More Gaming

I got in some more gaming last night. I went up to my friend Marta's house and Mark, Marta, Dave and I played some games. The fact that I got to drive the new Mazda didn't hurt! It was a very nice ride up to New Hampshire, and there's a winding, twisty road to get across from Rte. 93 that is quite fun to drive. It actually has been my downfall in the past - I totaled my Mitsubishi Starion driving along there one night:-( But they have since fixed my troublesome corner and I had a very enjoyable ride on a very warm spring evening. The only way to make it better would have been to be riding a motorcycle.

We played two games of Modern Art, and one game each of Victory & Honor and Katzenjammer Blues. Only the last one had been played before.

Modern Art is a true gaming classic in every sense of the word. #19 on the Boardgamegeek Rankings, it is a game of auctions. Each painting has a different kind of auction - blind, once around, open, etc. The more paintings sold by a particular painter, the more each is likely to be worth at the end of the "season". After four "seasons", the player with the most money wins. A very "pure" game, with only the card draw involving luck, and even then you have plenty of choices so no draw is a bad one. I really enjoyed playing this, as I haven't played it in quite some time. I won the first game, and came in a close second in the second one.

Victory & Honor is a trick taking game, albeit with very convoluted mechanics. You end up with three cards on your battleboard, and each card you play points to who plays next. There's a few special cards and in the end, you are trying to take cards. "Regiment" cards are worth the number of "general" cards of the same suit you end up capturing, so if you don't capture a matching general card, the regiment cards are worthless. We only played one of the four rounds, as it was getting late and seemed to be a little too complicated for the hour. I've had this game for awhile but haven't had a chance to play it, as you need exactly four players. But it seems worth trying again, even though we misplayed at least one important rule - "sacrificed" (or face down) cards don't count as being captured at all.

Finally we ended the evening with one game of Katzenjammer Blues, the second Reiner Knizia game of the night (Modern Art was the first). A pretty straight forward card game, where you are bidding for a set of one or more face up cards. The twist is that you use your cards to bid for other cards, and you also need to use your cards to "meld" four of a kind in order to get victory points. So you're bidding with what you need to use to win, which is a great mechanic. I ended up pulling this one out at the end, as the player with the most "mice" tokens also had played the most jokers, which means he had to lose 5 tokens, giving me the last minute victory.

A good time was had by all, although I didn't quite realize the time - I didn't get home until 3am. And then Adrienne needed a bathroom break at 3:30am. And Rhiannon needed one at 4:00am (I think they were very wound up, awaiting the Easter Bunny visit). And then Rhiannon told me that Spenser needed one, at 4:30am (Spenser hasn't been feeling all that well). And then everyone was up and tearing at the Easter "baskets" (actually suitcases this year!) at 7am. So sleep deprivation was in order.