Harrowed Halls

This week we met at my house for game night. This is because I was babysitting my 6-week old grandson. I was cautiously optimistic about how this would go. The little guy gets fussy in the evenings. It turns out he was very good and the guys were very understanding of the whining and crying. Of course they are used to that already. (We whine and cry a lot at our games.)

We played History of the World. Mike Byrd also joined us, so we had 5 players. Evil Mike wasn’t supposed to be there, but apparently he left one of his evil minions in charge and came over anyway.

I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve played this game. It’s a crowd favorite. Everyone else will have to add comments once this is posted to spell out any in-game fun. All I remember is the end.

The End Mike was so far ahead of us on the victory point track, that we lost sight of his tail lights. Ben, who lagged behind during the first half of the game, had become a solid contender. So had Owen…but Owen always finishes strong. It came down to a contest between Evil Mike and I over who would be last. I thought I might take him because I still had armies on most of the continents. Unfortunately it was too little too late. When the scoring was over, I was 4th runner up.

Mike Byrd won with an amazing 212 points. (We won’t be inviting him back anytime soon.) Owen was next with 190. Ben and Evil Mike followed with 185 each. I had 180. (So since Evil Mike and Ben tied, was I 3rd runner up? Let’s hope so.)

Chaos Steve

The week Mike showed us how to play History of the World. Oh, we’ve played this games lots of times over the years, but this week Mike took it to a whole new level.

The game started normally with all of us vying for the best empires of the current epochs. Points were scored, names were taken, enemies noted. At the start of the third turn Mike realized we hadn’t changed the point counters on the territories after the first epoch. Crap. That meant our scores were off. After some memory gymnastics we were able to recalculate everyone’s turn two score and continue on. Had we not discovered our error when we did, the world would have ended day sooner.

My game was going fine even though I could not seem to win an epoch and thus get a special “I won an Epoch Counter” worth extra victory points. Things went completely south during the fifth epoch. The defining moment was when Ben gave me Chola for epoch 5. You’ve all heard of Chola right? Exactly. No one has ever heard of them. That’s because they suck! My points for the epoch dwindled.

On epoch 6 Mike got the 2/2 Incas and Aztecs and still rockets up the scoring track to 179 scoring 42 points.

Here’s a chart of our point progression throughout each epoch. As you can see… What? You don’t see a chart? Then complain to Mike why our site won’t let my upload images! [Edit: See my constant whining worked. Here’s the chart.]

As I mentioned earlier, Mike took the game to a whole new level by winning it with 246 points. Ben slithered by me to take second with 198 points. I was third with 195 points. Owen was last. Well not just last—way dead last. He had 175 points. This fulfilled the prophecy he proclaimed at the beginning of the game where he claimed First Loss.

Chaos Steve

This week we revised The History of the World. There is so much to say about this game. Fortunately, I’ve forgotten most of it, so I’ll just the hit the parts that I remember. If you want to know all of the details of how to play the game, go to www.geekdo.com (formerly BoardGameGeek.com).

The game started out normally enough. Owen had a small lead after the first epoch, with the rest of us tied for second place. By the end of the second epoch Mike was the pre-eminent one (the leader) and earned the first of many pre-eminence markers (bonus points). By the third epoch things were in chaos. I completely forgot to use my special cards. Mike ended the third epoch by scoring a boatload points—taking another pre-eminence marker. This was to be how each of the remaining epochs ended and here’s why.

At the start of the forth epoch, I handed Mike the game on a silver platter by stupidly allowing him to go first, thus magnifying the boatload of points he had just scored a hundred fold. (Ok, not really a hundredfold, but certainly by a lot.) Ben and Owen were duly outraged. I wish I could say they were struck speechless by my act of incredible idiocy, but alas, no, there weren’t. Mike extended his lead and never looked back.

I was in second place most of the game, with Owen lagging a bit behind and Ben lagging way behind…way behind.

Before I talk about Owen’s lucking changing, it has come to my attention that I may have had something to do with Owen’s horrible luck during the past several weeks. For this I apologize to Owen and now turn my curse ridden eyes towards my true target, Mike.

The end of the game was predictable in that Mike won by a huge landslide. What was surprising though was Owen’s ability to make up for a lot of lost ground and come in second. It wasn’t really that surprising I guess. Owen has always had a way of scoring a ton of points at the end of whatever game we are playing. That left me in third and Ben in very last place…very last place.

Chaos Steve