Friday 13 November - House of Pain

Anne was out for the evening and we were six, so I rashly suggested Pizarro & Co. a game where the players take the role of kings and queens who bid to hire the services of the best and most daring explorers. As the game progresses, competition for the explorers' services increases as each explorer has fewer and fewer expeditions available for investment. In the end, only one ship for each explorer will make the final trip. Perhaps Carl and I should have warned the newbies more diligently about the harshness of this auction game, where early decisions can have dramatic effects later on and certain combinations of explorers are powerful and others are weak. For instance once Carl had bought the first two Captain Cook ships it was worth it to him to spend all the rest of his money on getting the third Cook ship, because once a player has all three ships of an explorer then they have no competition in the next 3 auctions and three Cook ships were worth 35 points plus what ever points they have left on cards. It probably wasn't worthwhile for anyone else to bankrupt themselves to buy the 3rd Cook ship and stop him.

Everyone starts the game with 9 cards worth 45 gold which are also worth 18 points (if you managed to keep all your cards until the end of the game). In phase I 18 ships are up for auction (3 for each explorer). In phase II there are 12 ships up for auction (2 per explorer) and only those people who bought ships in phase I can participate. In phase III there is only one ship per explorer. At the end of the game you score depending on which ships you end up with (some are worth no points) and cards left in your hand.

Carl    46
Ian     36
Anna    35
John B  34
Nigel   29
Andrew  22

After the game there was some talk of playing again now that everyone understood the game better, but Nigel was visibly relieved when we decided to move onto a new game and said he understood why Anne hates Pizarro and Co. so much (I expect Andrew was equally unkeen on another play).

As an aside I think Pizarro & Co. is badly themed. I think a better theme would be film making (like Hollywood Blockbuster / Traumfabrik) with the players taking the role of film makers hiring film stars. The 3 phases of the game corresponding to the phases of the filmstars' careers. Early in their careers they act in a lot of films (well 3) and a later they get more choosy and act in fewer films per year.

In keeping with the masochistic theme of the evening I convinced the others to play Sticheln (aka Pain) a simple trick taking card game where each player chooses which suit they want to avoid taking cards in. Unlike other trick taking games you don't have to follow suit but any cards that are not in the suit led are effectively trumps.

We played three rounds, and could consider it a learning game, tending to play to maximise our own scores rather than dump too much on other people. While Andrew and Nigel showed a preference for negative numbers, I think most of us improved over the course of the game.

Carl Andrew Anna Ian John Nigel
  2    -26    5   7   14   -21
  8    -20   21   9   10   -43
 26    -16   31  18   10   -42

Anne got home at this point and Carl left. After touching the frying pan of pain we jumped into the fire of Mamma Mia! Armed with a handful of pizza orders and ingredients everyone is slamming stuff into the oven and hoping it will turn out all right when the oven is opened. Many of our customers went hungry as the pizza chefs stuffed up order after order. Consequently the final scores were fairly low.

Ian     4
Anna    4
Andrew  4
John B  3
Nigel   2
Anne    2

Licking our wounds we called it a night.