My Day

It's my birthday! We started out the day with games. Duh! I picked out...

Istanbul 2-5 players
Liz got this for me as a birthday present last year. It was on my wishlist with many other games. She picked this one because it was newer and it would add a game starting with the letter "I" to my library. Now I just have "O" and "U" left.

In the game, you are in the markets of Istanbul. You go around town having your assistants get goods and trade for money, improvements, and gems. The first person to 5 gems (6 in a two player game) wins. You play on a 4×4 modular board, each tile a location in the market, each with different things to gain from them. The key to the game is optimization.  You only start with 4 assistants and you must have an assistant with you to take the location action (you are quite hoity-toity). When you go to a location, you drop off an assistant, but if there is already an assistant there you pick the assistant up. This turns the game in to a bit of a puzzle with you trying to make paths that overlap and prevent you from wasting time going to places you have no use for. The game is made even more complex through the other players. If you land on a location with another player, you owe them money. So it's not just about taking the right path; It's also about taking the right path at the right time. It's a good brain burner and doesn't take too long to play.

I randomly set up the board and we had at it. I trampled Liz in this one. By the time I got my 6 gems, she only had 3. Although, we agreed to call it 3.5 gems since, had she taken a better move the turn before, she would have had 4 gems. I really enjoy this game. It's got that little bit of tension and randomness combined with optimization. It's a winner all around.

Afterwards, Liz picked out Glen More. She spent the whole game making whiskey and I spent it getting chieftains and castles. The final score was something like 37-91. She may have lost, but she could drown her sorrows in whiskey.
We had time for one more game before we had Independence day parties to go to. I popped out Pandemic: The Cure. We continued to fail at this game. Ugh!
After parties I held my own small get together at Liz's parents. Ben joined Liz and I in another game of The Cure, but we didn't do much better. Liz had us play another game while she watched. We very nearly won that time. We were a few rolls away from the final cure.
By this time, Spencer and his friend April had arrived. I went through the list of games and April decided on...

Robo Rally 2-8 players
I am always looking for games that can fill and empty spot in my collection. Games that are really fun and none of my other games play anything like. This one was a great buy. I'm pretty sure I got it on tabletop day 2014 as a way to support my local game store.

In the game, you are a robot trying to reach a number of flags in a certain order. Each player is given 9 cards with commands like move forward 3 or turn left. You secretly use 5 of these cards to program you robot. After everyone is done programing, you let all the programs run and watch the fun begin. It all starts fine, but things turn bad fast. Robots push other robots making the rest of the program very wrong. You get pushed into a pit or drive into a laser field. You may have miss read a conveyor belt and get stuck zipping around doing nothing for a while. This whole thing is repeated, but if you took any damage, you get fewer cards or, if you took enough damage, fewer cards and some of the commands get locked into your program. It is the most fun with frustration you can have in a game. We normally play with a house rule that every bot gets a modification from the start to make it really interesting.

Since we had 3 new-comers to the game, we left off the house rule. We played on the course called, "Bloodbath Chess". Ben started with a fine lead and got to the first flag before rest of us had even gotten into the ring of death. I was slowly catching up and so was Liz. April got shot so much she was forced to power down. I took the lead and got to flag 3 while Ben was spinning in place. He soon pushed me into a pit. I returned the favor and pushed him into a pit on the next turn. Spencer apparently wanted to know what all the fuss was about so he drove himself into a pit. Afterwards, there was a lot of pushing and shooting in the middle of the course. Spencer took a lot of damage and Liz got pushed into a pit by me. I eventually made it to the last flag and claimed victory. Liz and Ben had made it to the 3rd and Spencer almost made it to the 2nd. April may not have made it to any flag, but she was the only player not to have died.

Afterwards we ate ice cream cake and cleaned up. The others took off and we went to a party of Liz's New Season friends and enjoyed some fireworks. All-in-all, a great day.

Tally: 71/158  Bonus: 20/50