Last night was the inaugural st louis warren event! The main aim was to meet each other, play a few games (introducing new ones to some) and talk a little about an Little Experiment I'm planning. In attendance were: Timothy (yours truly), Douglas, Melissa, Keith, and Di. Melissa brought carrot cake, which was deemed highly appropriate. We played: Fluxx, Volcano, Thin Ice, Martian Coasters, ÜberChrononauts, and Zendo. Fluxx... wow. Keith has a fantastic deck. It has Fluxx (3.0? I think), Family Fluxx, EcoFluxx, and a TON of his own inventions mixed in. I mean a ton. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349417204/ See? I told you. Some of his cards are very amusing. I managed to win having uh... 17 cards in hand after playing the "10 cards in hand" goal. Volcano was new to most (I had recently learnt how to play it), and the game we played essentially allowed people to learn the mechanics. More plays are needed in order to develop strategy, and I can see playing solo will be useful in spotting patterns. Then we had some Thin Ice. It's a great game, though the table I have is a little slick... but then I had a bright idea... Use a Martian Coaster each as your playing area. It's just big enough that it can hold the three base pieces just fine - if you want to have them so they'd be off the coaster, they'd be too far apart to be useful. Keith, Di, and I tied, as we all managed to collapse our structures on the same turn. Next up was 5-player Martian Coasters. This is where I introduce you to my Cunning Method[tm] of Setting up, without problems. It's divided into two parts. Tree Creation, and Tree Placement. Tree Creation and Tree Placement can be used for 4 or 5 players. Neither is necessary for 4, but once you understand the process, it's very quick, and you don't have to hunt for the right piece or coaster. However, this process makes setting up for 5 players much easier. Each tree has two colours missing, so it's possible to set up 4 trees and then not be able to set up the 5th without having 2 pieces of the same colour in. Then you have to break them down and figure it out again. Even once you have your trees all made, placing them can also be a problem, as each tree has two legal coasters. It's possible to place 4 of the trees legally and leave the 5th containing a piece of the colour of the remaining coaster. Following my Tree Creation and Tree Placement process will eliminate these problems and make setting up quick and easy. So. Tree Creation. Set up the pieces in rows - each row is always one colour, Queen on left, Drone in the middle, Pawn on the right. The order of the colours is irrelevant. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545629/ Take the Pawn from the Pawn from the 3rd row down, and place it on the Drone from the second row. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545685/ Take the stack you've just made, and put it on the Queen in the first row. You've just moved the Pawn from the third row diagonally up and left twice, gathering the pieces it lands on as it goes. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545729/ Do the same for the pawn in row 4 http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545800/ http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545877/ and the pawn in row 5 http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349545928/ Our rectangle of pieces wraps around, top to bottom, so our row "6" is really row 1, so move the Pawn from row 1 to the Drone in row 5, and then to the Queen in row 4 http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546001/ That leaves just one tree to make http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546066/ You now have your 5 Trees, each tree having 3 different colours. So, set up your Coasters for the playing area. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546170/ Because of the way the trees are positioned after Tree Creation, it's now very easy to place them. You want to place the top-most tree (i.e. the tree in row 1) first. Look at the Pawn on top of the tree below it (i.e. in row 2). That's the colour of the coaster to place the first tree on. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546281/ We now want to place the tree that was originally in row 2. But this is now the top-most tree, se we can just repeat the above procedure: Look at the colour of the pawn of the tree below, and place the top most tree on the coaster of that colour. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546388/ Then place the third http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546485/ and fourth trees in the same way http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546565/ The fifth tree has only once place left, and you'll see that it's a legal place (and the astute of you will also notice that this coaster is the colour of the pawn of the first tree placed). http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349546618/ You are now ready to play Martian Coasters. Yes, I do intend to write this up on the Wiki, I just need some time to do it and get my head around the wiki syntax. So, we played Martian Coasters, and Di (playing red) won. http://flickr.com/photos/timotab/349417421/ And yes, that was me playing Black :( Next we put the 'mids aside, and played ÜberChrononauts (with Lost Identities in the mix too). We noticed that I must have a newer edition of OC as the Halt Attack, Avert Disaster, and Prevent Assassination cards have the EAC cards that they apply to printed on them in smaller text. Good job. So, we were happily playing, and people were throwing away Discontinuities. Timothy, having stolen the Temporal Shield, thought it would be really amusing to play a Discontinuity, but remain unaffected by it, thus causing grief for everyone else. It was only after he'd done this that he noticed that the person to his right (Di) had done enough patching to have 9 cards in hand, and she'd just given that hand to Melissa, sitting to his left. Not only that, but that hand contained the patch that Melissa needed to Get Home. She played the patch on her turn, and got the additional card, thus completing 2 of the 3 conditions in one fell swoop. It was then fairly simple for her to complete her Mission and win the game. Ahh... unintended consequences once again. Melissa and Keith had to leave at that point (it was getting late), and Douglas had not actually played Zendo, so Di and I taught him that. We played just the one round, which Di won (largely because of some experience in what to look for and how to modify a wrong guess to make it the right one). For those interested, my rule was AKHTBNIAOI it contains exactly 3 colours. Much fun was had, and we look forward to getting together again soon. Timothy