TBGT - Day 3

I got up and took it easy on Saturday. Kristin had some errands to run, and I had a soccer game at 10:45. Got some games together, went to my game. It turned out there was a football game, and traffic was so bad I had to plan an alternate route to the soccer field. This was like my first game of the day...

My soccer team is huge, but that's actually quite nice right now. The humidity is killer. We play on a full size field, and, one 60-70 yard run, and I'm dizzy. I did not play very much in this game, as I don't like to be walking on the field, and I'll call a sub as soon as I'm tired. We were pretty disorganized and never found any rhythm, and lost 4-1.

I got cleaned up, ate lunch with Kristin, and headed over to the event. I ran into Rob, who was ready to play something, and we decided to get a table going. Rob hadn't played Thurn and Taxis yet, so I agreed to teach it. He tracked down Kevin and Dolly to fill up the game, and we got started.

I taught to Kevin and Rob. Dolly helped. She also got off to a strong start, taking the vp chip for the purple region immediately. Rob took his time getting a route down, to score some extra vp's with five cards. I wasn't getting anything too exciting for my routes, so I decided to push the coach upgrades. I was in the last seat, and stole a march on the other players by playing two cards two turns in a row to be the first to the four coach. I remained in the pole position the rest of the game. Dolly and Rob, however, were the big points earners, each building extra-long coach lines at times, and picking up lots of extra vp chips. Dolly filled the grey region, and Rob got the every region but Baern chip. I don't think I picked up my first vp chip until I scored to get my six coach, which is, of course, rather sad. I was in a funky place starting my seven route, two away from filling Baern, three away from every region, and one away from some other stuff. I finally hit a run of cards I needed, and Rob finally didn't take them, in the seat ahead of me. I wasted a turn when I got confused, something in my head misfiring and telling me I could grab Baern AND every region, grabbing an extra card when I could have played two. I waffled a bit on pushing the game end - I felt everyone was so far ahead of me - but Rob was also pretty close to seven, and Dolly only had three houses left, and, frankly, I didn't really care if I won, so I triggered the game end. Being the last player, nobody else would get their seven after me. This was a huge turn, in which I picked up, I think, 12 points. With the houses I got rid of, the combined total was actually enough to get me the game, with Rob, Dolly, and Kevin following in that order. I'm really happy I got a chance to play a game with Rob, as he is the primary organizer of the event, and I'd never met him before.

It turned out to be much later in the day than I thought, so there wasn't much time before the evening's special events. There was an ongoing "Pirate's Dice" competition, which I had played no games of. I decided to give it a shot. I'm pretty bad at bluffing, so I figured I'd just be giving some coins away... and that's what happened. I lost on about six "hands" in a row, and abdicated my seat, after going out first at a crowded table, in order to look into the puzzle competition.

We had been randomly assigned to teams, and we were supposed to get ourselves together over the course of the week to solve several pirate-themed puzzles that had been created by one of the attendees. I had found some teammates on Friday night, three of them had done no puzzles, and one said he had "worked on some." I went to go look for some of the puzzle sheets, but there were none left, so I figured it was a wash. About this time on Saturday, I ran into Kevin, who was looking for a word puzzle for his group. We managed to find one, made a copy at the front desk, and sat down to work on it. It was an interesting little puzzle, and I finished it in about twenty minutes. The time came to gather into teams, and it turned out a group of people had finished all the puzzles already. In fact, together, we'd finished the one I did three times, and two others twice each. I figured this boded well for our chances. Rob then gave each group a map and a bottle with some coded instructions in it, and we were off, racing to solve the final puzzle. Unfortunately, we over thought one of the clues, and spent way too much time on it. One of the groups was very quick, though, and finished before we were even close. They got plastic swords and copies of the map/poster used in the puzzle.

Next up was the "prize table." This took a long time. My name was called very late, and all the games that really interested me had gone. I picked up the Game of Thrones board game, which I had been sort of interested in for a while. On the second pass, in the "speed round," I grabbed Mammoth Hunters - it was a choice between that and Tortoise and Hare, neither of which I'd ever played. I didn't manage a third pick. Overall, it was a pretty interesting process, and I'm happy I participated.

