Game Night

Tuesday night was game night and I did play a couple of games; only a couple though because I arrived late.

My first game of the evening was a game of Tempus. This is a very light Civilization style game by Martin Wallace. It's heavily abstracted and feels very Euro-Gamery but I like it. It had been a while since we'd last played and it took us a little while to refresh our memory on the rules but it went pretty smoothly afterward. Unfortunately, our minds were also a little fuzzy on the strategy and so we let Adam get a really good starting position all to himself. There was really little question as to who would win after the first few turns. Hopefully we can play this one again soon and give Adam some real competition.

Next up was a game of Tichu. Mike and I teamed up against Adam and Kai. Mike and I got out to an early lead. We teased Kai and Adam by allowing them to nearly catch up just before the last hand. The final hand was a doozy though. Kai was holding a very strong hand. He had something like three aces and the dragon and he had passed the dog to Adam. What's more, although Kai didn't know it, Adam was holding a bomb so that only made Kai's hand even stronger. Naturally, Kai called "Tichu". What he didn't know was that Mike also had a bomb and I was holding not one but two bombs! As it was, Kai still almost made his Tichu call. It took all three of our bombs to stop him but three bombs proved just enough for Mike and I not only to stop Kai but also to go out one-two for the double win. What a satisfying way to end a Tichu game.

Speaking of great card games, we've been playing a lot of Mü at lunch lately and while this particular game didn't take place at game-night I still want to mention it. Thursday's Mü game went pretty well for me. We've been playing four handed Mü to 500 points over a couple of lunch hours. I started the day yesterday (Thursday) with something like six points. The leaders were in the early three hundreds. Needless to say, I had some catching up to do and catch up I did. By the end of the game I was up over 500 points. I didn't win the game but I certainly won the day and I came in a very close second. I was blessed with several good hands but the one which really satisfied was when the leader had a large bid with something like six yellow cards showing. What he didn't know was that I held all but one of the remaining yellow cards in my hand: cards which I refused to bid; preferring to hide them. Instead, I made sure that I bid enough to secure "vice" so that when he won his bid I would be unavailable to him as a partner. I then called ones as the lower trump, since I was holding one of the two yellow ones. He called yellow (with a bid that high, what choice did he have?) and then I proceeded to split most of the points with him: more than enough to set him and earn a hefty bonus for myself in addition to the points I took in play. How sweet! I love this game.