Game night was at Nadine's house, since I thought I would be late. I only arrived a little late, at 7:15.
Puerto Rico
David 62, Yitzchak 56, Nadine 47They opted to play this as a starter game, promising to play quickly. It took an hour, which is quick enough, for them.
Havoc
Jon 30, Tal 28, Binyamin 24Tal doesn't play heavier games, and this is one of her favorites. Or it used to be, until she realized that her strategy of always waiting to win the last two battles didn't always mean winning the game.
Binyamin won both the first two battles, but nothing more until we finished the first seven. Tal and I took 2 and 3 of the next battles, respectively. I was ahead in points now, but it came down to the remaining two battles. If either won both of them, they would win the game. If they split, I would still be ahead.
My hand was seriously depleted, so I wasn't in the running for the last two battles at all. Binyamin was convinced that he wasn't going to win either. He had the opportunity to simply not call Havoc at all, basically handing me the victory, since the eighth battle wouldn't be fought and the remaining points wouldn't be enough to beat me. But he didn't. They ended up each winning one battle, which gave me the victory, anyway.
Blokus Trigon
Binyamin+, YitzchakBinyamin brought this out as a filler game. Yitzchak had only once played the regular Blokus.
Princes of Florence
Yitzchak 72, Binyamin 63, Tal 54They played on the fancy graphics new version in German. Jesters were selling cheap.
Power Grid: France
Jon 16+, Nadine 16-, David 13End scores in Power Grid give you little information about how the game went.
This was our group's first time on an extension board. Nadine and David spent some time picking which country and provinces in which to ply, finally settling on Western France. We played with the correct France rules which tossed out the 13 plant, put the 11 in its place, and added more nukes to the initial setup.
Both of them had the opportunity to place cities on the board before me, and both chose not to take Paris fearing imminent enclosure. Instead they both placed right outside of Paris. I took Paris.
And after my fourth city build, I was enclosed. Despite this, I was earning more cash than either of them, which allowed me to jump across the board to mid-France, and then all the way down to the south coast.
Resources were in short supply. Coal went first. Nadine and I were sitting in Phase 3 with 13 cities each, to David's 10. He had plant capacity to power 15 cities, Nadine 13, and me 10.
All of us were able to take a 6 power plant, giving David 17 capacity, me 13, and Nadine 17. Except Nadine couldn't really power 17, since I kept running out the garbage fuel she needed.
In the last round, we finished all the big power plants, netting me a maximum power capacity of 16. There were no more plants I could get, so I was bound to lose if David could build the cities. Nadine tossed her 7 garbage plant, since she could never fuel it, and instead took the 50. So she was also now limited to 16 capacity.
The game had to end that round for me to win; otherwise David would just build 3 cities this turn, 4 the next, and power all 17. Luckily he wasn't able to get even to 16 cities in this turn, so I built to 17, being able to power 16 of them. Nadine could also build to 16, but had far less cash, even having to build one less city.
If you followed all that, you're a genius.
It's Alive
Binyamin 46, Yitzchak 42, Ginat 37Binyamin find the new graphics gross.
Bridge
Jon/Yitzchak, Binyamin/NadineYitzchak played two 5c contracts. The first he made. The second I jumped to 5c as a sacrifice bid over my his 2c bid followed by Nadine's 2h. Binyamin doubled, and Yitzchak redoubled. Yitzchak is still a bit new to the bidding game, and so didn't realize I was sacrificing; he thought I was powerful. And forgot that I had initially passed.
Turns out we only went down one. He had 7 clubs. And our opponents were cold for 5h, and might have made 6h.
