2017.10.26: Without a Compass

3-Players: W, Z & G
Location: W
Choice: G
Game: Navegador

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	131
Z	115
G	110

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• W closing in on M in overall stats
• M's GR is currently at 34.0% and W's is 32.2%
• If W were to winall games and M were to finish last in all games, it would only take two 5-player games, or three 4-player games, or four 3-player games, for W to move past M in GR%

Music:

Cannonball Adderley: Live in Chicago (Recorded: February 3, 1959)
Cannonball Adderley: Live in San Francisco (Recorded: October 18 and 20, 1959)
Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, and Stephen Stills: Super Session (1968)

2017.10.05: Show Us Your Cubes

5-Players: W, K, G, J & Z
Location: W
Choice: K
Game: Terraforming Mars

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	60
K	49
G	47
J	45
Z	43

Game 2:

Game = Dominion Base and Adventures

Player	Points
G	37
Z	30
K	30
W	18

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• W's hierarchy of needs
• Quickest TfM ever played (2 hours)
• First time playing with Elysium expansion board
• G stole J's three plants before J even had a turn
• Z wins tiebreaker for game 2

Music:

i think that it was cds from K's collection. not sure what anymore

2017.08.17: Terra Mystfied

5-Players: W, G, Z, J & K
Location: J
Choice: W
Game: Terra Mystica

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	128
G	127
Z	111
J	89
K	83

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

2017.07.13 The Village Expanded

4-Players: W, J, G & Z
Location: W
Choice: W
Game: Village + Port Expansion

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	69
J	64
G	63
Z	49

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• none. #sad

Music:

Cream: W's Mixtape (Unknown but sometime between 1966 and 1969 obviously)
Grateful Dead: Harding Theatre (FM broadcast KSFX-San Francisco, Recorded Nov 7, 1971)
King Gizzard, the Wizard Lizard: I'm In Your Mind Fuzz (2014)

2017.07.06 African Visitor

7-Players: J, K, Si, W, M, Z & G
Location: K
Choice: Consensus
Game: 7 Wonders

Game 1:

Game 1

Player	Points
J	63
K	63
Si	60
W	60
M	54
Z	51
G	49

Game 2:

Player	Points
Z	72
W	66
Si	62
K	54
J	51
G	50
M	48

Final Tally:

Player	Points
W	126
Z	123
Si	122
K	117
J	114
M	102
G	99

                                    

• W was declared this week's winner!

My usual walk home after gamenight

Game Notes:

• Good to see Si again after so long away
• Report back from L that the LCBO gift card was much appreciated

Music:

G's Mixtape: TripHop1 (Various)
CBC Radio Two: Tonic (Various)

2017.05.11: Duck

4-Players: W, G, Z & K
Location: W
Choice: Z
Game: Terraforming Mars

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	67
G	60
Z	59
K	55

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• notes lost #sad

Music:

notes: lost (sad)

2017.03.09: Feels Tzo Good

 

3-Players: W, K & G
Location: W
Choice: K
Game: Tzolk'in with Tribes expansion

Game 1:

Player	Points
W	59
K	55
G	51

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

Player	Tribe
W	Itzamna
K	Ah Chuy Kak
G	Yumkaax

Music:

Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Lettuce: Crush (2015)
Joe Russo's Almost Dead and Bob Weir: youtube stream (2016.11.12 Fox Theater, Oakland, CA)

2016.10.27 It's a Whole New World

end game points

4-Players: W, K, Z & G
Game: Terraforming Mars
Location: W
Choice: Z

Game One:

Player	Points
W	65
K	59
G	56
Z	54

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• First time playing this game for all
• All looking forward to a reply now that rules are better understood

Music Notes:

Thievery Corporation: Culture of Fear (2011)
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nerd (1973)

The game rules use the names Kim, Stanley and Robinson
 for the player names in the turn by turn walk-through example
an obvious tip of the hat to the author

2016.07.21 Push Me Into Watershallow Before I Get Too Waterdeep

3-Players: K, Si, W
Game: Lords of Waterdeep with Undermountain expansion

Location: K

Choice: Si



Game One:

