Weekend Highlights

This memorial day weekend I got to do a lot of gaming. A lot a lot of gaming. A list, if you will:

Games played:
2 Triplanetary
1 Cosmic Encounter
3 Clue
2 Pirate's Cove
2 Tide of Iron
Numerous games of Magic.

All in all it was a weekend well spent. As I sit here writing this it's ten in the morning. I've been up the entire night previous boardgaming. Yeah, I'm short on sleep, but I can sleep anytime. A couple random, disjointed thoughts that aren't at all affected by the caffeine and the lack of sleep, I swear:

That was my first time playing Triplanetary. I picked it up because I heard the vector movement system was really interesting, and in that aspect it didn't disappoint. Other than that I'm going to reserve judgment of the game for the time being. Won once, lost once.

Lost pretty hard in Cosmic Encounter. If you've played the game, it seems to me that the philanthropist power is pretty bad when you're the main player. Unless you also have your flare, in which case it's pretty good so long as you've got two appropriate encounter cards in hand. 'course, going through those double quick is an easy way to lose that flare...

You know, I think the last time I played Clue my age was in single digits. Back when I was a first grader I cleaned up at that game. Y'see, I always had pretty decent deductive reasoning powers, and really the only people I was cleaning up against were my brothers, who were just a year or two older than me. Now I find that it's a lot more difficult. The twenty somethings I was playing with were all skilled enough at deductive reasoning as to make no difference, and generally they were better at reading other people's tells. I'll say as well that I could have put more effort into playing optimally. I won one of those three games, but that was under unusual circumstances; everybody knew all but the room, and there were still several rooms to be guessed. You can't stop to research, you gotta be first. I was the last in line for the guessing, and therefore won by default. Whoo. Default.

After two games of Pirate's Cove, I'm still not sure if I've played it before or if I just read the rules once. The game was pretty fun, but it seems a little prone to variance. That is, the game can swing easily from one player winning to another. In some ways that's a good thing, but generally I prefer games that reward skill over games that reward luck. Again though, havn't had much experience with the game so I'd prefer not to comment here.

Tide of Iron was an experience. That was my second time playing, first for everybody else at the table. None of us knew how to play; my previous experience mostly let me know which parts of the rule book we could skip for now to actually start playing the game. Yeah, we played the first game largely incorrectly over a period of about six hours. The second game lasted half that length, and with very few rules played out of place, but still. That game has a learning curve so steep the Matterhorn is envious. I've still got rules questions, mostly about assaults. (What happens when units assault a heavy vehicle? And if a unit moves to the end of it's modified move but successfully assaults the next hex over, is it still able to move that last hex?). Lost game I, won game II. I've got some thoughts about the game, but I want to think them over a bit before I post them here.

(Yeah, that's three games that I said I didn't want to comment about. I meant what I said about the lack of lucidity over here. While I don't mind giving off impressions I'm not going to try anything like serious analysis.)

Let's see, highlights of the Magic games.
In a Rise of the Eldrazi Sealed pool I pulled the best card in limited (Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief), only to never see it in an actual game.
In a Worldwake Pack Wars game I very nearly got there on the back of a third turn Scrib Nibblers alone.
My brother switches to a new deck, pulling out a milling deck. Without knowing what he grabbed I pull out Gibralter. My six hundred some card highlander rock deck. He stood by his choice. It's a tribal merfolk deck, and his Stonybrook Schoolmasters could possibly make enough tokens to kill me off.
I won one game with that deck on a Spouting Phytohydra beatdown. I killed a burn deck with my five mana 0/2 plant. Y'see, at the point where I drew Phytohydra we were both pretty much on empty, Mr. Burn at 2 life. I had an Obsidian Battle Axe that I could keep equipping to Hydra copies and swing in with, eventually running him out of burn before he could find the sort of cards that'd kill me.
Different game; Chandra Nalaar activates her ultimate ability. With lethal damage on the stack, I cast Momentary blink on Reveillark, bringing out two Murderous Redcap which finished off both my opponents, leaving me the winner.
Speaking of which, the reveillark deck works really well. I cut Ninja of the deep hours (sad) and Venser, Shaper Savant in order to fit in some Ponder. I really needed something else to draw or filter cards besides mulldrifter. While the Mulldrifter engine is pretty awesome, you have to draw one of four mulldrifters before you can do anything at all with it. Ponder helps me there. At just U to cast, it doesn't mess up my Ancient Ziggurats too much.
I got an EDH deck to do what it's supposed to; take out another (competitive) EDH deck, and not even in a fair way. Huzzah!

Got to do some trading as well. Acquired some Goblin Guides and Warren Instigators. gonna build myself a Standard goblins list. Most of my Legacy goblins list is going to stay together so I can switch back into it given the need.

And seeing as this whole article is one long string of miscellainy, I'll add one more not at all related to this weekend's activity. I've spent quite some time this past week trying to relearn my physics so that I can actually write equations for orbital motion. Who'd have thought that Rocket Science would be so hard? I worked out the differential equations for a rocket accelerating in a central G field and you know what? I can't solve them. At all. Which is sort of relieving, actually. Just means i'll have to fake it, which is perfectly doable in a board game.