In attendance were John, Ron, Marty, Paul, Dave, and Kathy.

This was a Cosmic night, as determined by whatever algorithm is currently in effect. This chronicler has been out of the loop for a while and has lost track of what is to be played when.

We had a full complement of cosmikkers and we decided to play a "basic" two-power game, spiced with a dash of lucre, the Cash of Cosmic (1 lucre = $00.00000002). Lucre allows you to buy almost anything available in Cosmic. As a result of a certain power in this game, we actually had access to EVERYTHING available in Cosmic.

A "panoramic view" of a typical Seattle Cosmic scene. Kathy is fairly new to Cosmic. Ron is not.

Kathy has fun anyway.

Let's see. I had Parasite/Calculator. Calculator "equalizes," which is another way of saying this power really does nothing at all, but it still strikes fear into the hearts of the more math-phobic among us. Parasite is a "start-up" power, which means in this case that, at the beginning of the game, a venture capitalist gave me twice as many tokens as anyone else. My stock immediately shot up.

John got Laser/Loser, which, apart from being fun to say, brought up a number of questions regarding its interaction with Dave's duo of Deuce-Clone. Thanks to Deuce, Dave got to play two challenge cards. Marty had Macron (each token is worth 4) and Aristocrat, the power that lets you grab Flares and start with any hand you want. Kathy was a Filch-Worm. But Ron was the real wheeler and dealer in this, our most recent foray into the realms nor'-nor'east of the Mountains of Madness. (Since the Mountains of Madness are in Antarctica, according to H.P. Lovecraft, at least it will be warmer to the north of them. Oh, wait, you mean those Mountains of Madness...--Ed.)

Ron had Hurtz [sic], the power that lets you buy stuff you can't normally buy with lucre (e.g. powers, specific flares -- you know). Actually, you just rent it from Ron, who will regale you with a stunning sales pitch if given half a chance. He also had Schizoid. Ah, Schizoid. Schizoid is another "start-up" power. This one allows Ron to concoct his own winning conditions for the game and allows the rest of us to quiz him about it during each of our challenges. Trying, as a group, to figure out meaningful and probing questions occupied the largest segment of our Cosmic time and, in the end, didn't do any of us very much good. Nor did the lucre, for that matter. Ron collected the most of it, by virtue of going last and being able to fleece the rest of us for his (mostly useless) rentals. (Shut up.--Ed.) He even paid some lucre to get a few extra tokens out of the warp, but I don't think the rest of us did too much with it.

Anyway, we made it back around to Kathy, our starter, once. She flipped a comet announcing that we would each have new powers for this challenge, which temporarily nullified all of our other powers, including Ron's, thereby resetting the winning conditions. Nobody noticed (or they did and wisely chose to keep quiet) that Dave had four bases when he allied with Kathy's successful invasion force of somebody's planet. Having secured 5 bases outside of Schizoid's requirements, he deemed himself (and we concurred, for the sake of our sanity) the winner.

Not that this was a bad game. We had a lot of fun, I think, but it was going slowly, and Ron's winning conditions (7 foreign bases, among other things) were going to keep us pounding away for a long time.

The Space Slug examines the Schizoid's victory conditions: "You must have at least 7 (seven) foreign bases to win the game, and only foreign bases not shared by another player of a colour foreign to that planet count toward the victory condition of 7 foreign bases."

Dave won a slightly outdated Y2K voodoo computer.

Too late to stop Y2K, Dave considers using his prize as a mere pincushion.

After that, we decided that we needed another game to clear the palate, so the Fluxx set came out. Fluxx is usually good for a few laughs and proved to be this time as well.

Marty attempts to be crafty.

I, Paul, won the first game after a shuffle of everyone's keepers put the other half of the goal in my hand. I won a pair of small, glow-in-the-dark Platonic solids (n = 12 and 20, so I guess they're not really a "pair") with non-glowing labels for their faces so one can verify the class of each solid if visual recognition is unrevealing. Heavens, they're mathematical and expeditious.

Paul and his prize, modulo Paul. Notice the huge white dog hair. We felt it would be dishonest to edit it out.

Ron won the second game in a similar manner and forwent (eh?) his prize, considering the warm camaraderie and congratulation of his fellow gamers reward enough.

Love and Television: not a winning Fluxx combination.

Doughnuts, Peace, and Taxes: also not a winning Fluxx combination.

The next gaming nexus was augured to be for the following week, but our divinations could not ascertain the non-Cosmic games involved.

--Paul Unwin

Editor's Note: Looks like Paul is the Headless One this week. Also, check out the nifty Space Slug card from the Star Wars CCG that Paul handed out to all players. Mmm, mascotty! (He had sent me the above link as a birthday e-card a few weeks ago, too. What a nice guy...)

NEXT MEETING:

Saturday, 5 August 2000, 8:00 PM at Ron and Marty's in Kent.

Remember, game nights at Ron and Marty's are every Saturday at 8:00 PM. Come play for fun and FABULOUS PRIZES! Please bring a snack or drink (cookies, chips, soda, juice, etc.).

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All photos on this page copyright © 2000 by Ron Hale-Evans except where otherwise noted.