June 6, 2009 - Two Old Games and a Filler

Location: Yoda's House
Players: Yoda, Steve, MichaelP, MichaelU, Kay

Once again Merchant of Venus started the day. We played a longer game this time since everyone was familiar with the game now. Steve managed to establish control of the best cycle on the map and gain control of the key port of Ice Station. He won easily, with everyone else trailing at a respectable distance.

After lunch, we decided to try LOTR game again. This time we had five players instead of four. Since this spreads the protection markers more thinly amongst the larger number of people, you would think that would make the game a bit harder. We tried applying our learning from the previous session a few months earlier, but it wasn't clear this actually helped all that much. Yoda was sacrificed to Sauron relatively early in the game, and he kibbitzed for the duration. We actually made it all the way to the end of the path on the last board, where all the remaining players have to roll the die to face Sauron. One after another, facing Sauron resulted in yet another Sauron minion... until the last roll, when Kay rolled and won the game for everyone.

To close out the day in the small time remaining, we tried Perudo, also known as Liar's Dice. Everyone starts with five dice under their own cups and engages in rounds of bidding and guessing about how many of what number is hidden by all the cups, until one person challenges a bid made by a player. This game developed such that before the end Yoda had more dice remaining than everyone else combined and was able to convert that to a win. Steve declared that we finally had found a filler game that met with his approval.