June 13, 2007

Participants: Nadine, Jon, Ben, David K, Dylan, Elijah, Binyamin, Rivka, Yitzchak, Adam, Gili

Game night was held at Nadine's house, as it will be for the next three or four weeks. Jon is going on vacation.

Thor

Ben 16, Dylan 12, Binyamin, Adam, Rivka

This is an updated version of Knizia's Flinke Pinke. Quick and painless, apparently. This version also included some action cards, to make things a little spicier.

Toutankamon

Rivka+, Elijah, Adam, Binyamin, Yitzchak,

I probably spelled the name of this game wrong. This is a simple set collecting game with a very elegant movement mechanic. It looked interesting.

El Grande

David 110, Ben 100, Nadine 96, Dylan 89, Jon 88

This is one of my favorite games, especially with five. I decided to start the game off by playing my power cards randomly to see if it really made a difference. This lasted only three rounds. In the fourth round, there was a card that I really needed to take (to gain 15 points), so I chose to play my 13. From then on I played as usual.

You might think that my low score is from this experiment, but it's not. It's because in round 6, every single placement from the castillo destroyed my positions, despite the fact that David and Ben were doing better than I was.

Blah.

I did my best to limp into the finish line. I still enjoyed the game, because I love taking the intrigue cards.

David, Ben, and Dylan had better positions, and David whomped on the last turn with a huge castle victory.

Backgammon

Jon++, Gili

Gili showed up in the middle of two larger games and didn't get to play anything but this. I feel a little bad about that. I rolled a number of doubles at the takeoff phases to win both games.

After this, she played Settlers/Cities/Seafarers online a little, and then went home.

Taj Mahal

Elijah (44), Yitzchak (42), Adam (33), Rivka (30), Binyamin (21)

Binyamin was not supposed to be free, as he was scheduled to play an online Bridge game tournament, but his opponents didn't show up. Yitzchak warned everyone that Elijah was not only bad at the game but always took someone down with him.

So it is an appropriate burn that Elijah ended up winning the game.

Elijah played relatively rationally. This was the first time I've played with Elijah, and his play was not as advertized. --Adam

Medici

Adam (103), Binyamin (93), Rivka (76), Nadine/Eliyahu (74), Yitzchak (53)

I haven't played this and didn't see what happened.

A very nice, fairly simple bidding game. Bidding is essentially the whole mechanic, along with some details about what counts for what. Quite similar to Modern Art, except with less diverse bidding and more details of how things score. I liked it quite a lot, though I think that I there's still a place for Modern Art when you want something that is even more single-mindedly just bidding. --Adam

Tichu

Ben, Nadine, David, Dylan

I had to leave before this game.