hrrf nemo saltat sobrius

Infinite City

Last night I played the game Infinite City.

This was after playing a horrible game of Alhambra, which is more or less an Arabic Carcassonne, only less fun.

Infinite City is not infinite. There are a limited number of tiles. This disappointed me, because when you're playing a game called Infinite City, you start wondering if you have a table big enough to play the game. People do not like when you call it Infinite Shitty.

So, it has really crappy ratings on BoardGameGeek, but I can say definitively after playing it - it seemed like it was fun. I say seemed, because nobody had played it correctly before, and nobody really knew how to win, and a last minute rule clarification right before I took the last turn caused me to go from last to second place, missing first place by a single point that the guy in first place didn't know he should get.

The premise is that you're building a city, which is not infinite, thus making the game a lie. Each tile that you use to build a city has some kind of rule on it that can cause you to modify other tiles, or the city, or your tokens, or someone else's tokens, which you use to claim tiles. There are bonus points for doing certain things. You should wait to mention these things until right before my turn, which is the last turn of the game, due to another rule clarification. It really isn't our fault - the rules are horribly written and open to lots of interpretation, and the only guy who had played it before had only played with his ten-year-old son.

The game has the capacity to be horribly unbalanced - it is feasible that you could play an entire game without having a single useful tile. I suspect this is why it rates so low on BGG.

Anyway, I think the game had potential. We'll probably add it to our lunch rotation and see how it goes, since I'm currently on a 15-0 run in Carcassonne at lunchtime with co-workers. And I never want to Race for the Galaxy ever again.

The Gauntlet

Kenny has challenged me to live-blog the GMAC bowl. Even though nobody really reads this, I may take him up on his challenge. I'm sure it can't be as good as the 2004 GMAC bowl featuring powerhouses UTEP and Toledo, but I can hope.

This year's stellar matchup pits the Central Michigan Chippewas against the Troy Trojans. CMU just lost their coach to Cincy, who lost their coach to Notre Dame.

And that's about the only interesting thing I can think of to say about that game.

Predictability

I play a lot of board games with a handful of guys that I work with.  They're usually involved board games - much more complicated than something like Monopoly or Scrabble.  I was introduced to them by an old co-worker and haven't really looked back since.  I know a lot of you have played some of the same games and know what I'm talking about.

In playing different games with the same guys over and over, just like repeated activity of anything else, you learn their patterns.  Mind out of the gutter!