Wednesday Games III: The Last Panther

It was a bit quiet day today, as we only had three players. Well, we still played many delightful games.

I was eager to try even some of the Mü & mehr games. So, we tried The Last Panther, which turned out to be a nice little trick-taking game. It is also rather nasty game, as in each deal (with three players), 190 negative points are distributed and only 95 positive points. The game ends, when a player gets more than 200 negative points. We played twice, the games took about 20 minutes each. I'm still eager to play Mü, but at least I got to try the deck. I'm a bit unsure if I like the illustrations or not... Some are fine, some are less ok.

Manu had bought himself 6 Nimmt!, and we played so he could learn the rules better. We played half-tactical variant - that is, using 34 cards that are dealt randomly. Picking up cards sounds boring. This way it was far from boring. I managed to gather loads and loads of cards, which wasn't nice.

Mamma mia! is also a good game and also a game Manu had bought. It was great fun, once again. Manu won with six pizzas, while I got four and Ville just two. I also got one of the pizzas very easily: I was the starting player of round two, the pile had already 12 ingredients and I had the 15+ pizza in my hand...

Two games of King Lui were played next, reinforcing my opinion of the game. It's rather hilarious little filler. The games took about ten minutes and were reasonably even. I lost the first game to Manu by four points and the second game by five points. Which was rather annoying...

And if we played King Lui, then surely we played also Coloretto. This time I was able to win the first game, while the second game ended up as a three-way tie. Funky.

The afternoon was finished with a game of Sticheln - how could we not play it? Manu was rather good at this, it turned out - rarely a beginner is able to compete from the start. After three rounds he was in the lead. Fourth round was +8 for me and -2 for Manu and we started the fifth and final round with me in five-point lead. It was rather exciting. We both made some mistakes and I had already given up the hope, but with the last trick Manu got his misery 8 and the game ended as a draw: me and Manu had +26, while Ville had -26. Which wasn't fair, but that's life.

Sticheln is still my favourite three-player card game, but The Last Panther isn't that far. They are rather similar, which of course tempts me to compare the games. The Last Panther feels a lot more chaotic; it's easier to keep control in Sticheln (at least with three players). Or it means I don't know how to play the panther game... But the following of suits gives more opportunities to throw the big -50 hitters on other players while keeping them in your hand is also more dangerous than keeping big misery cards in Sticheln.

But, I'm still rather anxious to try Mü and Dia de los Muertos. Maybe next time! I'm waiting for five players (or at least four) to try Mü and four for Muertos. I'd rather have a good impression of the game on the first time.