February 13, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Gili, David, Yitzchak, Sigal

I'm still not sure I have Sigal's name correct.

Mr Jack

Jon (Detective)+, Nadine (Criminal)

I thought this would make an opener while we waited for others to arrive, but it takes a lot longer than I remembered. As a result, we started a few rounds and then picked it up later again at the end of the evening. Tearing Nadine away from the game is hard work.

I eliminated 1, 2, 1, 1, 2 characters on the first through fifth rounds. Stepping on Jack at the end was trivial.

Notre Dame

Yitzchak 67, Nadine 58, Gili 57, Sigal 38

We set this up for four and I explained the game to David. Yitzchak and Sigal showed up in the middle, so David and I abandoned the game to play Magic. All during Magic, however, though we were having a good time, he looked appraisingly at the game and said that it looks good.

Our games of Notre Dame have all been either runaway marginal victories - the leader going in to round seven essentially maintains his lead without too much trouble - or stunning upsets - someone suddenly pulls ahead 15 or 20 points to take over. These are growth spurts. As we learn to play better and find what works and what doesn't, and share this information, we will begin seeing closer games, I believe.

David 65, Nadine 58, Jon 48

This was an example of the first type of game. David managed to pull off an uncontested victory in Notre Dame in round 6, where neither Nadine nor I could use the cards and so had to pass them in round 4. The resulting 14 point jump was unassailable by either of us during the remaining rounds.

I put a few cubes into the VP track in round 1, prompting Nadine to say for the next few rounds how much of a threat I now was for the rest of the game and how no one should pass me any VP track cards for the rest of the game. It was already obvious I was losing by round 6, however.

Magic: the Gathering

David++, Jon+

This is always enjoyable, even when I lose badly. I didn't lose badly this time. We still have too many games thrown by mana curves, but that just makes it all the more challenging. We've tried a few of the alternatives and we're not really happy with them.

We're still working through the common cards I bought fro my last trip to Toronto, which means all the cards are new to both of us. As usual, we Rochester drafted out of 90 cards for decks, which is half the fun.

I put together a green and white deck with a splash of red and a number of equipment. I put in only three Mountains to support the red. In the first game, I got all the Mountains in the first ten cards, and no Forests during the game. In the second game I got all the Mountains in my first ten cards, and one Forest a few cards later. And in the third game I got two of the Mountains in my first ten cards, but a balance of Forests after that.

I won the first game with a white card that lets me toss useless cards to put two white 1/1 tokens into play. I had lots of useless green cards to toss. The second game, David pretty much flew over me. In the third game, I should have won, but I wasn't paying attention to his lack of mana and didn't attack with everything for fear of reprisal. He was down to 2. I pulled a direct damage that took him down to 1, naturally not drawing the other one which would have taken him down to 0.

I'm on vacation for the next two weeks, so game nights will be at Nadine's.