Post-prize table, I wandered around until I ran into Justin, Fitch, and Ravindra starting Silk Road. I couldn't pass up that table, so I took a seat and was quickly joined by Brian. Ted Cheatham came over to teach us his game, and we were soon headed West. I wanted to take this game really easy - and it was easy to. The nature of the game, in which you are drawn steadily down the road, allows you to sort of sit back and deal with what happens, should you choose. The randomness of the turn order also can really get into your planning - you just need to go first a time or two, and really pick when that should happen. Other than that, you don't have a huge amount of control. I wanted to focus on being a little social, so I just tried to play my turn relattively quickly, and maintain diversity with, if possible, a focus on acquiring the goods that looked more saleable in the West. Well, I didn't get up to a significant number of anything, which hurt me a bit, in the Grand Vizier department. I also only got to sell one good. I was feeling pretty far back in the order up until the last turn - on the second to last turn, Ravindra had made an excellent move to sell 18 coins worth of goods, which was as much as I had total at the time. However, on the last turn, Brian went South when I expected whoever won to go North - there was one goods sale in the North, as opposed to two in the South, and two Grand Viziers in the South. I tied for the win on the last Grand Vizier, and then got the camel, to take the other GV as the last action, naming the same color I tied on, to get Brian and I both $10 total, a big turn for Brian. It ended up with him winning by a lot, I think 16, with me in second, then Mike, Justin, and Ravindra. I really have no idea how that happened, although I would guess it mostly had to do with how much money people made from the GV's.

We weren't done having fun yet. Eric came by with a copy of Every Man For Himself, which Justin described as a "must play." We got a table of six, with at least one player being turned away. In this game, you have sailors in lifeboats trying to make it to shore. The lifeboats are full of strife, and are sinking. Each turn you vote on which boats get leaks, who drowns if the boat was full when it got a leak, and which boat moves. You also have to jump a guy out of one boat and into another. This game was pretty fun, I had a good time trying to figure out which way to vote, boat to jump out of, etc. There was also a lot of interaction, which was good, although most of it was after the fact - in response to people's moves. I thought there would be a little more chatter leading up to the votes, but maybe people thought that would have slowed the game down. I managed to get a few of my guys to shore, although I think I rushed one of the boats, and should have maybe gambled to try and get someone else's piece kicked out before it came in. The biggest blow to my game was when one of my captains was kicked off the green boat, which I didn't end up with anyone on, and which somehow made it to shore, despite only having two colors on it at the end (I think). One thing I didn't like about this game was the endgame - it seemed just a little ignored - as though the designers made a system that would run, with some little inconsistencies that would develop in the end, and then just left it, when they could have played around with it a little more and made it more interesting/intuitive. Also, it sort of snuck up on me, and happened very quickly. Knowing how it works, I might plan better for it in the future, and enjoy it more. After getting my guy kicked out of the green (which was the highest scoring) boat in the second to last turn, I ended up in second, with Mike winning, Ravindra and Sarah tied for third, Eric in fifth, and Justin bringing up the rear after being the victim of too much drowning too early.

We went looking for something to play until Ravindra could leave, and, with typical enthusiasm, Justin chanced upon and grabbed The Bottle Imp, which he called "the best trick taking game ever." This was a cute little card game, with good illustrations and a story that went along with the game. The story was printed on some of the cards, illustrations on others, and was, I think, also included as a booklet in the game. Story gimmick aside, this was a cool little game. There are three suits (colors), you have to follow suit if you can, highest card wins the hand, unless someone plays under the Imp's number (starts at 19), in which case the highest number under that gets the trick, and the imp. Taking tricks is good, but having the imp is bad, as you don't score at the end of the round and, in fact, get negative points for cards people have discarded under the imp at the start. You also pass one card right and left after the start. We decided to play until either someone wanted to quit or Ravindra had to leave. I jumped out to a big lead over the course of the first three hands, then got stuck at 93 on the fourth hand while everyone else was below 50. I figured I had this one in the bag... (bottle?) Justin asked if we should keep going (earlier he had suggested maybe four hands). I said sure, I'll stop - meaning to say that, hey, I'll quit while I'm ahead. He took me seriously, but I said I'd play on until Ravindra had to go. So, we played a couple more hands, I finished with the imp both times, and ended up in last, with Mike just breaking one hundred. We had a lot of fun with this game. Oddly, whether it was due to the nature of the game or the lateness of the evening, all of us, at some point, made absolutely ridiculously foolish plays, which prompted much laughter, including my total brain failure on the last round, in which I completely lost myself the game by locking into the imp with three tricks to go.

I thought I was done, but my ride, Chris, was finishing up a game, and a couple people were trying to get Buccaneer going. They said it was fast, and it was a pirate game, so I was in. In this game you either build a crew, by putting one of your crew members on someone else's, or you board a ship with your crew. I could not get a ship boarded, and hence didn't get any treasure, although my crew members did set sail on other crews, earning me money. I ended up finally getting to board a ship with low value treasure, but it wasn't doing much for me. A couple of us had to skip turns, as our last crew member had been taken. The game indeed went quickly, and was fairly fun, but not, honestly, terribly interesting. It eneded up with Kasey and Sarah tied for first, Mike in third, and Jesse and I tied for fourth/last.

Chris had finished, so we were off for Durham, to get some sleep and return.

One more day!

GG, GL

JW