Player	Points
W	207
Si	190
K	177

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• 
  

Music Notes:


Pet Shop Boys: Very, (1993)

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_(Pet_Shop_Boys_album) :
Very is the fifth studio album by English electronic duo Pet Shop Boys. It was released in September 1993, nearly two and a half years after the duo's previous studio album, Behaviour, and the compilation album Discography: The Complete Singles Collection. Very exhibits one of many turning points the Pet Shop Boys would make to their music, shifting from the subdued electronic pop of Behaviour to richly-instrumented dance arrangements. The content and lyrics led to Very being called their "coming-out" album, since it was during this time that Neil Tennant had publicly discussed his long-rumoured homosexuality.

Very has sold more than five million copies worldwide, and contains five UK singles.


Rolling Stones: 40 Licks (Greatest Hits), Disc 1 & 2

2016.05.05 Chaos Prevails

4-Players: W, G, Si & J
Game: Terra Mystica
Location: W
Choice: W


Game One:


Player	Points
W	88
G	86
Si	82
J	71

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Board at game end

Game Notes:

Player	Race
W	Chaos Magicians
G	Dwarves
Si	Cultists
J	Darklings

Music Notes:

David Holmes: Let's Get Killed
Alan Parsons Project: I Robot
Grateful Dead: Dick's Pick's Vol 4

2016.02.18 Return of the Keeng

4-Players: W, Si, K & G
Game: Imperial


Location: W
Choice: Si


Game One:

Player	Points
W	106
K	104
Si	94
G	90

Final Tally:

• W was declared this week's winner!

Game Notes:

• We played upstairs. Classy!
• G was dealt Germany as his starting country. His pleas for a re-deal fell on deaf ears and he was forced to play with the handicap.

Music Notes:

M8trix: Mix 96, Get Yourself Together (2015)

Great mixtape posted on bmbx.com. Get it yourself and get yourself together.

Liquid Soul: Revolutions (2013)

Fairport Convention: Liege & Lief (1969)

Augustus Pablo: East of the Nile (1977)

2015-10-22 The Adventures Have Begun

4 Players: K, M, W & G
Game: Dominion, Adventures + Prosperity
Choice: W
Location: K


Game One:
Card Setup: Last Will and Monument
G (68 pts), K (62 pts) & W (46 pts)

Game Two:
Card Setup: Think Big
W (93 pts), G (63 pts) & K (59 pts)



Final Tally:

W (139 pts), G (131 pts) & K (121 pts)

Scores from both games added together to get final tally

W was declared this week's victor
  

Game Notes:

• "You stole my heart, er, I mean, my hoard"
• There was some discussion about the Radical Marijuana Party and what makes them so "Radical"
• It was confirmed that 3 year olds are very effective infectious disease carriers
• "All Colony, All Platinum, All the time!"

Music Notes:
The Grateful Dead: Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead (2002; recorded in 1972) Discs 1 & 2 (out of four)

[Notes from MusicBox-Online] The Grateful Dead’s 1972 tour of Europe is legendary. The band’s prior jaunts across the Atlantic had been quick ones, but this undertaking was a working vacation that found the group taking a leisurely stroll across the continent, absorbing the sites, and turning in a series of epic performances. It’s no wonder, then, that Steppin’ Out with the Grateful Dead marks the third collection of material from this two-month affair. The first was Europe ’72, a polished, but powerful album that many purists decry for its studio overdubs. The second was the two-disc compilation Hundred Year Hall, which these same purists argue is less than satisfactory simply because it doesn’t contain a complete show. (For the record, both of these albums are exquisite representations of the Grateful Dead at its finest, and passing them by most certainly would be an unfortunate decision).

Nevertheless, for the definitive Europe ’72 recording, one need look no further than the recently released Steppin’ Out with the Grateful Dead. This four-disc package compiles music from seven of the Grateful Dead’s eight concerts in England, fusing the fragments together to form a rather cohesive collection of monumental proportions. No doubt, the purists are crying foul once again, but either taken as a single mammoth show or four individual sets, Steppin’ Out succeeds brilliantly. All one needs to do is sit back and listen.

