The Non-Euclidian Staircase

When I arrived at Eric's, Jim and Alex (who I hadn't met before) were just setting up Techo Witches, which I gladly joined in for. The game is a very clever sort of race game, with players building routes for their vacuum-cleaner-mounted figures in advance by eyeballing route pieces and the state of the board. When you actually move, from 1 to 6 pieces will be laid out in a trail based on your plan, and if you did it right you'll go where you want and not hit anything. It's easier than it sounds, but it's still not easy. Eric certainly has a gift for it, and I managed to get most of my programming right, but in the end I miss-judged a rather desperate attempt to hit my final target the round before Eric was sure to hit his... Eric took the win cleanly, as expected, the next turn.

We set up Goldland next, a game I hadn't really heard much about before except from Eric since, for some reason, it's never come out in an English edition. It's a solid exploration game, with some very interesting resource management systems working within it. Every square can potentially require the expending of resource, and most allow the acquisition of others, so much of the game becomes trying to find a minimum-cost route to the gold-rich temple in the far corner from the starting space. Alex managed that task, with an especially nice feature that each "pay resources to enter" space he uncovered on his route had a space providing the necessary resources right next to it. Eric and I were just a move behind Alex, but that wasn't quite enough. I ended up in the back of the game because of a couple of no-reward turns, including one where I moved myself to a spot where I could neither acquire any resources at all nor explore, so I literally wasted that whole turn. Still, it was great fun and I'm going to be looking for this game for myself, because I know several people who would like it. Final score was Alex in front, then Eric, Jim, and me, 17/15/14/12.

We unpacked Great Wall of China next, this time doing the rules right. (In fact, Eric had found a set of rules online and reviewed them himself prior to my arrival.) And it's just as good as I'd hoped it would be. It has a lot of the feel of Samurai to it, which certainly doesn't hurt in my book, but here there is no board, no differing suits, a couple new special powers, and no upper limit on the number of pieces one can place in a conflict. Alex and Jim and Alex and Eric got into a huge fights each, but both were over high-score tokens (I believe an 8 and a 5 and an 8 and a 4), and in the end they were right to have done it. On the final turn, I was denied (by being locked into ties) three potential scoring tokens and Alex claimed others, and that decided the game... Alex won, but just a point over Jim and I in a tie. 36/35/35/26. If there were any hard feelings from the miss-play last week, I think they evaporated.

Mark (who I had also not met before this game evening) had arrived while were were playing GWoC, and Ray arrived just as we were setting up Lifeboats. This a a delightfully fun game of backstabbing and shifting alliances. Play consists of manipulating survivors of a ship's sinking, voting which boat springs a leak, which passengers are tossed overboard, and which boat manages to inch toward safety. No one can be trusted, and no one is really safe. This particular game turned on one particular round not far from the end when, in a critical vote, four of the six players decided to use one of their three limited "override the vote" options, neutralizing each other and leaving the other two players to make the decision. Yes, I was one of the four. Even then, I cam in a close second to Jim, 23/20/16/13/13/13. I'll be watching for the forthcoming Z-Man Games release of this one!

Ray then headed back out (he'd come primarily to be part of an arranged game that, unfortunately, had fallen apart without him knowing it) and the rest of us picked Mü as a good 5-player game. It's a very tricky sort of Bridge-like game (trick-taking with bidding), with complex and shifting partnerships, many trump options, and more than a few fiddly bits. I don't think any of us completely avoided mistakes, but I managed more than my share, only achieving a good hand both in bidding and play right at the very end, when I came back from -16 points to end, still in last place, but positive. Eric won with exactly 200 (the target), then Mark had 171 (he'd proven an astonishingly good player in defending, breaking several bids decisively), then Alex at 140, Jim at 67 and me at 52. Ugly! But I really think I figured out the game with only 2 hands left to play, so I'm hoping to get another go at this!

And, with that, Alex, Mark, and I called it a night, though Jim and Eric were setting up Memoir '44 as we left.