Happy Space Beads

Liz and I love our lazy Saturdays. Once awake, I got straight to setting up 504 for game 567. Halfway through the game I had the realization that the money tokens we were using had different values on the flip sides, so there may have been a few rounds where Liz got a wrong (usually larger) income. We both felt soured by this and we just cleaned it up and Liz suggested a heavier game.
I set up Agricola as Liz made breakfast for herself. I started out strong with a great agriculture bias. Mid-game, Liz really found her gears with her occupation cards and gave me a run for my money. In the end my saving grace was that I had a larger stone house than she did.
Shortly after that game, the mail arrived and with it, the next game we would play...

The Game of Real Life 2-6 players
This is a game that is mostly available in Oregon. The guy that sells them lives in Eugene. I had seen him at Saturday Evening Market a few times. Liz and I got a taste of the game while visiting Emily and Drew. They had borrowed it from a friend. Liz liked it a lot. I'm not sure what inspired me to order the game years later, but I did. It's a roll and move game that is a parody of The Game of Life. Your sex, status, and health are random. Spots you land on vary from the bad, like drive-by shootings, war, and midlife crises to the good, like first loves, spirituality, and trips. There are also crap shoots like sex and drugs which could be really good, but also could be really bad. Happiest player in the end wins.

I started as Malik: A middle class boy with good health. Liz started as Bitsy and soon died in a drive-by. She started again as some other female only to be killed in another drive-by. Lastly she started as Barry: A rich boy with poor health. She made it through the drive by this time (Rich are exempt from them). I got a middle management job, married rich, got disabled, divorced, went into space, lost my fortune, reunited with my high school sweetheart, and wasted away in a crappy retirement home. Liz became a disowned bum, had lots of sex, moved to Canada to avoid the draft, had a near Donner party experience, got a motorcycle in a mid-life crisis and died of influenza.

This is a really interesting play on Life. They best part of the game is you actually write a little diary as you play so that once you are done you can recap the life you lived, or have a nice little party favor.

We needed to get going, so we worked out, got cleaned up, got dressed, and headed out the door. We got food and Red Robin and played The Duke. It lasted a while, but I eventually trapped Liz. We have very little time to do anything but get Liz some new jeans. I dropped her off at home and headed to my game group.
One guy got a bug or something so we didn't play Descent. We started with one of Brian's.

Galaxy Trucker 2-4 players
Everyone plays as space truckers hauling what they can in their scrap pile they call a ship past meteor field, pirates, and God knows what else. The game is played over 3 rounds. Each round has two phases. The first phase has all players frantically flipping over tiles to build a ship from spare parts (lasers, engines, cargo holds, shields, batteries, etc.). Once complete (and connections are verified) it's on to phase two. Cards are then revealed one by one. Some are good, like planets with cargo. Others are debatable, like pirates and smuggler (if you don't have enough lasers or have too much cargo) that will make your life hell. Some are just bad, like meteor fields. If you can make it through the deck without having your ship lose all it's parts and crew, you can sell your cargo. Each new round allows for bigger ships, but also a larger deck of cards to navigate. Richest player wins.

We had a false start because Josh and I both misunderstood a building rule. After that, it was unsmooth sailing. Overall, Bryan did very well,  I did moderately okay, and Josh did poorly and barely passable.

I liked it more than I thought I would. I was kind of hoping to see more ships fall apart than I did, but Bryan always had a seriously solid ship with a laser on every surface. I would still gladly play again.

Next up...

Trajan 2-4 players

I watched a game of this and liked the mancala mechanic. I'm always willing to add a game to the pile if it has something new to show me. It takes place during Roman times. You are... um... doing stuff. The theme is pretty loose. You are basically taking different actions to build up points. You can construct, get bonuses, get favors, move armies, jump in politics, and ship goods. All the actions are good and better to take at different times during the game. It's not hugely important in an explanation. It's how all the gears move that are important. Everyone has a player board with a tiny kind of mancala board. It has 6 dishes and starts with 2 "beads" in each dish. On your turn, you draw the "beads" from one dish and drop one each in the dishes (clockwise) until you run out. Each dish represents and action (the ones I mentioned). The one you land in is the one you take. So you have to do a little planing as the game goes on to get to take actions you want. The game doesn't just stop there. Each "bead" has a color. If you can get the right two colors in the last bowl with a trajan tile, you get a bonus (it could get you a number of things from points to free dudes on the board). So now not only are you worried about the number of beads in each dish, but also which color you want to drop off in which dish. If you thought I was done, then you're wrong. The number of beads you move also advances the game timer. The more beads you move, the more it moves. After a "quarter-year" of game time each player needs to have met the "demands" of the people or suffer point penalties. It's a crazy awesome thing.

A lot of people call this game (and most Stephen Feld games) a point salad, meaning you get points from everything you do. It may be true, but I don't care. This mancala thing is so weird and awesome at the same time. Sure you can get point from pretty much everything, but knowing how to make the most out of your points is where it's at. Also, if you aren't great at the game, at least you can feel like you're accomplishing something.
Bryan and Josh caught on to the game pretty quick. Bryan had a good lead for most of the game, but I was able to earn a crap load of end game bonuses to get me into the lead. Josh was pretty far behind mostly because he kept suffering penalties for not meeting the people's needs.

Tally: 168/185  Bonus: 43/50