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.

January 3, 2009 - Inaugural Voyage

After some months of idle musings, the first Kansas Game Day was scheduled for January 3, 2009.

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

The day got off to a rocky start with the discovery that Munchers was closed, presumably due to proximity to the holiday. Yoda scrambled to procure alternate doughnuts while the other participants converged. Daily Doughnut filled the gap, but didn't stack up too well by comparison to Munchers.

Doughnuts consumed, the discussion of what to play commenced. Steve brought a LOTR themed game and Illuminati. Yoda's game cabinet was perused.

We started with the LOTR game. It was a game that we all win or lose together. Everyone has to avoid Sauron or everyone loses. In this case, Sauron won. Not having played before, we were figuring out things as we went along. We decided a number of things we might do differently if we play it again.

Pizza ordered for lunch. We played Chronology while waiting for it to arrive. MichaelP won. Steve professed his hatred for such a game.

After lunch, we embarked on a game of Illuminati. MichaelP schemed. MichaelU cheated. (Sometimes we stopped him, sometimes not.) Steve tried to cheat. (We did stop him.) As the time was coming to a close, Yoda took a shot and managed to win, barely.

Yoda brought out Iron Dragon and gave a brief description of the game to set the stage for its future appearance at Game Day.

Game Day photos, courtesy of Steve's iPhone.