiles your penguins are standing on to your score. Very simple, you could easily make your own set, Dwayne mentioned knowing someone who played with poker chips and chess pawns.

I left, coached, cleaned up, ate, and returned around seven pm. This time, the room was much more crowded. A lot of games had just started. I wandered around a little, looking at what people were playing. I saw a group reading the Ticket to Ride rulebook, and offered to teach. They accepted, so I occupied myself getting them going for a few minutes. After that, a couple guys showed up with some Burger King, and, when they were done, we got together to get something started. Nobody had anything they really wanted to play, but El Grande came up from somewhere, and was agreed upon, although none of us had played many times, or for some time. We secured a copy, unpacked it, set it up, and consulted the rulebook. After a little discussion of the rules, and looking some things up, and finding our fifth player, we got started influencing Spain.

I had never met any of these fellows before, but they all seemed very friendly and willing gamers. Their names were Bert, Kendal, Kevin, and Ken. Kevin was the youngest, and got us started.

I started in Valencia, kind of out of the way. Old Castile was empty, as well as the Northeasternomost and Southeasternmost regions. I adopted a strategy of playing a middle number in the first turn of a cycle, trying to go last in the second turn, and trying to play a high number to take the king movement tile on the third turn. Surprisingly, it worked perfectly the first two rounds. For the first scoring round, Ken was in the lead, with a very good bonus scoring round that he capitalized on well. I was close behind. In the second scoring round, I passed Ken, dominating his home region to deny him points. However, Kevin passed both of us, with a huge bonus scoring round on the six and seven regions, making thirteen points. I committed to fighting him in Old Castile, and scored it once, but then Kendal whacked it with the replacement scoring tile. I won the Castille several times. I think I tied with Kendal on the first round, won it the second and third, and also won it on the two bonus scoring rounds we had for it. I think this was key, as it gave me a lot of extra points. I really like the hidden movement of the caballeros coming out of the Castille, too. I passed up Kevin with the bonus scores from the Castille, and then went well out into the lead on the third scoring round, by taking dominance of Old Castile back from him with my castille forces, and also by scoring secondary points in several regions. Ken and Kendal had put their castille caballeros in my home region, putting me third there, but not gaining Ken the points he had wanted. In the end, I won, followed, I think, by Kevin, Kendal, Ken, and Bert, in that order. I might have it mixed up, though, Ken might have ended up last. Bert made a big push at the end. I enjoyed this, my second (and first full - when I was taught the game, we played the short version) play of the game. We did have a fair amount of downtime, as some of the players seemed slow to come up with an overall strategy to approach the game with. I hope I get to break out my copy soon.

It was ten thirty, and I meandered about a bit, looking for somethign that wouldn't be terribly long. I ran into Justin, who introduced me to Gee, and we chatted for a bit, swapping stories and finally deciding to put a game on the table. We roamed around, looking at what was available, and, for some reason, the thing that seemed most exciting to them was learning Reef Encounter. On the way to the table, we were joined by Bob, who I also hadn't previously met. We got the game set up and taught, which was a bit of a combined effort by Bob and myself. I've played several times, but most of them were on Spiel by Web, which, of course, does all the setup and board management for you, so I had to refresh my knowledge on some particulars. Teaching didn't take as long as I feared it might, thankfully, and soon our parrotfish were swimming in the depths.

Credit to Gee and Justin, they picked up the game very quickly, and made quite good use of their turns. Much better than me on my first play... It was a nice group to play with, too. Bob was quiet and considering, while Gee and Justin kept the conversation flowing. I wish more of my games were like this, frankly; a mild amount of thinking with a fair portion of laughs thrown in. Gee lives in Durham, so, hopefully, we'll get to do some more gaming.

These guys played quite differently than the group I'm used to playing with, and I found myself getting hemmed in on several attempts to grow reefs. In face, I ended up eating both yellow and purple reefs, but only after abandoning the first one's I had started, after the other players had come in and locked me down on that board. People were playing pretty well, and opportunities to eat coral were limited. This was the case even though other people were forced into the same coral abandonment as myself. Gee had the hungriest parrotfish, and sated it with some pink coral, opening up some space on one of the boards. We slowly started to open the boards up, and I was able to keep pace, although my first coral was pretty small, only a seven. Someone abandoned four or five yellow tiles, and, with the four behind my screen and four in front, I was able to make a large, hard to assail coral. The eating continues, and some black tiles were abandoned on one of boards which, along with the free space, allowed me to make a second big coral. Even though I had to eat a coral for one, big scores on yellow, and especially black, allowed me to edge the game over Bob, who must have been wondering what more he had to do to make it hard for me to play (he made an excellent move to reduce to four and completely contain my first purple coral).

This was a lot of fun, espeicially considering the time, much more so than my first, and only other previous, in-person play. I will definitely try to pick this up. It was after 1:30 am, and I was pretty sure it was time to go home. Justin and Gee jumped over to play Catchphrase, which looked too crowded for me to get into. Dwayne and a friend of his took some time to explain the basic idea of Giganten, which they had set up, to me, but I didn't have time to play. I sleepily made my way back up the Durham Freeway, looking foward to today's soccer game, and a long evening of gaming...

Next up: Day three!

GG, GL
JW