E.B.G.G.’s Benedict

Well for all of you who didn’t have a chance to make it to game night, you missed out.

For those of you who did, MAN wasn’t that one thing just AMAZING! For the rest of my life I will never forget it. WOW, unbelievable.

Jon, as always was first to arrive at the Soulliere house hold bearing DVDs to return. We chatted a little about Exile and some other anime stuff and I put together another pile of DVDs for his watching pleasure.

Tim, still sporting his clean shaven look, arrived shortly there after. Normal chit-chat ensued. At long last a disheveled Brian showed up and we retired to the kitchen.

Michelle was feeling under the weather, Mark’s family also had the Zulu flu, and JoAnna and Mark suffered from work & car issues, so we settled for the for us. Originally we had discussed honoring the great explorer Columbus with our gaming, but when Tim mentioned the fact that he had never tasted the goodness that is Union Pacific, well, “We saw our way clear.”

Now Brian, who would our last game of UPac (his first time playing) was having a terrible case of the Monday’s (I think which ironically began on Friday night after game night) was having a hard time remember what he needed to do go collect and invest stock. For everyone else, follow along with me:

You can do two things:

1) Build a train

0R

2) Invest Stock

If you build a train, then you can collect stock. If you invest stock, you cannot.

After about a dozen failed attempts Brian started getting back into the swing of things. I don’t know what it is, but I think Jon Adam is really my arch-nemesis. It doesn’t matter the game, it doesn’t matter the location, some how we always end up going head to head. This game of UPac wasn’t any different. Jon and I began investing the same stock (okay, Jon actually revealed his stock before everyone, so I played the same one just to piss him off – it worked). We ended up competing for almost every stock we invested.

Just to share the love around I invested a few stocks in companies that Tim was found of, but I didn’t attack him as aggressively as I did Jon (after all it was Tim’s first game). We played for quite awhile without a scoring round, and then the madness happened.

Two scoring rounds back to back.

Thanks to some well invested stock, I took an early lead by about 8 million dollars.
Tim played a turn. I played a turn. Scoring round.

Madness! Since there were only 4 scoring rounds in the whole game and we had just burned through 3 of them in a matter of three turns, each newly acquired stock brought tension. Instead of holding stock, we invested every chance we could. There became a run on UPac stock and Tim started it and held the lead with 5 shares invested.

Brian followed suit and managed to snag 4, while I had 3 and Jon 2.

Tim turned out a rash of green trains, I milked the black and white rails and Brian opened up the red line with a vengeance. Jon kept quietly collecting stock and playing yellow cards.

Out of the blue Jon slapped down enough green stock cards to oust Tim from a controlling stop. Tim as it turns out wasn’t really worried because he was sitting on 4 himself (which he would easily plop down at the right moment). Well, the right moment never came because as Tim placed another green train, you guessed it. The last and final scoring round. “Curse you Jon Adam!”

I snagged the lead with 110 Million, Jon second with 101, Brian came in with upper 80′s and Tim finished with around 75ish.

UPac is a great game. It was filled with tauntings of Jon’s amazing shuffling ability (to have 3 scoring rounds end up so close) and comments of hating one another in the most loving way possible. I hate you Bob. That’s okay, I hate you too Jon.

A great time was had but all, well except Tim, because he lost, thanks to Jon.

We had kicked around the idea of playing some more Power Grid, but it took us over an hour to get through the first step last time, so who knows how long 3 steps would have taken. Instead we decided to go with Ticket to Ride since Brian hadn’t had a chance to play it yet.

We gave him an overview of the rules and I even learned a new one. Apparently if at any point there are 3 face up engine cards (wild), you immediately clear the draw pile and place five new ones down, an interesting little tidbit that helped make the game.

Tim, being a T2R vet, managed to snag get a few 5 and 6 train routes around the board. I had a couple of good ticket cards to start out and made my master plan to connect New York to San Francisco and all points in between. Tim and I managed to stay neck and neck in the point totals as we marched around the score board.

Not to be out done, Jon was cutting a pretty mean swath of black trains down the center of the board. He’s a crafty fellow. At one point he took a pile of ticket to ride cards where he spent too much time cursing loudly his bad luck. In retrospect, I think it was just a clever tactic to make us all think that he had gotten back tickets. Brian continued to motor along connecting various routes.

Tim triggered game end with a 5 train route on the west coast and was WAY ahead in the point total (in the lower 80′s) where the rest of us still lagged back in the 50′s and 60′s. We did a recount of our point totals and Tim had the clear advantage. However, it turns out that Tim was the one with the poor luck when it came to ticket to ride cards and only managed to snag one positive point when all were counted (I had foiled all his plans by connecting the Huston to New Orleans route before he could and that completely cut off all his cards). After all mine were totaled, I ended up one point shy of Tim. In a masterful display of train connecting prowess, Jon managed to earn a host of points and took the lead so much so that he almost lapped Brian (who was playing the caboose of the game).

Again, another amazing game, and a great time was had buy all.

It was a little after 9:00 at this point and it was clear that with work in the morning we weren’t going to have time to play anything else, but as I was passing the game table I did notice that I had my copy of “Before I Kill You Mister Bond” sitting there.

Brian had never played and we managed to talk him into playing a few games.

For those of you who haven’t tasted the joys of “B.I.K.Y.M.B”, you have no idea what you are missing. Well, I don’t know that you are missing much more than an opportunity to talk in your best Dr. Evil voice, and make spy jokes, but man, what a vehicle for a fun ride.

The basic premise of the game is this: You build your secret lair and then capture spies. Your lair contains all the goodness that someone of your evil nature would require: A moist bar, a lemon aide stand, a hall of magnets, and many other wonders. Each part of your lair has a point value. The higher the total value, the tougher the spy you can capture.

But we warned, other evil geniuses can send spies into your lair to destroy it. As an added point bonus before you kill your spy you can taunt your spy with a doubler (which doubles his point total).

All and all it’s a great time doing absolutely nothing other than taunting and killing spies and blowing up lairs. We played two quick games with no one really winning the first one and Tim scoring the most points in the second one with a lair of enormous size (insert your own joke here).

Sadly this game is no longer made as the evil folks of Bond, Inc made the guys at Cheap Ass Games to stop making it since they violated copyright issues, so in form of protest Jon and I are going to make a new version called, “Before I Kill You Mister Powers” and distribute it to the whole world.

The next game night is Oct. 25th, I hope to see all of you there, even if you have to drive all the way from Lansing to do so.