Labor Day weekend gaming

We marked the three-day Labor Day weekend celebrating American workers with several boardgaming sessions.  (In other words, we commemorated work by playing.)

Image courtesy of
Rio Grande Games

Friday evening, Kathy and I had our friend Theresa H. over for a game of Puerto Rico, one of our very favorites but one that we seldom get to play in its original three-to-five player form.  The three of us ended up very close in shipping and building points, but Kathy won with a strong showing of bonus points from the fortress and city hall.

Sunday we hosted our friends Glenn W., Grant G., and W.J.G. for three games.  We opened with 7 Wonders, in which Glenn and I ended up in an arms race.  That motivated Grant and W.J. (our respective neighbors) to give up almost entirely on military advances, which in turn allowed Kathy (who had the Lighthouse at Alexandria) to gain a significant number of military victory points.  But the lion's share of her points came from strong scientific advances in combination with the Scientists Guild, to win the game.

(c) Z-man Games
Used by permission

We followed with The Speicherstadt, which we like for the taut money supply and interesting bidding mechanism.  I ended up winning by one point with two high-scoring contracts and a couple of early fire fighters over Glenn's counting houses.  We wrapped up with Citadels, which was the usual mind-bending second-guessing knife fight that it usually is.  Kathy and Grant tied outright in both points and cash - Grant completing his eight district first as well as representing all five colors but Kathy having a number of high-scoring buildings.

Today we spent the last afternoon of the kids' summer vacation with a family game of Probe (Parker Brothers, 1964), that old stand-by that never seems to get stale.  Kathy's word, reciprocal, was completed first despite failed attempts to guess it prematurely with the Interruptive Rule by both myself (regimental) and our 11-year-old (residential).  But the 11-year-old got completely inside the brain of his 16-year-old brother and guessed his word xenobiology with eight cards still face-down - an unheard-of feat.  The teenager returned the favor, however, by guessing three straight blanks (a very risky move) to expose his younger brother's word at.  That left my word, which remained unguessed largely because everyone mistakenly believed that they had already tried the letters 'c' and 'r.'  So I won with crying, even though the last three letters had been exposed very early in the game.

So Labor Day weekend was properly celebrated with a lot of fellowship, family, and gaming.  We can now face the school year knowing that we made the most of the summer.