Game night continues to hit on all cylinders, and it appears that the 12-16 range is our new "normal" for attendance.  I was a little extra later than normal in getting there (thanks to a less-than-efficient server at Chili's), so it was almost 7pm before I got in my first game. 

Man Bites Dog

This game was apparently jumping to get played, because it feel off my stack o' games twice as I was bringing them in.  Five new players joined me as I took the 3.4 seconds required to teach the rules, and then we got going.  Michelle pulled off two "exclusives" to jump into an incredible lead that won her the game.  But while I don't want to take anything away from Michelle, the game really isn't about winning, nor is there any real skill or strategy involved in doing so.  Instead, you play a simple 5-card-draw variant where the cards have elements of headlines on them, and then you try to build a somewhat coherent and rather silly headline out of what you end up with.  Each card has a point value printed on it (which appears to be rather random), and you just add up the points on the cards you use to determine your score each turn.  It's silly and fun, but there's not much there otherwise.

Time: 17 minutes
Score: Michelle* 625, Chris* 505, Me 465, Graham* 400, Mark* 375, Brett* 275
Ratings: Michelle 8, Chris 8, Me 6, Graham 6.5, Mark 8, Brett 8

No Thanks!  

Some of us had a game of Agricola pre-scheduled, so we played a quick hand of No Thanks! while waiting for our final couple of players.  I won!

Time: 10 minutes
Score: Me 10, Ken 26, James 47, Mark 55
Ratings: Me 8, Ken 7.5, James 8, Mark 8

Agricola  

Kenny picked up a copy of Agricola  cheap because the box was banged up, so we helped him deflower it this week.  It was Charles' first play, and it was actually nice to refresh myself as we explained the rules to him.  In my opening hand, I thought that I had a really good setup.  I had the Seasonal Worker (which gives you grain or vegetables when taking the Day Laborer space) and the "frickin' awesome plow" (okay, that wasn't the actual name, but it let me plow 3 fields instead of one, and I could use it twice in the game, which was pretty frickin' awesome), as well as the Head of the Household (or something lke that, and which let me use the Build Rooms and Family Growth spaces even if someone else was on them). 


What I actually found, however, was that meeting the requirements for the plow and then getting it out and using it was rather distracting to the rest of the things that I needed to do in the game.  So while I maxed out on family members, fields, grain, veggies, and pastures, my house was only a 4-room clay hut and I only had a couple of animals.  Alton, on the other hand, had a 5-room stone house, five family members, tons of animals and pastures, and at least a tad of pretty much everything else.  And the difference was significant, with him beating me (who was in second place) by 11 points.   
  

At the end of round 14...

Time: 110 minutes
Score: Alton 49, Me 38, Chip 36, Ken 32, Charles* 26
Ratings: Alton 10, Me 9, Chip ?, Ken 9, Charles 10 110 minutes Alton 49, Me 38, Chip 36, Ken 32, Charles* 26 Alton 10, Me 9, Chip ?, Ken 9, Charles 10 

Agricola is a strange game.  While it's relatively dry and has an admittedly rare but rather boring theme, it's still a lot of fun.  Sort of like The Settlers of Catan, there's always the built-in jokes about keeping animals in the house for all sorts of nefarious purposes, which are pretty entertaining overall.  And as I mentioned in my last article, it's just packed full of tension and strategy.  We all certainly had a great time with it, and maybe it will see somewhat of a revival at our game nights in the next little while. 

My farm (top) and Alton's winning farm (bottom)

Pandemic 

We then got into a "heroic" game of Pandemic  (that's using 6 Epidemic cards).  Since I figured that it'd be pretty difficult to win with 5 players, I dealt out 2 roles to everyone and let them pick which one they wanted to use.  We ended up with the Field Operative (Chip), Medic (Charles), Researcher (Keith), Operations Expert (Kenny), and Dispatcher (me).

The whole game was exceedingly difficult, but we managed it pretty well.  We were set back significantly by the fact that Keith (the Researcher) kept drawing special event and epidemic cards rather than city cards that he could trade to somebody else.  Chip was able to get three blue cards and the cubes he needed to use is power to cure it relatively early, and the most luck we had was in my ability to topdeck into a black cure with getting only one card traded to me. 

As we worked on the other two cures, we had two moments of "brilliance" in our play.  Keith was holding the card that gives someone two extra actions, and the commercial travel ban was in place (limiting infection rate to 1 for one complete time around the table), and I figured out that between my turn and Charles' (who was the Medic, if you'll remember), we could eradicate blue completely.  The only catch was that I would draw the one card at the end of my turn, and if it was blue, we wouldn't be able to pull it off.  Thankfully, our luck held and sunsetting blue gave us the breathing room we needed to focus on cures for the rest of the game.