Pigpen fans, in particular, will have a blast pouring through the music on Steppin’ Out. Though he was thin and frail — this was his final tour — one wouldn’t have known it from the power of his performances on this set of songs. Indeed, where Bear’s Choice felt flat in its tribute to the Grateful Dead’s first keyboardist, Steppin’ Out radiantly shines. Good Lovin’, Turn on Your Lovelight, and Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks) all basked in the sparkly glow of Pigpen’s improvisational raps. And, his wordy rants only served to egg on the band, pushing the group further outward into its own unique brand of blissful space. If Pigpen’s passionate vocals were the jet fuel, Jerry Garcia’s guitar was the rocket ship, blasting straight through the center of each song’s heart with inexorable incandescence.

In early 1972, there was something different in the air as well. The Grateful Dead had already shifted from jug music to blues to folksy Americana, but it was about to embark in a new, jazzier direction. Part of this transformation was due to Pigpen’s failing health, which prompted the addition of keyboardist Keith Godchaux and his vocalist wife Donna. Then again, this broadening of style could hardly be called a surprise, given Garcia had long been infatuated with the music of John Coltrane and later Miles Davis. As Dark Star began to take on a slower, more deliberate, jazz-fusion pace — like the version reproduced on Steppin’ Out — it blossomed with even more potential than the rapid-speed early renditions. Though this metamorphosis would not be complete for another year, the seeds had been planted: Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad embraced a looser, freer groove, the pairing of China Cat Sunflower and I Know You Rider swung mightily, and Playin’ in the Band thrived in a more open-ended setting.

In addition, the members of the Grateful Dead were in the midst of their most prolific period of songwriting. Tunes such as One More Saturday Night, Jack Straw, Ramble On Rose, and Comes a Time had all found their way into the band’s sets just a few months earlier, but it was the tour of Europe in 1972 that put them in perspective and allowed them to come into their own. And there were plenty of relatively old favorites, too. Songs such as Truckin’, The Other One, Sugar Magnolia, and Uncle John’s Band had begun to take on fresh shapes and sizes, moving into a myriad of new directions — sometimes all at once.

For this reason, the Grateful Dead’s concerts from 1972 through 1974 are what many consider to be the band at its best. Though it delivered many outstanding performances both before and after this period, the group was never so consistent, its sets never so diverse, its music never so exploratory. The 1972 European tour may have only been the beginning of this new endeavor, but while listening to Steppin’ Out with the Grateful Dead, it’s hard to imagine any collection of material to be any better at encompassing what the band was all about.

2015-09-03 Village idiots down at the Port

To sea Cap'n!

unmarked graves

4 Players: W, K, G, J

Game: Village: Port Expansion

Location: W

Choice: W

Game One:

W (66 pts), G (62 pts), J (54 pts) & K (40 pts)

 

Final Tally:

• W was declared the winner

the great book at game end
W Yellow
G White
J Red
K Blue

Notes:

• Actually two expansions as we played with the Silver and Gold Goal cards as well as the port
• All players enjoyed both expansions
• "Pink over brown" was overheard at the table
• Final Mass awarded W and extra two points. We weren't sure if we played this correctly as the rules, we felt were vague about whether at game end you have a "final mass" or not.
• Another rule that we were unsure about was if you had to stop whenever your boat passed a landing spot (no hourglass symbol) or if you could continue on your journey
• K described the concepts and game play of his in-development game, promising a prototype soon to game test

Music:

Morcheeba: Big Calm (1998)

[Notes from AllMusic.com] Realizing that trip-hop was a dead end, at least as far as hipness goes, Morcheeba expanded their sonic palette on their second album, Big Calm. Trip-hop and dance rhythms remain, but the trio has spent more time writing songs, crafting an album where pop, lounge, film soundtracks, reggae, jazz, and electronica all peacefully coexist. Consequently, Big Calm is a stylistic tour de force, evidence that Morcheeba have turned into a mature, sophisticated group with impeccable taste. Occasionally, the album can sound a little distant, as if the fusions and productions were more important than the actual songs, but the trio is so musically adept, and Skye Edwards' voice is so enchanting, that Big Calm become irresistible in its own way.

