January 13, 2009

Participants: Jon, Nadine, David, Gili, Avraham

Game night moved to Tuesday, as I had an event on Wednesday.

Carpe Astra

Nadine 12, David 10, Gili/Avraham 10, Jon 5

First play for all of us, we took a little time to learn the rules as we started.

OK, rather than slam the game here in an open forum, I'm going to write to the publisher to see how many ways we screwed up the game. Suffice to say, our first play did not go well. Look for a review on my blog sometime soon.

Magic: the Gathering

Jon++, David+

Played at the same time as Carpe Astra and Bridge. A very rare win for me this evening; David usually wins.

We drafted as usual, and I just couldn't drop down to 2 or 3 colors, so I ended up playing a four color deck. I had 3 to 6 lands for each color, depending on requirement, plus three other cards that gave mana bonuses, including one that gave a multi-color mana bonus. Incredibly, I had no mana problems whatsoever during the game.

David played White/Black. He got the white from negative drafting against me, but his white cards weren't as good as mine. And he never plays white.

First game went down to the absolute wire. David won by a single point with an instant that boosted one of his creatures by one point. I would have taken him out on the next round.

Second game I slaughtered him, getting out an early 7/7 creature, and then making him a) fly, and b) every time I hit him with the creature, I get a number of 1/1 green creatures equal to the amount of damage I did. He resigned when I had 14 1/1 creatures.

Third game again came down to the wire, but was most unusual. I knocked him down to 3 points and then couldn't get any more through, which is when he began hitting me slowly.

The unusual part was that we both made a number of plays to help the other players creatures, for a a variety of reasons. I had a piece of equipment on one of my creatures, and I really wanted it on another creature, so I attacked with it, hoping David would just kill it. David couldn't afford to let it through, so he blocked it and then healed it.

Then, I cast my enchantment that makes a creature fly and also gives be baby 1/1 creatures for every point of damage the creature does onto David's creature that had been poking me. This neutralized him, as he could not now afford to give me swarms of creatures.

And so it went. I finally left my defenses open, and David took the chance to kill me by attacking with everything. Then I played an instant which canceled all combat damage and left his creatures tapped for an extra round. That let my 1/2 creature walk through for the final 2 points of damage that I needed to give.

Fun game.

Jambo

Gili 62, Avraham 58

Played at the same time as Carpe Astra.

Solitaire

Nadine ?

Played during Carpe Astra, while David and I played Magic, and Gili and Avraham played Jambo. Lot of downtime in Carpe Astra.

Bridge

David/Nadine+, Jon/Avraham

David and I also played Magic while playing Bridge. Second play for Avraham.

David and Nadine got the cards and did well, making a slam, and a doubled contract. In the other hands, Avraham made a number of beginner errors; he still plays well for a new player.