Gang of Four (game, not commies)

Still playing TTR (haven't quite broken out of the provisional rankings yet) but lately have been sinking more hours into playing Gang of Four on the Days of Wonder site. I really like it and will probably pick up a copy when next I run across it, even though the game can be played with a couple of ordinary card decks. I like what Days of Wonder is doing so much that I wish to actively reward them.

Three games tonight, one a two-hour-long slugfest where I earned 75 points within minutes (the game ends when someone reaches 100 points) and then apparently figured out how to play, winning a lot of tricks and dragging the game on and on while everyone else got 3 or 4 points per round. It was actually kind of hilarious, if you're the sort who finds such things funny. One person who was early on complaining about the game taking too long was laughing with me by the end, or anyway typing in "HAHAHA" every time I won a hand with a 1 or something equally bizarre. I finally met my destiny and came in last, but not before sticking at 99 points for three hands. Great game.

Next game was against an inhuman player who was cleaning the three of us up through an intriguing shoot-the-moon strategy I didn't quite grasp, passing on most of the first plays -- even though they clearly have the cards needed to take the trick -- then taking over and owning all of the last tricks. But due to a lucky deal, I managed to go out while this person still had almost a full hand of cards, earning over 60 points at once. It was enough to convince me that I wasn't missing much. (I ended up winning that game, too, whoopie dee.)

In some ways the DoW site's game collection is closer to my Volity ideal than Yahoo Games is. That's pretty cool.

(no subject)

Just experienced my first walkout, with two players bolting from the GoF table the moment I won a round. The DoW games replace such lusers with bots so that the game can continue, but beating (or losing to) bots doesn't affect your ranking, which is half the fun. Fooey. The other person left a few hands later, but at least they apologetically asked to be excused first. (Then the bots, which were playing terribly up to that point, proceeded to beat the tar out of me. Good stuff.)

I note that TTR has a simple automated "karma" system where you get 1 point for every game you play to completion, and lose 3 if you're the first to quit. Players' karma is public, and you can set karma-minimums on tables you create. No such system on GoF. (Which shows, anyway, that they're not using a Volity-like shared-info system among all their online games...) So now I'm a little leery of starting a new game there.