Gaming on the long weekend!

I forgot this was a long weekend when I planned game night so we only had a small contingent show up. There were five of us and we played 6 games over the course of the night.

The first game we played was Ticket to Ride: Europe, the second in the famous Ticket to Ride series. I ended up winning it, by completing both the longest trip and by building the tunnel between Sweden and Russia for 21 points. The game was fairly close, with 4 players at 100 or more and last place missed 100 by only one point.

We played Vegas Showdown as our second game. I tried a new strategy. My previous strategy was to crank up my income and then outspend everyone. The object of Vegas Showdown is to amass the most fame, so I only purchased a couple of slot machines and always tried to purchase things that gave me fame. I won, but only by 4 points, I was always starved for cash and had a hard time purchasing anything but my strategy did work. I actually finished last in both income and population.

Will and Cory had to leave as Will was a little tired, but Al stayed and the three of us played cards (yes cards, like in normal none boardgames stuff). We played a couple of hands of 9-5-2, a game for three players. John (the other one) decided he did not want anyone winning so he deliberately lost it. Al had enough of this so for the second game he killed us both.

Al taught us a new three player bidding game he called Mexico. It uses the cards from 7-A of all suits. You deal out the cards to everyone except 2, which go to the side as kitty. The bidding starts at 5 and the dealer can call "My Five" and to outbid the dealer you must go to 6, the bidding is similar to Kaiser but instead of taking the bid you can still overbid the dealer. There are also Low (take no tricks, can be outbid by an 8 or higher bid) and Mexico (take all ten tricks, go down in score by 10, all others go up by 10).
Scoring goes as follows; everyone starts with 31 points and the goal is to get to -1. Every trick you take reduces your score, but if you fail to make your bid, you go up by that amount. If one of the players fails to take any of the tricks, they also go up by the amount bid. The Low bid is the exact opposite, if the Low bidder does not take any tricks, they go down seven and everyone else goes up by 7.
Ok, enough explanation! We played twice and I won twice. The final game I won by setting Al twice, once when he was at 0 and only needed to make one trick to win.

I enjoyed the games, and I am glad Al taught us Mexico.

Remember, game night is also this weekend, as many were gone for the long weekend.

Have a fun time!