Arr matey! That's my elephant you got there! - Gamer's Meetup 04 Oct 2005

In this installment of Gamer's meetup, I only got to play one game with Sonic. But from what I heard, he did pretty well on the railroad games without me to distrupt his schemes. Muahahaha!

Anyway, I only got to play 3 games this session as 2 of my games required quite a lot of rulebook reading. Shows that you really got to read the rulebooks well, and play at least 1-2 games before trying to teach other people how to play. (But I was not the one doing the teaching, oh well...) All 3 games were 5 player games though, so it was the 'optimal' number all the way.


The first game we played was:

For Sale
The objective of this game is to accumulate the most money by buying and then selling properties. Basic gameplay: the game is divided into 2 parts.
In the first part, players bid for the property cards on the table (numbered from 1-30 and revealed some at a time) with the money they have. Each bid has to be higher than the previous one, and each player starts with 14 million dollars. The player with the highest bid gets to pick a property from the table, and pay the bid in full. The rest pick their properties in descending order, and pays half their bid, rounded up.
In the second part, players will use the property cards they obtained from the first part to bid for title deeds with worth from 0 to 15 million dollars. In this round, bids are revealed simultaneously. Highest bid pick first.

It was quite a fast paced game, and I forgot where I placed, but my other friend, Mr. D, managed to win with a comfortable margin. Sonic made some early bidding blunder and fell with me somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I then joined another table to play a pirate game (forgot the name), and Sonic went on to play Ticket to Ride: Europe.

The objective of the pirate game is to gain notoriety, and become the most feared pirate on the 7 seas. A player can gain notoriety by either: Defeating another player, finding and hoarding treasure chests and gold, and defeating Legendary Pirates or the Royal Navy Fleet (played by the board). In order to do this, each player will have to travel to various islands to collect treasures, and either use the treasures to upgrade their ships or hoard them for notoriety. Combat is done by dice, and there are funky 'Tavern cards' that a player can use to swing the battle in their favor.

I could not find my sea legs fast enough in this game, and more often than not, got sunk rather than sinking other people. There was also a few bad 'Tavern cards' play on my side, and despite all the threats of keelhauling my crew, I only managed to tie with the player to my right (for last place). The winner was Mr. A (the same guy from last month), and he did it by amassing a huge load of treasure chests, and defeating a legendary pirate for 6 notoriety! (Plus he sunk my ship twice, one of where I played the wrong card...) There was also a memorable battle revolving around shooting birds... (parrots to be exact :P)

The last game I played was Taj Mahal.
This game is set with an Indian background (duh...), and each player plays as a prince who is vying for influence to be able to sit on the throne. This is a bidding game, where you can score influence by either: building castles, winning the hand of princesses (harem, oh boy~!), and gaining trade for commodities. The rules were in German, and we had another Mr. A explain the rules for us. Players use cards to bid for the type of influence they desire for 12 rounds.

After intense political manouverings, Mr. A (the other) won the game, and I somehow managed to tie for 2nd place with the person on my right (yep, the same person). I think it was because all of us underestimated the value of commodities (and I got outmanouvered by Mr. A for 6 influence points in one region that I was eyeing). It was a game that I am very willing to play again though.