What Bharmer wants, bharmer gets (Pirate's Cove, Goa, Ra)

Bharmer felt like playing Pirate's Cove, Goa and Ra this week... so we did.

Kozure had to drop out at the last minute, leaving us with three players. Couldn't have happened on a better night, all these games work just fine at that number.

Pirate's Cove hadn't been played for a long time. I'd like to say that I won because I played so well, but the fact of the matter is that Luch and Bharmer were rolling like wusses. Yaaar, ya heard me, laddies! Wusses! Without exagerating, a battle between the two of them (which involved 3 or 4 dice per side) took 3 rounds apiece to register the first hit! I did manage to take down the legendary pirate, which also helped.

Goa was next. My success last time was not in the cards this evening. Bharmer was cruising along at breakneck speed, colonizing and increasing his skills extremely efficiently (he ended the game without a single plantation). He also received the lion's share of additional actions. Luch, meanwhile, was also doing a very good job of advancing his skills while he also tried to garner bonus point tiles. While the race was tight between the two of them, I was floundering. In the end, Bharmer won the game by three points (sadly, a poor choice in my last few moves affected the outcome in Bharmer's favour. Had I not overpayed for a tile on the last auction, Luch would have had the most money and tied for first). I'm happy to say that Goa continues to be a very fun optimisation type game which plays well at any number from 2 to 4... not a range of players typically found for this category (3-5 players is far more common, and 5 is usually the magic number)

Last, but not least, we played RA. Luch gathered a large series of monuments to win the game, but along the way had a very nice "push your luck" bit in the 1st era where he drew 5-6 tiles while facing down the last RA spot. It was fun to watch from the sidelines... I would have been far to chicken to draw that many in his situation!