Game Night!

For reasons that are slightly opaque, even to me, I ended up in Golden on Tuesday night for a game night. Don't get me wrong - I love game nights, and would have one every week if I could. It's more the whole 'driving a touch over an hour, each way, on a school night' part that I'm pretty sure I won't be doing again.

Anyhow, at Jeff and Tracy's we ended up playing a game called Puerto Rico. I have to say I was generally unimpressed. It's not that it's a bad game, not that at all. In fact, it was quite...stimulating. It's complicated, and works on a lot of levels. I didn't do very well, in large part because I didn't quite understand how badly my general strategy was screwing me over, but I don't mind that. I suspect that with a couple more repetitions, I'd start to really get it and probably be pretty good at the game itself.

But, as a game night game, it was downright rotten. I enjoy game nights for a very specific reason: it's social night for nerds. It's the nerd-equivalent of poker night, or girls' night watching Sex and the City. Often, at game night, we play Settlers of Catan. And everyone, the first time they play Settlers, thinks that it's complicated. But, like any good game, once you get the rules down it's actually fairly simple. During everyone else's turn, there's relatively little that you have to worry about doing. This leaves lots of time for chit-chatting, trash talking, or heavy drinking, all necessary parts of any enjoyable evening.

Puerto Rico, on the other hand, never really simplified. It works in too many dimensions, and the number of things you have to keep track of while you're playing the game is ridiculously complicated. You have a little less to do on other peoples' turns than on your own, but it's still way too much. Plus, while you can screw with people in Puerto Rico, it's always via these ridiculous double bank-shots, whereas in Settlers you can relatively directly mess with your opponents which is, let's face it, fun!

So, not a bad game, but a bad 'game night' game. I don't know quite where this leaves it, in terms of when I'd actually want to play, but c'est la vie.

On the other hand, Shane recently introduced me to a game called Munchkin, which is just a hoot. The best part about it is the inherent sense of humor built into the game. For instance, one of the pieces of armor is the 'Kneepads of Allure'. The curses include 'The Duck of Doom' and 'A Chicken on Your Head!' Also, in various ways, you can directly mess with the other players, which is just, as previously mentioned, fun.

So, in short, chatting with your friends - fun. Messing with your friends - even better. Making sure that your warehouse isn't full of corn such that, if you can't ship your indigo, you don't lose it to the bank? Less so.