Card games at a café

Here's the session report I promised. Three of my friends (Laura, Ville and Olli) showed up and we had some tea (Chinese Gunpowder, didn't like it), soft drinks (Dr. Pepper, I loved it) and card games at a local café. The café was a pretty good environment - it was very quiet (but a bit cold) and had almost reasonable prices. We started at about 14.30 and when I left, it was 18.45 so it was quite a nice session.

First, we played Castle, a Faidutti-Laget cooperation released by Eurogames in their Blue Box series. I found it quite enjoyable. With four players, it was reasonably short and definitely exciting. One could criticize the game for being a bit luck-heavy, especially in the end game. But it's a chaotic game and you shouldn't play it if you don't like a little bit of chaos. We saw some nice manoeuvres when the cards combined well, that was fun. I think Ville won, but it certainly was close. I got stuck with really bad cards in the end for a long time. I'd give it, after this first playing, a 7. Nice, but I wouldn't buy it myself.

I haven't played my few Cheapass for a long time, not since I bought several "real" board games. However, I took Give Me The Brain with me and Laura wanted to play it, so it was next. If possible, it was even more chaotic than Castle. In the end, I won, but only because Ville switched hands between Laura and me - I got Laura's winning card and Laura got my two useless cards. Too bad. Reminded me why I haven't played it for a while - it simply isn't that good a game. However, the zombies are nice. I love those cute little monsters...

Then, I dug out my regular playing cards (a rare sight) and we started a game of Liverpool. Usually, I wouldn't try to convince people to play something so regular, but this time I had decided it beforehand and advertised accordingly. No annoying muttering was heard, so we started melding and playing. After first three hands we decided that we had playing wrong and corrected the rules on fly. It took us two hours to play through the seven phases, and even though Ville had looked like a winner for a long time, he collected lots of points in the sixth contract and I won with a safe margin, even though Ville managed to win the last contract. That was very satisfying.

I was about to suggest Vom Kap bis Kairo, but Laura wanted to leave. She went for a quick visit to the University computer class before she and Ville left, so that gave us a window of opportunity to play a quick match of 6 Nimmt. We played the tactical variant. I hadn't tried it before, but from now on I'll play it every time when we have three or four players. It was a fun, close game. What's the best, I won.

After that it was time to go home. I was quite satisfied with the games played. I would've liked to try 4-player Vom Kap bis Kairo, but there'll be other opportunities. 4-player Liverpool is a rarer treat, I'm very happy for that.