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Wow, I need to do a post today before I get too far behind on my Cocktail 'n' Gaming posts!

Last week, we went Olde School again, this time with the New Orleans classic, the Sazerac, with the recipe from David Woolrich's wonderful book Imbibe!:

• 1/2 cube sugar
• 2 oz whiskey (must be rye. I used Jim Beam)
• 2 dashes of Peychaud's Bitters
• lemon twist
• splash of absinthe (I used the wonderful Spanish absinthe Obsello)

I'll quote the good doctor's mixing instructions, which came from the late Tome Handy at the Sazerac Bar :

Frappe an old-fashioned flat bar-glass; then take a mixing glass and muddle half a cube of sugar (1/2 tsp) with a little water; add some ice, a jigger of good whiskey, 2 dashes o Peychaud's bitters and a piece of twisted lemon peel; stir well until cold, then throw the ice out of the bar-glass, dash several drops of absinthe into the same, and rinse well with the absinthe. Now strain the Cocktail into the frozen glass and server with ice water on the side.

I finally came across a bottle of Peychaud's in a local grocery store, of all places, so I was dying to finally mix up a real Sazerac. To "frappe" a glass means to fill it with chipped ice and let it set a while. It didn't say to add any ice to the drink, so we didn't. It tasted real good!

For beers, we had a hit and a miss. Micheal brought over a bottle of Southern Tier iniquity Imperial Black Ale, which was the hit. Really full taste with lots of things going on. A "black" ale, which is odd for an IPA but really works here.

Second beer poured was one of the Samuel Adams "Barrel Room Collection", the American Kriek. It is a red fruity beer, which uses black cherries for flavoring. It was just too fruity for us.

Finally, for gaming, we finished up the last of the "Terrorist Hunt" maps in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. The last two were just "dark" versions of previous maps, including our toughest one. But we must be getting good at it, because we did pretty well on all three. Then Michael made it safely home in Yet Another Snowstorm, but that was 3 storms ago!

The cocktail for our Cocktails 'n' Co-op Gaming night last night was an old standbye - the James Bond Martini, from one of my favorite cocktail books, The Martini Book: 201 Ways to Mix the Perfect American Cocktail:

James Bond Martini

• 6 parts gin (the usual - Bombay Sapphire)
• 2 parts vodka (in this case, Tito's Handmade)
• 1 part Lillet blanc
• Lemon Twist

Just shake with cracked ice and strain into a nice frozen cocktail glass, and garnish with a lemon twist. Pretty refreshing, actually, even if mixing gin and vodka seems like overkill.

We followed that with a couple beers. First up was one of the more unusual kinds of beers - a Rauchbeir, which is a German beer with a heavy "smokiness". We tried the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbeir Marzen a few weeks ago and found it, interesting. It was our first Rauchbeir, so we perhaps weren't quite ready for it, because we really liked this one, the Weizen. Either we're getting more used to it, or this one isn't as overpowering, but the smokiness added to the flavor, rather than overwhelming it, like it seemed to with the Marzen.

And we followed that with a bottle from a local artisanal brewer, Pretty Things Brewery. We have really enjoyed their flagship beer, Jack D'Or and found their Hedgerow Bitter a little over the top. But we really like this one, the Baby Tree - very smooth and tasty.

Gaming last night was, again, a couple of hours playing Terrorist Hunt in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. We must be getting good, as despite the difficulty level and number of enemies cranked to the max, we cleared 3 maps. It's definitely a lot of fun to coordinate the 3 of us in the attack. Still wish we could play in story mode though.

A basic cocktail last night, for our weekly drinks 'n' gaming session. I managed to snag a few Meyer Lemons, which are so precious during these cold winter months! To keep it simple, I made a Sidecar:

• 2 oz cognac
• 1 oz Cointreau
• 1 oz fresh squeezed Meyer Lemon juice

Mix 'n' strain into an ice cold, sugar-rimmed cocktail glass. Pure heaven.

And we had a couple of brews. My co-op gaming friend and I have become somewhat addicted to artisanal brews in big bottles. First was Brooklyn Local 1 from the Brooklyn Brewery. We have had their Oktoberfest beer and while it was okay, it wasn't as good as promise from Imbibe, who put it inn their top autumn beers list. Brooklyn Local 1 is a very fizzy beer! The cork flew off when I opened it, like a champagne bottle. And it was another okay beer. A little light and too fizzy.

We followed that up with a frosty mug of Goose Island Matilda, a Belgian style pale ale. Now that was yummy - smooth, tasty and refreshing.

