Silver Case

The Tribe hung out all day Monday. First had brunch in Wallingford, then over to Greenlake park where Luke ran amok. Matt captured some great photos of him. After that, we baked under bright sunlight at the furiously packed Zoka. It’s worth it for a cup of Rwanda Cylya Mugambira, Cup of Gold #8

Luke flying around the carousel. This is the first time he’s ridden without crying and jumping off.

Late afternoon, Ling and I bought the majority of QFC’s deli counter and loaded our dinner table with a huge spread of cheese, antipasti, meats, breads, and salads.  Once we were sufficiently stuffed, Luke went to bed and we played a long game of Six Man Settler of Catan. (I beat mom. HA!)

I woke up a few mornings ago to a gloating Instant Message from my mother:

Then my dad even sent me a photo of the historic moment — Mom doing a clean sweep of everyone, placing all her Blokus parts.

Except…

I zoomed in the photo a bit and started noticing what suspiciously looks like small yellow tiles “lost” around the room.

Shame, Shame mother. Fortunately, Matt the Good Son, not me was there, and he had the tact not to point out your treachery.

I have played the “seafarers” variant of Catan. I think we all found it guilty of making the game more complex faster than it made it better. Tonight I discovered a second variation that I must confess I enjoyed a lot.

Called ‘Full Explorers’ gamemap, it has a bigger map area. And offshore are a lot of unknown white tiles. There is a new piece to buy, a ship (wood and sheep) which is the equivalent of a seaborne road. As you move offshore you start uncovering new territories and are rewarded with the resources you find. Apparently settlements built on this new territory count as two points. There is a resource card in the most extreme corner that looks like a waterfall. This, if you score it, allows you to choose which resource you want.

Anyway, I played it twice. The first time was a serendipitous accident. I had no idea what was going on, but I managed to score 2nd. The next time I played it, I won.

It added enough new stuff to make it interesting, yet not cumbersome. I’d play it again. I am not sure if this is an invention of “asobrain” or a true variation from the Settlers manufacturers.

If you are annoyed that I am writing about Settlers of Catan instead of my Hanoi Vacation, go look at flickr instead….

I am growing so, so weary of notions of “fairness” in placing the robber.

I beat this guy handily. It had nothing to do with robber placement.

Played Settlers of Catan tonight. One opponent, __neo__, was ranked something like 150+ points. The other guy, Wizzy, was a pathetic minus fifty-something.

Early in the game, I got the robber. Wizzy had been doing the naive “build for longest road” race with himself and was up to +5. ___neo___ was +3. I was +4. So I played the robber on __neo__. The game is close, and clearly __neo__ is way more dangerous than Wizzy.

This sent Portuguese __neo__ out of his mind. And so he started carrying on and on and on. Eventually he reverted to taking as long as possible on his every turn. Well, I have other windows to look at too, so I just did other things as he did is pouting. So it didn’t really succeed in driving me away. In fact, I even reported him, so maybe he’ll be banned. That would be fun.

Alas, the only bummer of the night was that Wizzy beat me by two points or so. He had too many cities and was simply too productive. Oh well.

This chap wasn’t happy that I blocked out his settlement with one of my own. Which was ok, because I was on the way to giving his ass a good thrashing.

This one is roman alphabet thankfully… “Kara me cago en tu puta madre” and “kara hijo de puta”

Hmmm. None of the free online translators can do much better than, “Kara I shit in your prostitute mother” and “kara son of a prostitute.” Well, ok, Borat, you still lost.

Oh… perhaps “kara” is short for karavshin.

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I whipped these guys 10-5-5 in about 20 minutes. Angry greek man sour about the Robber. Tough Shit. In fact, the distribution was quite normal.

I would love to know what he said to me in Greek. Maybe I’ll get to find out. In trying (unsuccesfully) to copy the greek text to clipboard to feed to a translator, I apparently accidentally reported STRATOS to the “authorities.” ahahahah neener neener. I got beat twice tonight, so it is pleasing to really trash #3, and for him to take it so badly.