Had to miss our board game session this week – it’s a busy week – but at least I did meet Janne at the circus school. We had more time than usual, as our kids were having a dress rehearsal for the upcoming circus show. I was expecting to be able to watch the rehearsal, but that didn’t happen – fortunately I had prepared. In the end, we had time for four complete games of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper.
It’s a good game, and the more you play it, the better it gets. I’ve reached more than ten plays now, which is still fairly rare. I only have 116 games so far that I’ve played at least ten times.
Last week I did get to play. I suggested Eclipse or Brass, and we eventually ended up with Eclipse. We had three players, two experienced and one newbie – who had done a remarkable job of reading and understanding the rules, so we needed very little explanation to get going – and we all played humans. So, first three-player game for me and first play with all humans.
My game went bad pretty early on, as I tried to attack two Ancients with most of my fleet (ie. one dreadnought, one cruiser and one interceptor) and the first time the Ancients shot, they killed the dreadnought (which hadn’t fired a shot). The cruiser went next.
That was a major setback. I did recover, though, and eventually my missile boats harassed Tuomo’s empire. Tuomo, however, had been destroying Ancients and growing his empire, and he had hoovered all the 4-point reputation tiles. That was good enough to win the game. I’m just glad I managed not to lose badly, with final scores of 35-28-28 (and I lost the tiebreaker).
Tuomo had to leave, but I played couple of games of Oregon with the new guy. I had to raise my rating to full ten. It’s just so good. I’ve been playing on Yucata.de, and for a long time, I was stuck on 50% winning percentage: I would win some, then I would lose some to balance it out. Now I’m at 56% and hopefully able to keep it growing. Overall my winning percentage is 66%, which is 17% more than I should have (yeah, I do know my expected win percentage).