The beer went very well with our intense battles in the Murdercity Terrorist Hunt in Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2. While it is disappointing that you can't play the campaign in co-op mode, the three of us have been having fun with each map in the Terrorist Hunt mode. We crank the difficulty, max the number of enemies and give us each 1 extra life and that makes for a tough match, especially in this map. It's a close assault map, with enemies popping out pretty much anywhere, which makes it tough.

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.

So last night was game night at my friend David's house. He's been hosting a game night since we both worked at Interleaf oh so many years ago (in the early 90s, which is like 15 years ago - zoiks!). We play what is often called "Euros", which are games that are generally short (about an hour), with clever mechanisms that require some serious thought. Back then, they were almost exclusively imported from Europe, hence the name, as the American game industry was (and, for the most part, still is) mired in a land of Monopoly clones and brainless kid games. They usually have great components and are often multiplayer games.

I used to go every week, but I don't make it nearly as often as I'd like these days. I'm not even sure I can completely blame having kids, either. Working from home, it can be hard to motivate yourself to head out in the early evening to go somewhere. After I first left Interleaf and started working from home, I used to meet Gabrielle on her way home from work for sushi, and then continue on to David's. Now, there isn't even that encouragement to drag me from my chair. But if we get the girls to bed at approximately the regularly scheduled time (around 7:30pm), I try to head on over.

Last night, I was supposed to be there at the regular starting time, which is 7pm, as there was a poker tournament being played, in honor of another long time player who is leaving for Florida. Nothing too big, mind you - $1 buy in, Texas Hold'em (of course). But I once again completely forgot about it, until I was tucking Rhiannon in and it struck me I was supposed to be somewhere. Once again, my complete lack of organization strikes. It is terrible when the top item on your "Getting Things Done" list is to set up a system to "Get Things Done" and even that never "Gets Done" - sigh. I still haven't made any progress on setting up any kind of system that I talked about earlier. I have to find the time!

Anyway, I did finally make it over there around 8pm and thankfully they had kept me in the game with the "blinds". So my chip stack was down quite a bit, and I never really was involved in any hands. I did bet in one hand, but bailed out when the second ace turned up. Good thing, as another players had both other aces! I was soon out of that game, and so I went to find something else to play. It was a pretty big group, as befits a night in honor of a very nice "regular", so I had high hopes of getting into something fun. When you finish up a game, you ask around to see what else you might be able to set up. David has a very large collection of games, and with this hard core game playing group, there's often other games brought in. So you ask around and try and get another one set up and playing.

Paul and I tried to get a game of Formula De up and running. Greg, the guy leaving, is a big fan of the game, but it isn't really that big a favorite among the hard core players, relying as it does on lots of dice rolling, even if they are cool dice (each gear uses a bigger die, from 4 to a 30 sided die). We twisted a few arms, but Greg was still in the poker tournament, so we gave up trying to get that one going. I have a copy of it, and I like it well enough, but se la vive.

So we moved on. There were three of us ready to play, which is generally a tough number to find a good match. So we ended up playing High Society, one of my all time favorite games. Two more players joined in once we started playing (it's always easy to get new High Society players), so a chaotic game with maximum five players ensued. One was a newcomer to the game, which is usually the death knell for that player, as the "gotcha" for the victory conditions (most points wins) is that whichever player (or players) spend the most money immediately lose. So new players tend to bid too much too soon and it is a battle for first place after that, and that's how it played out last night. I tied with Mark at 10 points, but he had a few more dollars at the end, so he was the official winner. It could be the first time I've ever played and had a tie in points.

We then started a game of Vegas Showdown, a new game from the new Avalon Hill company. Once a bastion of the hardcore "wargamer", it was bought by Wizards of the Coast and morphed into an American "Euro" company. In this game, you buy tiles to build your own hotel/casino complex, and try to get the most "fame" points. I found it interesting, but I never did figure out any sort of strategy to try. And it was also lacking something I find to be vitally important for a game to reach the high end on my scale - hidden information. Like other very popular Euros that don't grab me (Puerto Rico and Settlers of Catan immediately come to mind), everything is pretty much out there for all players to examine and consider (and to chime in with the "perfect" strategy:-). I really enjoy games with some pieces of hidden information. High Society keeps the amount you have left a secret. While you could conceivably keep track of all spent monies, it generally isn't done and plays great for it. Despite this, Vegas Showdown was fun enough, even though I came in a distant fifth out of five. I'd give it another try if it shows up on the table again.

I'll be sorry to see Greg move on, though. He was a good person to have around at game night - a solid, competitive game player, but one who didn't take it too seriously. He will be sorely missed, and I'm glad to have donated (well, I will donate!) to his going away present, a nice crokinole board. It is, I believe, the first ever Tuesday Game Night going away present, which should give you some idea of the esteem we all hold for Greg. May he survive the Gainseville gators!