An Abbreviated Game Night

Unfortunately, I got "volunteered" to attend a meeting at seven last night so that cut my game night a bit short. Nevertheless, I did get to game from five to six thirty and that was just enough time to get in a couple of games.

Christopher brought Loopin' Louie again so I was able to get in a couple of games while people were arriving. What a great little dexterity game. Just in case you don't know what it is, Loupin' Louie is a kid's mechanical barnstorming game. Louie is the pilot of a small plastic plane which sits at the end of a small counter weighted, swinging boom on a rotating motorized turret. The turret spins around which causes the plane to "fly" in a circle. Each player has a number of disks balanced on top of a "barn". In front of the barn is a small lift that players can move up and down by means of a lever. As Louie approaches your barn you use your lever to push him up and over the barn. Hopefully you'll use the proper force to cause him to travel over one of your opponent's levers and into one of the disks on his barn, knocking it off and allowing the next disk to roll into position. Lose all your disks and you're eliminated for that round. It's fast and simple and incredibly fun.

The main event for me was a game of Castle Merchants. This is a relatively simple game involving tile laying and hand management. Players race to reach castles in order to sell their goods at the best prices. Get to a castle late and you get a poorer price. Players play cards in order to lay terrain tiles on a hexagonal board. Then they can play cards to travel over those tiles. You need to be careful how you build so that you help yourself without putting down a path that aids your opponents. There are also rock slide tiles which you can play in order to block someone off or slow them down. This is a relatively unremarkable game that was made much better than the sum of its parts by the people I was playing it with. The competition was fierce, with the game being decided by a single point. Jason edged me out for the win after he and I (and a little bad luck) had conspired to keep Adam out of the running.

One more game of Loupin' Louie and it was time for me to leave. Hopefully next week I'll be able to stay a little longer.