The other big event came when we were figuring out how to get our last two cures and win the game.  The "plan" was for Chip to get three yellow cubes (which would take him two more turns) to go along with his 3 yellow cards and make that cure, while Keith played the Reexamined Research card to let Kenny pull his 5th red card out of the discard pile and cure it.  But then Chip had the idea to count the cards in the draw pile, and realized that he was only going to get one more turn.  Our first instinct was to write the game off as a loss, but then we looked closer.  I was also holding 3 yellow cards, and Charles held a red card that he could give to Kenny.  Through some complicated planning, we figured out how to get me one of Chip's cards, that Keith could play Reexamined Research on me to get the last yellow card out of the discard pile, and that Kenny could get that card he needed from Charles, all before the world melted down.  And in the end, Chip actually drew the card that allowed a player (Kenny in this case) to change his role, so he became the Scientist and cured red with only 4 cards.  

It all went off as planned and we won the game with 3 cards left in the deck, sitting at 6 outbreaks, and with our last epidemic poised to ravage the world.    


Time: 41 minutes
Score: Heroic Humans (Chip, Charles, Keith, Ken, and Me) - WIN!; Pandemic - LOSE
Ratings: Chip 9.5, Charles 8.5, Keith 9, Ken 9, Me 10

After the game, Charles voiced this mistaken idea that Pandemic is easy or something.  I think this came about mainly because he's been playing with people that have lots of experience (this was my 86th game, if you'll remember), along with the fact that before this game, we've been playing at difficulty levels that were too easy because of all the new people playing with us.  But if he'll take some time to look back at our history (which he can find  here, here, here  (where we had a 33% win rate when it was GotM!), here, and here) we developed our skill the hard way, on the broken and decaying bodies of several worlds lost to the pestilent scourge. 

Bang!

With 7 players looking for a "last game of the night", Bang! was the obvious choice.  Keith and Charles had never played before, and were both interested in learning more about this game that has become almost a part of our game group's culture.  So after rules explanation, we dealt out the role cards, and Alton revealed himself as the sheriff.  Now, Alton has some interesting ideas about how to be the sheriff, which mainly include shooting the people on either side of him to see how they'll react.  Unfortunately, Keith was on one of his sides, and was severely wounded in the exchange.  And then, feeling like he had no other choice, Keith showed his true colors and shot back at Alton.  Then outed as an Outlaw, Keith was soon gunned down and ousted quickly from his first game.  However, while it looked good for those of us on the side of law and order for a while, Alton's constant emptying of his hand opened the door for Kenny (with his Volcanic) and Chip to fill him full of lead and win the game for the Outlaws.


That game went very quickly, so despite it being half-past eleven, we shuffled up and started over.  This time, Keith was the sheriff, and he promptly assumed Alton's philosophy by shooting Alton a few times.  In the end, this was a bit unfortunate for him, because Alton was, in fact, a deputy, which we found out soon enough when Beth gunned him down.  There was some role confusion for a while in this game, with Keith (and almost everyone else) thinking that Kenny was an outlaw, which only helped the real outlaws have an even easier time with knocking Keith out and winning again.

Time: 31 and 33 minutes
Game 1: Outlaws (Ken, Chip & Keith*) - Win; Sheriff (Alton), Deputies (Beth & Me) & Renegade (Charles*) - Lose
Game 2: Outlaws (Beth, Chip & Me) - Win; Sheriff (Keith), Deputies (Alton & Ken) & Renegade (Charles) - Lose
Ratings: Ken 8, Charles 9, Beth 8, Chip 7, Me 7, Alton 9, Keith 9

We had a good time, and I was even a little surprised how positively Keith and Charles viewed the game.  But in the right circumstances, it can be incredibly fun.


Other Games Played

Alhambra
Time: 35 minutes
Score: James 208 (with the duck-shaped city to the right), Mark 176
Ratings: James 9, Mark 8.5

Endeavor
Time: 76 minutes
Score: Brett 60, Graham 54, Chris 48, Michelle* 46, Keith* 41
Ratings: Brett 8.5, Graham 8, Chris 8.5, Michelle 8, Keith 7

Metropolys
Time: 44 minutes
Score: Graham* 39, Chris 31, Brett* 29, Michelle* 19
Ratings: Graham 8.5, Chris 8, Brett 7.5, Michelle 7

Race for the Galaxy
Time: 120 minutes (for 3 games)
Score: Mark - 2 wins, Alton - 1 win, Charles and Brett - No Wins
Ratings: All 10's

Taluva
Time: 26 minutes
Score: ??? (not sure what Chris meant by his scoring notes) Chris, Graham, Keith*, Michelle*
Ratings: Chris 9, Graham 8, Keith 7, Michelle 6.5

Through the Desert
Time: 18 and 30 minutes
Game 1: Graham 112, Chris 92
Game 2: Keith 69, Charles 68, Alton 67, Chip 61
Ratings: Graham 8.5, Chris 9, Keith 8, Charles 8, Alton 8.5, Chip 8.5

Unspeakable Words
Time: 24 minutes
Score: Alton 100, Michelle 75, David 70 (and crazy), Beth 60 (and off her rocker)
Ratings: ?

* First play for that Person