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Monthly Archives: April 2010

Ticket to Ride, Ingenious, & Kachina

On Monday night, Ben was King of the Games. Owen was gone on a trip through the tornado infested land of Mississippi, so it was just the three of us. Without Owen our gaming equilibrium was thrown off causing all kinds of strange things to happen; such as Ben being crowned King of the Games.

Our first game of the night was the Ticket to Ride card game. Mike and I could not stop Ben from continually placing many cards in his on-the-track card pile. (These are the cards you use to complete your destinations at the end of the game.) At the end of the game, both Mike and I had trouble completing all of our destinations. That meant negative points for us. Ben on the other hand completed all of his destinations; even the extra ones he had taken. He trounced Mike and I who were battling to not be in last place. It was close, but I was not last.

Next we played Ingenious, a tile placement game where your score at the end of the game is your lowest score within all your colors. Let me explain. The board is made up of hexes. The pieces are two joined hexes and each hex of the playing piece contains a different color. (Each color also has its own symbol, but we’ll just talk colors for now.) The idea is to score points by placing a piece such that the colors on it lie next to already-placed pieces with the same color. In our game, Ben once again was able to score vast amounts of points in all colors, nearly completing his entire score card. This time I failed to beat Mike and ended up in last place.

kachina
The last game of the night was Kachina, another tile placement game. This time Alex, Mike’s son, joined us too. Oh, what an awful game I played. I was in last place the entire game–usually way behind everyone else. Ben and Alex vied for first place most of the game. Mike got the biggest score of the night, nine points, which I gave him because of my previous tile placement. As the game drew to an end, Mike and I were scurrying to not be beaten by a nine-year old! Oh, the shame. Ben eventually won. Mike ended up tying the nine-year old and I came in last…behind the nine-year old. Well at least I was beaten by the best.

Chaos Steve

JimCon XV Con Report Available!

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Roborally

Evil Mike was out of town this week. When this happens it can only mean one thing…RoboRally! Ben, Owen, Mike the Younger, and I gathered at Andy’s house for the Straatman invitational. If you know nothing about RoboRally you can click the link above or go to GeekBo.com to check it out. Basically each player is one of several supercomputers in a fully automated widget factory. Each turn you program your robot’s path in a frantic, destructive race across the factory floors. Our games are always heavy on the destructive part of the race, as many of our robots are destroyed along the way. Fortunately you can archive copies of your robot along the way, so destruction isn’t the end, just a setback.

We like the robot option cards, so we have several home rules that include them. Each robot starts with an option and as you touch each flag you get a new option. This is above and beyond the normal option rules.

We made the horrible mistake of allowing Ben to pick the factory floor boards. (We play with the new Hasbro release of Roborally, but I have all of the boards and expansions from the original release too.) Of the three boards Ben chose, two were particularly deadly. One was filled with conveyors and spinning gears, while the worse of them was filled with lasers and walls—forcing you into the lasers.

All through our game we had lots of programming mistakes, but I don’t think any directly ended in robot destruction. Indirectly though, there was lots of damage as players used their robot lasers at every turn. My robot got off to a slow start and even was destroyed early in the game at the hands of a crusher. Still this ended up being a good thing. While everyone else was ahead of me, they were also interfering with each other, slowing each of them down. This allowed me to eventually catch up with my robot being pretty much unscathed.  Mike the younger took an early lead, but those nasty boards that Ben chose soon had his robot in trouble. This allowed everyone else to catch up. A low point for my robot was during the turn I powered down. Granted, I was in a horrible position, but Andy didn’t have to shove me into a laser (well, maybe he did actually.) And Mike didn’t have to keep shooting me…register phase after register phase. My power down turned into a destruction sequence.

At the end of the game Andy and Owen were primed for the win, but a mutually destructive laser battle postponed one of them from leaping in for the win. Ben and Mike were nearby, ready to touch the final flag too. But where was I? My robot was doing a spirited ballet on one of the spinning gears…right turn, right turn, right turn… In the end it was Owen’s robot that touched the final flag first-using his robot’s extendable arm, then his robot did a victory danced on the flag itself.

Chaos Steve