Who Needs Food Anyway

Becky and Carl were free to play today and they swung by to pick me up. After they got lunch and we headed back, we got right to gaming.
Ida had us start out with Pairs. and we followed that up with a 3 player game of Cribbage. Ida won cribbage. I then broke out Pandemic: The Cure. We played two games and Ida was in both. The first was disastrous. The second was nearly our first win. One of theses days.
We took a little break, but then came back to the table and played Caverna. I took a non-adventuring strategy and Carl went heavy on adventuring. Becky went a little of both. I still won, but Carl wasn't far behind me.
Liz showed up near the end of that game, but was pretty tired so she just took it easy and just observed most of the games. Carl picked out...

Mille Bornes 2-6 players
My parents had this game when I was a kid. I just liked imagining how cool it would be to have a card with puncture proof tires and a tanker following me. I found the art pretty neat too. I eventually got my own copy as a present in college.

It's a card racing game, with little in the way of choices. You have to play a "Go!" card first. Once you're on the move you can add kilometers. The first to 700 km wins the round. Not only can you play miles, but also hazards on the other players: accident, out of gas, flat tire, stop, and speed limit. There are fixes for all of these and once fixed another "Go!" must be played. Even better than a fix is a safety card which can prevent other player from ever playing certain hazards on you. In fact, if you play it right after the corresponding hazard is played on you, you get to yell "coup-fourré" and stop the hazard as well as score a few extra points. You play a number of games and the first to 5000 or more wins. You can play as partners in games of 4 or 6. I like it better with partners, but it's ok with 2.

We played two games and we each won one. Carl was a little peeved that we didn't get to draw from the discard pile. He didn't see the point if you couldn't do that. I know what he means, but that would make it just as weird, but in a different way.

He then popped out a game I had heard of but never played...

Chronology 2-8 players

This is very similar to the Timeline games, but each player has their own timeline to work on.
It works like this. Each play starts with a card in front of them. All the cards have an event that is described and the year it happened. Another player draws a card and reads the event to you. You need to decide where in your timeline that event happened. If you can determine where it fits, you add it to your timeline. If not you don't get it added. Players trade off on reading to each other. This starts off easy since there are fewer places for an event to be placed, but once you have 8 events in your timeline, it gets difficult to know where a new one goes when the years get really close together. The first to ten cards wins.

I did quite well. I only missed one card. Carl missed at least three or four. Normally I win games like this by getting lucky with cards, but I had a number of close calls. I was just tuned into the spirits of the past I guess.

Right after that Carl pulled out Backgammon. We played two games and he won both. I nearly had him the second game, but he was able to get just the right roll at the end to knock me off. Arghh!
After finally eating we were set to play one more game. I was dying to try out...

Formula D 2-10 players
This is one of the games I got from Liz this year as a birthday present. She knew I had eyed it a few times and she was able to get it used from Cloud Cap Games. Since it was used, it was missing the advanced rules. I was able to get some summarized replacements from The Esoteric Order of Gamers.

It's a roll and move game with a twist. You have a gear box that you can shift up or down during your turn. This allows you to roll better dice with higher or lower numbers. This may seem silly since you'd obviously want to roll as high as you could every turn. That is true, but as in real races, you need to slow down for the turns. The track as hard turns indicated in red and you need to stop a certain number of times in that red area before you tear out of it. If you don't, you'll add wear to your vehicle or possible spin out completely. There are other things that can cause wear to your car, like driving too close to another player, driving really fast in 5th or 6th gear, or skipping gears when down shifting. The game is all about balancing and gambling with dice and the wear you have left. You can play with a number of options added like special racers or weather conditions. The giant board even has a second track on the flip side. They really packed a lot into this game. Before even playing a game I'm tempted to get expansions. I did get extra dice.

Liz filled in for Becky in the start while she helped the kids to bed. I started out in a good lead with Carl on my tail. I took a lot of wear to my gearbox, Carl took a lot to his body and tires. Liz/Becky took a good number of hits to the brakes. Carl had the lead for most of the mid race, but in the end Becky was able to use a good roll and a nitro boost to cross the finish line before the rest of us.

I'm excited to play this with more players. So was everyone else. As we were leaving Carl was looking up used copied prices and possible expansions. Love it!

Tally: 73/158  Bonus: 21/50