Whad' Ya Know, Pirate's Cove, Tigris and Euphrates

Since Saturday Morning Gamer went on haitus with the introduction of the new blog format here at About.com Board/Card Games, I've not posted much about my own gaming experiences. Time to start changing that.

My wife Beth and I had two gaming-related experiences on Saturday, with a sofa-shopping trip tucked in between. First, we traveled to the home office of Game Surplus, a terrific online store which happens to be about 20 minutes from our house. Thor and Sarah Samuelson, some of their offspring, and their cat greeted us as we picked up some Christmas gifts for my family. (My family says they like getting games every year...)

After a successful venture in a furniture store, we then headed to our favorite spot for four-player gaming, the home of our friends Tom and Dana.

We opened with Whad' Ya Know, the new trivia game from Out of the Box Publishing which is based on the NPR (National Public Radio) show of the same name. I love the fact that the game comes with an entirely gratuitous bobblehead figure of Michael Feldman, the show's host.

The gameplay is interesting, as every player is involved on every question. (This takes care of one of my least favorite parts of most trivia games -- the downtime while you wait for other players to take their turns.) One is the host, asking the question. The two players on either side of the host are the contestants, and everyone else is the audience. I'm going to guess the game is best with 6 to 8 players (the box says it works with 4 to 10), but we had a lot of fun. Beth eeked out a win with 16 points to my 15. Dana earned 12, and Tom checked in with 10.

Next, we pulled out Tigris and Euphrates, a strategy game that's the number two ranked game at BoardGameGeek.com, just behind Puerto Rico and ahead of Settlers of Catan.

The reasons are myriad, but this was the first time any of us had played T&E (or E&T if you use the original German name, Euphrat und Tigris). The game challenges you to position your four leaders (king, trader, farmer and priest) and tiles (four types, related to the leaders) better than your opponents.

The game is wonderful throughout, but the final scoring is a real stroke of brilliance. Each player scores in each of the four categories. The winner is the one whose weakest category is stronger than the other players' weakest categories.

In other words, Tom scored an 8 in his weakest category. The fact that I scored the single highest number in any category of anyone at the table was irrelevant for the final scoring. The fact that my weakest category was a 5 was very relevant. Tom won with his 8, topping Beth's 7, Dana's 5, and my 5. We're all looking forward to playing again now that we understand the basic mechanics.

Our final game of the night was Pirate's Cove, newly published in an English edition by Days of Wonder. Lots of pirate talk ("Arrrrr!") was heard around the table as we each tried to secure the most treasure, moving through the islands, upgrading our ships, battling other pirates, and visiting the local tavern to see if we could find a good parrot.

Pirate's Cove is another game we expect to improve with additional play, a good light game (lots of dice-rolling in battles) that needs to be played at a fast pace and, preferably, with eye patches. Beth won another close one, sneaking up from behind with 45 points. Dana scored 44, I finished with 38, and Tom -- complaining that it was all due to the fact that he couldn't find a parrot -- trailed with 23 points.