Broken Bells: ?

Grateful Dead: Dave's Picks, Vol. 13: Winterland, San Francisco, CA 2/24/74
 

[Notes from AllMusic.com]The full three-set performance from the band's February 24, 1974 date, the third of three nights at San Francisco's Winterland Arena. This date finds the band in fantastic form, using a sound system that predated their famous "wall of sound" amplifier system by just a month, and spinning their cosmic wheels through a spirited first set of rockers like "U.S. Blues," "Candyman," and "China Cat Sunflower" before relaxing into more wide-reaching territory in the second and third sets on extensive jams like "Weather Report Suite" and an incredible half-hour "Dark Star" that melts gently into "Morning Dew." The sound is exceptional on this particular set, and the vibe is more energetic and bright than usual, resulting in one of the more lively Dave's Picks to focus on the early-'70s era Dead.

 

 

2015-08-28 Guildy As Charged

Why is she with him? Ham?

3 Players: W, K, G

Game: Guildhall

Location: W

Choice: K

Why is she with him?

 

Game One:

K (20 pts), W (18 pts) & G (12 pts)

 

Game Two:

W (20 pts), G (19 pts) & K (12 pts)

 

Final Tally:

• W was declared the winner

Notes:

• W couldn't stop playing his cards directly into his guildhall instead of his playing area

Music:

 

Phish: Magnaball Festival Friday Night 2015-08-21

 

[Notes from the Rolling Stone Review] At Magnaball, the band gave fans plenty to chew on, including (on night one) a blissful 23-minute "Bathtub Gin" (from 1990's Lawn Boy) and a version of "Harry Hood" that pushed rhythmically and harmonically free from its well-worn jam paths. There was newer material, like "The Dogs" (from an album's worth of half-songs debuted last Halloween in Las Vegas, based on Disney thrift-store LP staple The Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House) and (on day two) "Scabbard," a recent through-composition by guitarist Trey Anastasio that might (with practice and continued performance) yield the kind of playful prog-rock drama of the band's earliest work. The band jumped on trampolines and vocal-jammed ("You Enjoy Myself"), unleashed perhaps the longest vacuum jam in the band's history by drummer Jon Fishman ("I Didn't Know"), played ambient mood pieces ("What's the Use"), dusted off tunes for the first time in a decade ("Mock Song"), got fans to shout in odd time signatures ("Punch You in the Eye") and dropped the occasional MOR-ready pop melody ("Waiting All Night").

 

Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove (1978)

 

[Notes from AllMusic.com] One Nation Under a Groove was not only Funkadelic's greatest moment, it was their most popular album, bringing them an unprecedented commercial breakthrough by going platinum and spawning a number one R&B smash in the title track. It was a landmark LP for the so-called "black rock" movement, best-typified in the statement of purpose "Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock?!"; more than that, though, the whole album is full of fuzzed-out, Hendrix-style guitar licks, even when the music is clearly meant for the dancefloor. This may not have been a new concept for Funkadelic, but it's executed here with the greatest clarity and accessibility in their catalog. Furthermore, out of George Clinton's many conceptual albums (serious and otherwise), One Nation Under a Groove is the pinnacle of his political consciousness. It's unified by a refusal to acknowledge boundaries -- social, sexual, or musical -- and, by extension, the uptight society that created them. The tone is positive, not militant -- this funk is about community, freedom, and independence, and you can hear it in every cut (even the bizarre, outrageously scatological "P.E. Squad"). The title cut is one of funk's greatest anthems, and "Groovallegiance" and the terrific "Cholly" both dovetail nicely with its concerns. The aforementioned "Who Says a Funk Band Can't Play Rock?!" is a seamless hybrid that perfectly encapsulates the band's musical agenda, while "Into You" is one of their few truly successful slow numbers. One Nation Under a Groove is the best realization of Funkadelic's ambitions, and one of the best funk albums ever released.