Matt's Blog

I'd better do a quick gaming report. Cuz if I don't do it, nobody will. Danny received his new copy of Ticket to Ride in the mail yesterday. He brought it over last night and he, Mare, and I gave it a go. Anyone who is a gamer knows this game. It won Game of the Year in Germany last year (Spiel des Jahres) and is being called "the perfect game" by some in the gamer press. Well I don't know about it being the perfect game, but it was pretty fun. And if you're not a gamer, this might be the perfect game to introduce yourself or family into the wild wild world of German gaming.

Anyway, I'm getting off track here. In brief, the object of the game is to complete rail routes across the United State in order to score the most points. I was the winner of last night's three-man maiden Speil. I don't remember the score exactly, but I pretty much clobbered them.

Well, Danny, swell guy that he is, left his new game with us as he wouldn't be able to play for a couple days. (Don't worry buddy, you can hardly see the beer stain on the board.) So tonight Mare and I tried it 2-handed. It's a much more relaxed game two handed. You have more of the board to yourself and the players can mostly play their game without getting into each other's way. I can definitely see how a full contention of 5 players could result in some cut-throat play and heart-breaking play. I look forward to trying that sometime.

Oh yeah, and I beat the pants off her both games. I'm not sure what she was doing wrong, or if she was doing anything wrong. We kind of tried to figure that out post game, but didn't come up with anything. I do know that that makes me 3 and 0, baby! I just don't know if I'm lucky or good.

To Mare's credit, she did stage an impressive come-from-behind victory the other night during a game of Wyatt Earp.

And just to plug one more game, Danny borrowed Bohnanza to play with his family. It's another great family game that we play just about every get together with Mare's family.