The monthly Nerd Night get together for game playing and all-you-can-eat pasta was a blast, as always. It was a smaller than usual turnout (if there can be a “usual” at only the third event) but there was just as much laughter and gaming fun as always.
I try to play at least one or two new games each time. This time around, I tried a game called Labyrinth. It's a tile game, and I really enjoyed it even though I came in last.
Another game I tried for the first time was something called Pit. It's a card game from the 70's in which you try to “corner the market” by collecting a hand full of the same cards (labeled wheat, rye, corn, and so forth). You can trade any number of the same-faced cards at once. When you collect all the cards for one commodity, you ring a bell to close the trading and announce that you've won.
The game quickly devolves into a table full of people yelling "Two! Two! Two!" or "Three! Three! Three!" as they try to arrange trades. It's fast, it's loud, and it's hilarious.
And I cheated.
After playing a number of rounds, all of which zipped past and all of which ended in bouts of laughter, I decided to throw a wrench into the system. I collected one of each of the different cards, and then … I just held on to them. It was now impossible for anyone to corner any market, so the game just went on and on, getting faster and faster, louder and louder, as the same few cards were traded back and forth by everyone (but me) frantically trying to find that one last card they needed to win.
In the movie below you can see the moment I start to mess with the game because I begin collecting and then trading away cards without even looking at them. Everyone else is so caught up in the game they don't notice, but you can hear Erin behind the camera start to laugh as she catches on:
Carrington cheats at Pit [1.9MB AVI]
Nerd Night has become one of the things I most look forward to each month. It's open to everyone, so if you're free on the last Monday of a month you should come out and play. Drop me a line for directions. The next one will be on December 27, and since most people are off work that week the turnout should be good. There's even talk of making it an all day drop-in game-a-palooza.
I'd tell you to make sure you don't miss it because all the cool kids will be there, but with a name like Nerd Night I'm not going to fool anyone.
I just remembered that in my last post I promised some normal non-nerd blogging about television or girls or something. I guess I do have stuff to share about watching television recently and how it reminded me why I don't watch it, plus I've got photos of Tanya taking photos of bicycles. Stay tuned.
