Saturday 5 March 2011

On Saturday Babs and Carl were hosting games at their place partly in celebration of their birthdays and also as one of their new regular fortnightly Saturday games nights. We arrived as Craig and Sean and their kids were leaving. T and K had been given a couple of Chinese terracotta soldiers. But to make them more interesting they were each encased in a clay brick. Each brick came with little bamboo scraper and small brush to give the feel of archaeology. Judging how far the boys got in the first hour these bricks could keep them busy for days (if they don’t get bored and frustrated first). Overall a cute idea that I’d expect to see in gift shops at heritage sites around the world.

Expedition
We kicked the evening off with Expedition. The red route curled in tight loops around North America until we got bored with it. The blue route petered out very quickly in North Africa while the yellow route went around the world. I made a mistake of not going to a destination one link away from the one just got to, but luckily recovered to win.

Ian  18
Carl 17
Anne 10

Wyatt Earp
Carl then taught us Wyatt Earp, a Rummy game which in terms of its mechanics is part of the Mystery Rummy family of card games. Anne hadn't played Rummy before so the basic concept of pickup, optionally meld (create or add to a set of cards on the table) and then discard was new to her. In Mystery Rummy games the deck is divided into "normal" and "special" cards, with the special cards making up a quarter to a third of the deck. Each turn a player may meld or play one special card (in addition to melding normal cards). In Wyatt Earp most of the special cards relate to the scoring of sets, though the commonest special cards (the multi-use Wyatt Earp cards) can be, and often are, used to allow the player to draw more cards.

The theme of the game is hunting outlaws in the wild west. Each outlaw has a bounty which starts at $1,000. There are 7 suits (one per outlaw) with 7 identical cards in each suit. Melding 2+ cards in a suit increases the bounty on that outlaw by $1000 times the number of cards melded minus one. Some special cards can be added to melds of a particular outlaw that also increase the bounty. The cards played also indicate how much "knowledge" a player has of that outlaw (normal cards are worth 2 points). At the end of the hand the bounties may be paid out, but only if the total "knowledge" of all players is at least 8. If a player has at least 5 "knowledge" more than any other player they get the whole bounty otherwise it is share among the players. Unpaid bounties accumulate from hand to hand. I have been interested in this game for awhile as it has a sort of stock market idea.

At the end of the second hand I got to $24,000 but in next hand Carl prevented me from getting any more cash with a well timed Hideout card. Anne and I are keen to play Wyatt Earp again.

Carl  $27,000
Ian   $24,000
Anne  $24,000

Tichu
By this time the boys were in bed and Carl was keen for Babs to learn Tichu. As it was after 10pm I suggested that we just play a couple of hands, but it turned out that we played a whole game. I felt that I had consistently poor hands (I must learn how to make the best of such hands).

There were very few Tichu calls though plenty of 1-2s, and on two hands the points were shared 50-50. Babs and Carl were ahead through the mid-game but in the final two hands we scored 105 and 95 points.

Hnd IA+AM C+BdV
1.   200     0  1-2
2.   200   200  1-2
3.   215   385  Carl's Tichu
4.   265   435  50 points each
5.   315   485  ditto
6.   315   685  1-2
7.   515   585  our 1-2 & Carl fails Tichu
8.   560   640
9.   860   640  Anne's Tichu 1-2
10.  965   635
11. 1060   640