The Non-Euclidian Staircase

When I arrived, I caught the tail end of Eric showing the lovely copy of BattleLore he has a month before the rest of us (thanks to his trip to Essen and the game festival there). So I've seen and even touched a copy (if only to help it be packed away)... which just means the end of the month is even higher on my anticipating list. This one, I really want!

After looking at a few more of the titles Eric had brought along from Germany, we started actual play with a quick game of Und Tschüss!, suggested by Eric to occupy the first 6 of us to arrive while others we still coming. This is a clever card game I've owned for several years but never had a chance to play. Cards are dealt out as rewards, then everyone plays from their hand, trying not to be the lowest score. Each round, the lowest score takes the lowest reward card and is out of the hand. Everyone remaining adds a card to their own total, repeating the process, until finally there is just one (usually quite high) reward card left (and two players). The highest total then gets that card, everyone's hand is re-filled and it's all repeated. Quick, easy, and fun. Unfortunately, I was one of two players who ended up taking as many negative as positive cards, so ended up at the tail end of a 50/39/20/11/0/0 score.

A very large group was forming, so we split into three games. I joined folk setting up Ave Ceasar, a chariot racing game I'd heard no end of good things about, but never quite gotten a chance to play. It's a cruel game of chariot racing, cruel mostly because the route is often narrow and easily blocked, which can force you to lose turns or take longer routes. And there simply aren't enough cards in each player's deck to finish the required 3 laps if you take too many overly-long routes. In fact, this happened in this game, as Dave almost managed 2nd place... but wound up 1 space short of the finish line after playing his final movement card. I didn't do well at all, despite starting on the pole, and ended up near the tail end... but I did finish.

Next, Linda encouraged us to play Bohnanza, Matt, who was attending his last gathering as he is moving from NH to PA for a new job, had never played before, and that isn't something we could allow. He quickly caught onto the game, and I proved once again to not manage trading well at all, ending up tied for last in a 14/12/10/8/8/7/7 game, which was dominated almost from the beginning by Max (who scored that 14).

Next came another game I've owned for a while but never gotten to play, the highly regarded Tichu. It is a rather interesting mix of partnership trick-taking with post-deal card passing with "play out all your cards" play, with significant encouragement for risk-taking because the best way to score points is to "call Tichu", which means to brag that you'll play all your cards first... and take a big loss in points if you don't. I was new and made several early mistakes, including once stepping on my partner's Tichu call for a very foolish reason and misremembering a card's value (trying hard to keep a card worth -25 points I should've been trying to get rid of), but the last hand managed to see me with a nearly unstoppable Tichu and the good fortune that my partner also had a strong hand that could go out second, winning us 300 points and letting us win 566 to 335. Normally, the game is played to 1000 points, but we cut it short because I was hoping to leave early... Still, it took long enough I missed what I was hoping for, and so stayed for one more game, especially since I saw a nice, quick, light game being set up.

I played Transamerica then, and had a great time despite a very poor first round (I was 6 links from my target cities)... Thanks to much better luck in the succeeding rounds (I didn't win either, but I was only 1 or 2 links from doing so), I ended up in a close 3rd place. A nice, fun game to end the evening. And enough to make me decide to find space for the game in my TurkeyCon packing.