10/16/09 - Steve

Steve - 13 (HM,LR)
Rest - Close but no cigar
Mary House
Rainy as shit
Backyard is a Jungle of drips

Update: Unanimous for Rico

Update 2: Steve wants it to be known that he had the longest road (LR) and harbor master (HM); noted above as well

open source catan

after a day of 90+ degree heat, shimmering heat waves rising from long-dead grass at lakewood dgc we pulled into zayda buddies for refueling. stroh's, schlitz (both in new cans despite our 23 year old server's (obviously wisened) rebuttal) and some pizza were had. some were schlitz-faced afterwards. the white knight, sans tie, joined us and a quad-man-tan was called and confirmed. off to the red baron's condosienda.

i set the board up in an obviously contrived manner with 4 triple commodity hexes. then sort of undid that by giving each 2 strong numbers and a weak number. 2 golds were only 1 sea away from each other, a 4 and a 6: ripe for development.

i took the only good brick spot and thought i was pretty keen when i combined that with a full set of complementary hexes. it was only after the first roll that i realized that all my numbers were dupes. schlitz!

after the break i decided that green was pretty much a lock for victory given his central placement and capitalization of the 6 gold. in a stroh-ke of comedic genius i laid all of my cards face up on the table and declared the birth of 'open source catan'. there were several after-jokes and silly analogs to be drawn and we pretty much nailed all the good ones. totally unrelated but equally funny red beard pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer to pass around. each of us got to wear the crown of mini green balls for a while to cool out and sober up to the fact that it was obviously over.

i was on cruise control headed towards third place. but then, a duct! and a knobber on green's gold belt and lo, 8's started piling up like fat on a hog and so did the progress cards. paper metropolis - bam! oh, what? i have 2 DoCVPs from early on?! that's 10 veeps - schlitz malt giggles - stay cool, where are the peas?!?!1!

open source catan servers went offline due to lack of donations. cards came back up into hand. one more round was all i needed because i had the merch, the diplodorcus and chode building, read: 3 points.

snottily, i declared i didn't even need to roll to win - it was all academic with mac mcgarry. cards dropped, jaws were agape, arms akimbo, hope left the building to self-immolate. later bizznipps i gotta go to a tubbie! not bad for a monday night.

_blue

Rare Sightings

As the rain clouds settled over my tiny bodega I tried to focus on the task at hand: distraction. A miss-played dreary Sunday evening can lead to soul-sucking self-reflection; often centering around that immortal question, "Why the hell must I labor in the salt mines of modern industry tomorrow morning?” A well-played Sunday is like gorging on a box of distraction chocolates.

My distraction selection was decent last night; retro-card gaming with Sir White and a stiff Ceaser to help defocus events just enough. Things were going well; but then took a turn for the better. Ms. Orange sent a telegram inquiring about the possibility of a civil game of evening Catan. After brief negotiations we Sir White, Ms. Orange and myself hashed out our terms and decided to meet up in the outdoor bungalow annex post haste.

Minutes later I was standing in the kitchen with Ms. Orange when I noticed the most bizarre sight out the back window. Unless my eyes had fully unfocused I was observing something that had never before been documented in the history of Catan. Sir White was setting up the game, un-prodded, by himself! Frankly I didn't even know he knew the game required setting up. I had thought that he considered each game an "immaculate" conception; popping into the world with no work involved. None-the-less, there he was, pondering the meaning of each piece and slowly constructing them into a respectable Catan board.

I know many of our readers will assume this sighting to be a hoax, a sham or just the ravings of a Ceaser-addled drug addict. However I submit upon the as-of-yet-not-needed grave of Klaus Tuber himself that this event did unfold. Knowing my word isn't an international currency I also took the precaution of using my photographic recording device to capture the moment:

The rest of the evening played out to my advantage as though Catan owed me a favor and was eager to repay it. Solid swing placement landed me a treasure trove of production; settlement on gold, wheat and brick, and the trifecta development city (all three commodities lapping at the shores of my city). On a hunch I for-went the need for a 6 and was rewarded with an 8 friendly night. I had not one, but two victory points handed to me via development cards. Add some quick city/settlement building and a coffin-nail harbormaster and the game was mine!

So to all of you, my faithful readers, let this be a lesson that even the most out-landish and impossible, can in fact, be possible. Reach for the stars and roll big.

-Mr. Green, Esquire

so...yeah

i'm not one to brag... well actually i am... and this is a really good time to do so. i posted some recent major victories - two in a row in fact. the 'in a row' part isn't really that big a deal. it was the manner in which things happened. in the game 2 weeks ago _red_ had 12/13 points and whiffed on the vic. the rest of us schmopeds had 8 at most. clearly the game was stained _red_. round the horn come the cup o' bones and yours truly builds a city and trades a bunch of junk for coins and metropolizes said city for 3 points (we built this city on rocks and rolls of coins playing in the background), oh woops the city is on a harbor so i'll be taking the harborbastard card as well, ahoy matey that be 5 pts for the vic. no one in the history of catan had ever done that previously that day. i immediately submitted fluids for testing which was not looked upon kindly by the other players.
this past weekend saw a similar feat of harborbastardliness for the sneak from behind vic which shouldn't have happened. i started off with crappy number diversity 4,5,6,9 only but all resources. development was pretty lackluster throughout but wham bam a city on a port later and i was cruising my skiff at 14 knots to the island of victoria.

Traders and barbs expansion beach weekend

Before heading out for presidents (not valentines) day weekend. _blue bought traders and barbs expansion after hearing about it from a brown known as gbsr. We have been rocking it all weekend in tandem with axis &allies, a fave of white. We play our own variant mixing in the knights as added strength under the mounted knights. This allows for more powerful barb expulsion and for coin city developments to retain it's awesomeness. We were worried at first about the smith card in particular but since we are so awesome and we understand the mind of teuber we were able to figure out the most equitable way to make it all work. Were the collective members of the Pacific Beach Social Club not so awesome in who they are as people the weekend would have sucked in exponential proportion. As it was the weekend was unbelievably cool. Thank you mentor and spirit animal guide Klaus Teuber.

confession

i played puerto rico over the weekend and.... liked it.... a lot.
it's not going to unseat catan as the best board game ever but it is a nice warm up or cool down from said bbge.

_blue