Random Babblings

Players:
Duane – 74
Steve – 117 (longest)
Lisa – 100
Jake(me) – 110

So after a fun time with Atolla Modulis we sat down to TtR:E. After a quick refresher for Duane and Steve who don’t play as often, and we were off.

I had just watched both episodes of Boardgames with Scott for TtR earlier in the day. One of his comments was the Europe was a much friendlier game than USA, ya well… not this time.

We started off with a lot of tickets. Lisa and Duane kept all 4 while Steve and I kept 3 each. I had Berst to Petrograd with side trips in London, Berlin, and Roma. We started our initial draws and I watched as every bit of orange went to the other 3 players. Duane started off building in the British isles taking the 4 orange and the double locomotive routes, while I started fighting my way up the NW coast against Lisa, and Steve quietly built along the east side of the board.

My side trip to Berlin cost Duane a little heartburn, but for the most part we seemed to be out of each others way. I managed to pull off the 8 tunnel w/ minimal hassle and left the Essen to Stolkholm run for a little later.

After finally making it to Berst I decided to make my way to Roma through the center of the board. Just in time for Lisa to make a play at the Zagreb/Zurich/Rome triangle… right in my way. Figuring the ticket wasn’t worth 2 stations I started other plans.

By this time though Trains were going to be tight, and Duane had made his way into Berst by way of the 1 pink and 3 black, and was starting to make his way to Moskova. I had to make the southerly route of 4 trains a pop. Other people were starting to take more tickets, and if I wanted to complete Roma I would have no options on any other tickets having only 4 trains left. I pulled tickets and happened to stumble on Stockholm to Wien, so my excursion down the center was not completely wasted, but there was still a 3 train dangling off the end.

The game was pretty steady to the end at that point, with Lisa triggering the last round shortly after Duane had taken a few more tickets. I completed my last connection to London and we tallied up the points.

Irony abounds though. We had had a discussion at the beginning of the game about effort for the longest track, and how often it is a deciding factor in the game. As you see in the scores, it truly decided the game.

In attendance: Staci, Lisa, Ken, and myself (Jake)

Ken brought this along with him, and when we dropped down to 4 players we took a spin at it. This was a first time for everyone except Ken. After a quick explanation of the rules we proceeded to commence.

We immediately screw something up by not putting out the first batch of monkeys before the first civ round. This was followed by a further screwup of auctioning all 5 monkeys the first time around. These errors were realized on the first replenishment however and play proceeded.

Arrangement of tribes were: Black, Green, Red, Blue, Brown, and Purple. Black took a solid lead after 2 rounds, and remained that way throughout the game. I curred so much favor with them that I was the first to incur monkey scorn from the blue tribe. Play proceeded smoothly however with some of us having a hard time launching a ship, being inflicted with a 4 ship right off the bat.

I claimed many a monkey, quite to the detriment of my coin stack. While watching Ken amass quite the stack of favor chips. In the end this seemed to be my undoing and his benefit. The game ended it quite the landslide:

Ken – 17
Staci – 10
Lisa – 10
Jake – 10

While none of us ran screaming (from the game at least) this will take some consideration before I decide to play again.

Game Rating: 5/10

As I sat at my computer lastnight watching Underworld: Evolution a few things crossed my mind.

First and formost, was that I was glad I didn’t waste money to to see this in theaters. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll buy it and it’ll sit right next to Underworld on the DVD shelf. But I’m glad that I didn’t spend $25 on movies and popcorn, to sit in a crowded room with incosiderate jerks.

But anyway…

I’ve always been a “Letterbox” snob. Even in the days of VHS tapes, if I could get a movie in letterbox I did. And my recent episode of not paying attention when I picked up Serenity, purchasing the fullscreen, and not being able to get a widescreen at Best Buy for a month (and still having to buy it elsewhere) frustrates me that movies are still released as such. When more widescreen TVs are being sold than standard. When mandates for the broadcast of digital/widescreen TV stations are right around the corner (even if they do keep pushing them back). Why or why is it necessary to release a movie in other than it’s original aspect ratio. But then I watch U:E at 2.35:1 aspect ratio on my 17″ monitor, and maybe I do understand a little. I’m probably just spoiled.

Back to incosiderate jerks. I limit what I will and won’t go to in the theaters nowadays because of them. And then I do try to go when the posibilities of them is reduced. So I was thinking that there wouldn’t be any movies that I’d actually want to see this year, guess I was wrong though. X-Men 3 comes out, though probably to my DVD player. Pirates of the Caribbean 2… a must see. Ice Age 2, I can hope it’ll live up to the original.

What’s your movie list look like?

Well another fun weekend of Sci-Fi & Fantasy.

Not too many complaints about the weekend. As I expected the location seemed snug, and I didn’t get nearly as much board gaming as I would have liked.

Coyote Run was as good as last year, if not better because they were a little more confortable playing the convention. The Blackbeard pirate band was an interesting addition. And Rocky Horror was a blast.

So I sit here on this quiet Monday (took the day off to rest) and can say I thouroughly enjoyed myself. Pictures of the weekend are up on the gallery for your perusal.

So, it’s day two at MarsCon, and I hae a few minutes to just sit and look at thing in the real world.

So the Con moved hotels this year, and it has it’s good sides and its bad. The good side is that things seem to be going as they should. The hotel is treating us well, and there aren’t any problems on that front. The bad side is that the hotel is a bit smaller than the old one. Things are a little cramps. That might be good because the Con was downsized a bit. But the problem is that we’re already at max capacity. There’s not much room for growth.

Thins alrady seem set for the same location next year, so the real test shoudl be next year. When things go right (as them seem to be) and attendance tries to go back up.