Last week's game night held a few nice surprises for me because we had a couple of people make an appearance who we haven't seen in a while.  First was Chris Wickline, who has been off serving our country with the US Navy in and around Bahrain.  We sent a care package of games and associated goodies to him last year sometime, and it was great to finally see him in person again!

One of our charter members, Mark Gavlak, was also with us this week.  He moved a little farther away from us a while ago and isn't able to make it back for our Tuesday night gaming sessions very often.   

Piece O' Cake [BGG]

I had given Piece O' Cake to Gwen for her birthday mostly because her Dad used to always use the "you cut, I choose" method of dividing various goodies with her.  We've played a few times at home, but I wanted to see how it would work with a full group.  Overall, it was pretty cool and very quick, and I took the win when someone set me up for a couple of majorities in the last turn.  
 

Chris, Chip, Chris W, and Mark... It was like a flashback from 2007!
Time: 12 minutes
Score: Norton 36, Chris* 28, Chip* 21, Chris W* 20, Mark* 18
Ratings: Norton 7, Chris 6.5, Chip 7, Chris W ?, Mark 6.5

Okay, first of all, the box says "Cake" but the tiles are clearly slices of pie.  I mean, I suppose they could be some sort of pie-like cake; cheesecakes maybe?  But my guess is that either there must be some idiom in German about pie that roughly translates into our "Piece of Cake", or they make some wacky-butt cakes over there.  Or even better, why the heck didn't they call the game "Easy as Pie" instead of "Piece o' Cake"?

But anyway, in each round, one player randomly turns over pieces of cake or pie or whatever it is there are until they have a whole cake assembled (which takes 11 pieces).  There are 8 different types of cake in the game, and each full cake will be made up of random slices of several different varieties.   That player then divides the cake/pie thingy into slices containing 1 or more individual pieces, and everyone takes turns picking one.  You can then either immediately eat the pieces of cake to score points equal to the dollops of whipped cream on them, or you can keep them to try and score the bonus points for a variety of cake if you have the most of them at game end. 

Piece O' Cake is sort of a one-trick pony, I suppose, but there are some nice choices to make about which pieces to eat and which to save.  It looks really good, and as a light filler or in a family setting, I could see this going over very well.    

White Elephant [BGG]

Speaking of light, family-style filler games, we then played a quick round of White Elephant.  Now that it's all fully funded, we can all look forward to all the fun we'll have giving it away for the holidays!     

Time: 15 minutes
Score: Ian* 24, Chris* 19, Chip 18, Mark* 17, Norton 15, Chris W* 12
Ratings: Ian 8, Chris 6, Chip 7.5, Mark 7, Norton 8, Chris W 7


Lord of the Rings: The Card Game (LCG) [BGG]

I wanted to make sure I got in a game of the Lord of the Rings LCG, our Game of the Month!, sometime during the evening.  Chip and Ian (who hadn't really played a whole game yet) joined me, and we set up to play the Journey Down the Anduin quest.  It was actually pretty easy for us, despite Chip and Ian having a somewhat less experience with the game.  

Time: 73 minutes
Score: Heroes of Light (Chip, Ian* & Norton) - Win (78 points), Journey Down the Anduin - Lose
Ratings: Chip 7.5, Ian 9, Norton 9

Again, there's not much more to say about the LotR LCG right now, but I did pick up the first adventure pack (The Hunt for Gollum) last week, so hopefully I'll have something new to say very soon!


Tales of the Arabian Nights [BGG]

I offered then to run a game of Catacombs, which I hadn't brought to game night in a while.  Lots of people wanted to play, and Keith even wanted to try being the Overlord, so in the end I just taught the game and then stepped out so that everyone else could play.  So instead, Kenny and I opened up Tales of the Arabian Nights and had a go with it.

It's been a while since I played this as well, but Kenny had mentioned it a couple of times and I definitely wanted to get it back to the table.  He chose to play Ali Baba and I took Shaharazade, so I picked up skills like Storytelling and Appearance.  But in something like the first or second encounter I had, I chose to seduce or court or something like that and ended up getting turned into a freaking ape (the Beast Form status)!  Kenny got thrown in jail soon thereafter, losing 4 or 5 turns in vain attempts to escape the jailer, so I got a pretty big lead on him in my story and destiny points.


