BG with BJ

This past weekend was our first time on the receiving end of a Seattle-Portland visit; Brett and Jess came down! (they pretended that they wanted to visit us but really they were just shopping for a car... jerks!) Naw, we hung out and among other things, played some boardgames. I had introduced them to Settlers before we moved down to Portland, so they were itching to try some other ones.

We ended up playing Ticket to Ride on Friday night. I’ve played this game a good number of times by now, and I often win by a ridiculous amount of points (I was like 40 points ahead of second and I nearly lapped the person in last place). The buzz on this game was that it was great for newbies, but I dunno... How fun is it to be taught a game and then massacred by the teacher? As for my victory strategy? Commit to a cross country route early, and then pick up plenty of additional tickets that go along with the long ticket... I suppose there’s the risk of not making it all the way across the country, but it’s yet to happen to me...

We also played Carcassonne a couple of times on Saturday (without and then with expansions). I’m not in love with this game, but it’s decent fun and good for noobs. Kara is seriously a shark at this game. She steals stuff all the time and because of it, she usually wins. She stole her way to victory in the first game, so I figured she’d win the second as well (the big meeple in the expansion only enhances her evil thieving ways). However, there was a huge farm formed early in the game (thanks to the 4 city cap piece) and we all (save Jess) dedicated our big boys to that farm. The farm ended up being shared 3 ways, and I took the victory from points gathered elsewhere.