9-15-06
Gaming at WVU Tech
To Many Cooks and Ticket to Ride Europe
Players - Brandon, Shelley, and Charlie
Shelley and Brandon stopped by to play games again this week. I had
just started a free on-line poker tournament as they walked in so
Brandon played poker while Shelley and I found a game to play.
First Game – Too Many Cooks
I just picked this game off the prize table at "That Board Game Thing"
in Raleigh, NC last weekend. I also got Thurn and Taxis, Mal Mal (which
may be Ted's), Figaro (which is Ted's) and my last pick Time Pirates (I
like it so there!). Back to the gaming. Too Many Cooks has always been
a favorite but I never owned a copy. It was still in shrink. With
Shelley it seems I open a new game every time. It is a card game with
simple rules. We will play 5 hands (days). Each hand a player will
choose to make a type of soup, Onion, Pea, Mushroom, Chili or make no
soup. Once you have made a soup you cannot choose to make that type
again. As the hands are played you try to collect the cards that match
the type of soup you are making that day. However, if you are trying to
make Onion, Pea or Mushroom you do not want to collect any pepper
cards. If you are making Chili you do not want any bullion cards. The
day you make no soup, you do not want any cards. I had never played
with two and was not sure how good it would be. I think more
players are better but it scaled down quite nicely. I got off to a
little advantage in the first few days but the 4th day Shelley made no
soup and she slammed me. I didn't have any 0 or boil over 0 so I took
all but 2 cards. She managed to hang on for a one point victory
19 – 18.
Between games, Brandon ran to McDonald's and I played poker. He had
basically kept me alive but was not doing great. I managed to win a
couple of big hands and basically tripled my stack. I was actually in
decent shape. I hung on until I was in the top 1200 players (Yes, the
tourney started with almost 16,000 people.) I lost when the 10 of
diamonds made my flush but also made the other players full house. I
couldn't believe it. Oh well, back to gaming.
Second Game – Ticket to Ride Europe
Neither Shelley nor Brandon have played any of the Ticket to Ride
titles so we jumped into Europe. I decided to try to build the long
city connections for big points and have a go for the longest
connection also. Shelley and Brandon both went for multiple tickets.
Shelly and Brandon both started in western Europe and I built in the
east from Stockholm to Petrograd. I also built the 6 train tunnel from
Kiev to Budapest. I only kept 3 short tickets at the start and that was
all I finished. I did not build any stations and did have the longest
connection. Shelley drew tickets a bunch of times. I think she scored
54 points in tickets and did not build any stations. Brandon used 2 of
his stations and ended with one 11 point ticket that he did not finish.
The final scores were Brandon 104, Shelley 122, and me 124. Had Brandon
finished his last 11 point ticket he would have scored 126.