In order to shorten the game a little, we were using the variant where you don't pre-select your final scoring breakdown, but instead just play until your total between destiny and story is 20 or more (normally, you have to choose some split of destiny and story points that equal 20 before the game begins).  Despite the fact that my apeish good looks sort of ruined my whole seduction angle, I was speeding along and hit a total of 20 well before Kenny got very close.  But I had also unlocked the entrance to the Dusky Land and decided to head there instead for just one more adventure. 

It was pretty successful, as I managed to swing the tide of a huge battle, leading the "good" 'Efreeti to victory and getting all sorts of rewards for it.  But while my hubris led me to waste so much time, Kenny hit a few profitable encounters and managed to get his total score above 20 as well.  He hightailed it to Baghdad first and I thought he would win easily, but then I realized that I could make it there as well on my next turn.  However, despite the fact that I had a lot more points (36 total to his 25 total), the win actually goes to the person who has accomplished his goal (20+ points in this case) and has the most statuses (he had 3 to my 2).  He even won the second tiebreaker (skills, which he beat me 10-9 on as well), so the victory (arguable as inconsequential as it is) was clearly his. 

Time: 82 minutes
Score: Kenny* - Win (D8, S17, 3 Statuses, 10 skills), Norton - Lose (D18, S18, 2 statuses, 9 skills) 
Ratings: Kenny 8, Norton 7.5

I really need to play Tales of the Arabian Nights more.  I know I say that about a lot of games, but this time I really mean it.  However, I don't think that 2 players is really the best way to do so.  While it's probably marginally quicker than it would be with 3, a lot of the potential time savings is wasted in fumbling with both the Reaction Matrix and the Book of Tales.  If I do have the chance to play it 2-player again, I'll probably have the active player actually run the Matrix, which doesn't really have any information in it that would "give away" anything.  

Other Games Played

Alien Frontiers
Time: 60 and 85 minutes
Game 1: Steve 11, Ken 8, Tim 7
Game 2: Ken 10, Adam 6, Shawn 6, Keith 5
Ratings: Ken 8.5, Adam 8, Shawn 9, Keith 8

Ascension: Return of the Fallen
Time: 17, 23 & 32 minutes
Game 1: Chris 70, Mark 65
Game 2: Chris 94, Mark 77
Game 3: Sceadeau 76, Mark 72, Chris 65, Chris W 57
Ratings: Chris 10, Mark 9

Catacombs (I can't remember all the details, and they didn't fill out a sheet for the game)
Time: ??
Score: Keith (Overlord) - Win; Heroes (Josh, Chris W*, Ian* & Mark?) - Lose
Ratings: ???

Hike
Time: 20 minutes
Score: Ken* 38, Keith* 0, Shawn 0, Adam* 0
Ratings: Ken 7, Keith 6, Shawn 8, Adam 7

Lord of the Rings LCG
Time: ??
Score: Heroes of Light (Ian/Keith, Shawn, Adam & Ken) - Win (151 points), Forces of Shadow - Lose
Ratings: Keith 8.5, Shawn 7, Adam 7, Ken 8

Parade
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Kenny 19, Keith 27, Shawn 36 
Ratings: Kenny 8, Keith 7.5, Shawn 9

Samurai
Time: 31 minutes
Score: Adam - Win, Sceadeau & Ian - Lose
Ratings: Adam 8, Sceadeau 7, Ian 7

Small World Underground
Time: 76 minutes
Score: Mark 90, Josh 89, Chris 85, Chris W* 76
Ratings: Mark 8.5, Josh ?, Chris 8.5, Chris W 9

Tribune
Time: 41 minutes
Score: Mark 4 (39pts), Chip 4 (33pts), Chris 3, Chris W* 2
Ratings: Mark 8.5, Chip 9, Chris 8, Chris W ?


* First play for that Person

Related Articles at GamerChris.com:
Review - Lord of the Rings LCG, Part 1
Review - White Elephant
Review - Catacombs