After missing two weeks in a row because of Norwood Family Vacation 2009 - Special Cruise Edition and then some bad weather (that turned out to not really be all that bad), I was finally able to get back to game night!  Again due to the weather on January 13, we sorta split up our 2nd Anniversary celebration over that week and then the following week as well.  Since I've already given the overview of our year-end survey and general statistics, I'm just going to touch on the games played over the last two weeks in this entry.

I actually managed to get to game night early for a change last week, so Mark (and his daughter) and I got in a little light gaming before most others arrived.  We played 6 games of Tier auf Tier, a game of Hive using the Mosquito expansion, and then I finally had the chance to try out Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries.  TtR: Nordic was pretty good, but I think that I like the Switzerland expansion a bit better as a 2-3 player option.  Not being able to use the locomotives for regular routes seemed to be a much larger problem in Nordic, and I missed the "country" destination tickets from Switzerland.  Still, I'd love to get the other train colors, but I doubt that I'll go to the inordinate trouble of finding a copy at this point.

We then had six people ready to give a last play to our Game of the Month!, Cosmic Encounter.  Since the new Fantasy Flight version only accomodates 5, Chris Ingersoll pulled out his Mayfair edition of the game instead.  Players (and their races) were Chris (Pacifist), James (Sniveler), Alton (Loser), Brad (Mirror), Mark (Macron), and Me (Oracle).  It was a brutal game, and we're pretty sure that no one had seen that many ships in the warp before.  Things went back and forth until we found ourselves in a 5- or 6-way tie at 4 foreign bases.  Then it got really dirty as we all ganged up on the current player to make sure that they couldn't get their last base.  In the end, however, Chris and James got all weaselly and shared a victory as they allied together to get both of their 5th bases.  It was downright disgraceful.

We then had a ginormous 8-player race in Pitch Car.  I started last, which meant that I was essentially in last place for the first few turns.  Through incredibly skillful play (and more than a little luck), I steadily advanced to the front of the pack, and despite a late run by Chris, managed to pull out the win!  Pitch Car is so much fun, and I really need to bite the $80+ bullet and pick it up.  Of course, then I'd want as many expansions as I could get, which would cost lots more, and my wife would kill me.  Maybe I can ask for it for my birthday or something...

At this point, Denise made the admission that she had never played Pandemic.  Seeing that as a great tragedy and just happening to have my copy, it quickly hit the table and we played a couple of games.  We won with the researcher/dispatcher/scientist, but then lost with the ops expert/dispatcher/researcher.  As most people do, Denise really liked the game, so maybe there will be more oportunity to get this to the table at game night over the next little while.  Other games played last week included Clue, Connect Four, Ra, Race for the Galaxy, and Viva Topo!

This week, our attendance was down quite a bit, and there weren't nearly as many games played.  Of course, playing a 2-hour-long game can have that effect on game night, but I'll get to that in a minute.

By the time I made it in, Chris had already won a solo game of our new Game of the Month!, Ghost Stories, and he and Alton were already finishing up a session of Race for the Galaxy.   With Alton watching (which he likes to do to learn a game better), Brad joined Chris and I in another game of Ghost Stories.  We played on "normal" difficulty (3 Qi each and only 3 haunted tiles needed to lose).  I was blue and had the "Heavenly Gust" power (both exorcize and use the village tile), brad was red and had the "Dance of the Winds" (move another player after moving), Chris was yellow with "Bottomless Pockets" (draw a Tao token before moving), and the neutral board was the green one with "Strength of a Mountain" (extra Tao die and/or not roll the curse die).  Chris and I have been playing a lot of solo games, and Brad had played at least a time or two before, so we had a pretty good handle on the game.  Things went very smoothly, and we were never really challenged in any serious way.  I don't think we ever had more than one haunted tile, and when the Creeping Horror incarnation showed up, it only took us a few turns to get enough tokens there and take her out.  Using the scoring from the English rules, we got 25 points in the win.

Chip then joined us for another game of Ghost Stories, and even with another totally random setup, Chris and I just switched colors/powers, Brad got his red "Dance of the Winds" power back, and Chip got the green "God's Favorite" power (reroll Tao dice and/or curse die).  Things could not have gone more differently than they did from the first game, however, and we were behind the eightball from the first turn when the a ghost came out that stole all our starting Tao tokens.  We had haunters and tormentors all over us, and despite some really clever strategery, we lost 13 cards before We-Feng even showed up.


To finish off the last couple of hours in game night, we then pulled out Prophecy, which Chris and I tried 2-player a few weeks ago.  Alton joined us as Brad had to leave, and we randomly drew for characters to play the short game (first to 2 artifacts).  Alton was the Spellblade, Chip was the Mystic, Chris was the Mercenary, and I was the Ranger.  We all had a hard time getting much of anything accomplished early on, with everyone botching important rolls right and left.  Since we had so much trouble increasing our power level early, the game drug on more than it should have, and Chip even had the bad luck of kicking the bucket when he took a chance on a roll that he should have made.  As he started over with the Monk, I was finally able to get a few good items and start cranking up my strength.  While I was clearly in the lead in terms of power, I stayed pretty low on gold and had no movement skills/items, so I felt like I was plodding around the board in slow motion.  Finally, after two failed attempts, I was able to defeat the lesser and greater guardians in one astral plane location and claim the Astral Blade artifact.  After taking a couple of more turns to get in a last little buffing (and one turn to beat up on Chris just to prove my dominance), I took on a second set of astral plane guardians and won the game.  All of us enjoyed Prophecy despite its length, and I hope that we can get it played again soon to see if it will move a little better now that all four of us have some experience with it.   

Unfortunately, it was too late at that point to start something new, so I had to go home.  Only 7 more days until the next boardgame night!