Game Night - September 23 2005

It was a great relief to have a game night scheduled. We'd finally get to play some of the new games I'd been stockpiling over the past month.

The most anticipated game was my newly-acquired copy of Traumfabrik.

Some memorable things:
We popped the Traumfabrik CD into the player, and it was a wonderful mood-setter for the game. Form the opening strains of In the Mood, which almost everyone in the room surprisingly identified, to the Sinatra tunes that were playing while he was considering offers from the studios, the CD proved that little touches do enhance the gaming experience.

My highest-rated film was The Ten Commandments starring Grace Kelly, which was rather hilarious because Grace Kelly in a loincloth was good, but if she had a beard, that was bad.

The worst film for most of the game was a $5,000,000 box-office disaster filmed by a no-name director, starring Reiner Knizia.

That was unbelievably beaten by a $3,000,000 stinker filmed by another no-name director and starred in by Henry Fonda.

Eventual winners Frog and George had the film of the night - King Kong with a $3,000,000 special effects budget starring Marilyn Monroe. No, it wasn't the biggest box-office hit, but it was the most appropriate casting. They avoided the mistake of casting Norma Jean as the monkey and using CGI to animate the Fay Wray.

Final scores:
Frog/George - $71m
Rick - $70m
Nix - $60m
Erik/Annie - $58m
Monch - $56m

Post-game agenda - come up with custom tilesets. Make Keanu the Reiner of that set.

Nix, Frog, George and I decided to go for one more game, and I broke out my new copy of Verrater. I'd played the game a few times on BSW, some time ago.

It was an interesting game as we were all grappling with the quirky double-loop timing of the game, with the start player passing clockwise and the strategist and alliances flip-flopping the combat rhythm in a strange, disjointed waltz. I turned coat three turns in a row, sandwiched between a couple of building turns. Everyone else concentrated on being the Strategist or a flavor of the Diplomat.

When the dust cleared, the most traitorous one emerged victorious. I won the game with 27 points.

So, our all-German edition game night was a rousing good time. T-fab will almost certainly grace our table again next session, hopefully with some variant tiles.