Sunday came after another badly-slept night. This time I was able to sleep an about hour longer than last night. I went to eat breakfast at McDonalds, as that was the only thing that’s open at 9 am Sunday morning. This is not a food blog (I had one, but it’s a bit dead right now), but still: I tried the new Chicken Premiere and it’s delicious! Try it out, if you like chicken burgers.

I was leaving at about 1 pm, so I didn’t have much time for games. One game I couldn’t miss was Ricochet Robot. Tanja from Turku is a huge fan of the game, but unfortunately has no locals to play the game with, at least nobody as good as she is. That’s why we have always played the game when we’ve met at various events. As usual, I won the game… Ricochet Robot is a good game for such events, as people can wander in and join the game, as happened this time. William came to look at the game while eating his breakfast yoghurt and suddenly joined in and actually won one piece.

While we were playing Ricochet Robot, I had noticed Ville coming in with a Go board under his arm. I challenged him to a game. I played black, with an even opening. Turned out to be a bad idea: he beat me with about 100 points. Without one huge mistake the difference might have been 20-30 points less, but the outcome was still clear. Anyway, it was good to play Go with such a nice, large stones — my board is such a toy.

I haven’t played Puerto Rico that much after last years massive 30+ games. I was thus quite eager to play it, when Stefu suggested it. We played a five player game, which I ruled. I think my opponents were in general less experienced than I was and I was able to get a good Factory operation going. Some lucky trades generated a good start — after I bought my Factory, I still had seven gold left. The rest of it was easy and I felt nice and secure about my victory.

Last new game for the weekend was Members Only. Phil was eager to introduce the game to me, so we played a game. It’s a nice betting game, but it left me cold. At least with five players, there’s not enough control. I like luck-based games, but this one didn’t work for me. It’s decent, I’d rank it as seven, but not better than that.

The very last game I played was Samurai. Olli wanted to try it out, so I teached him the rules and played two games with him. I hadn’t played it before with just two players and it was pleasantly different experience. The complicated scoring gets a lot less complicated — get two majorities and you win. There’s no reason to play any further when one of the players gets at least two sets of four tokens. In both games, it was me. That was quite a pleasant experience, and Samurai is definitely a game I’d like to own.

So, how was it all? I’m quite satisfied with the event. However, the highlight of the weekend still was seeing Johanna at the Tampere railway station! Coming home was a Good Thing after the weekend. I’m growing old or something, but I just don’t like sleeping badly and eating too little. People were generally quite nice, it was a pleasure to meet Tommy, Phil and Stefu again and the mandatory idiots didn’t bother me that much (all gamers aren’t simply wonderful people, I’ve come to notice that).

I didn’t get to play Mare Nostrum or Svea Rike, but then again, I got to play enough good games and the weekend in general was fun. I guess I’ll just have to go there next year again…