Last Friday, some friends and I had dinner at Tofu House. 7 people could not be fit to a small table. So the waiters kept us waiting for at least 30 min just for a big table. We wondered why? Since the waiters could have put two small tables (one small table has four seats) to solve the issue. It did not make sense for Tofu House to come to this decision.
Warm tofu soup tasted so good in cold weather. These days the bay area turns cold pretty fast. The temperature gap between noon and night (or early morning) becomes bigger. A hearty meal was a good idea for the winter time (almost winter time). We 7 people were quite noisy. Fun conversations were here and there. I had not seen Chun-Chun and John for ages. It was nice to see them. Chun-Chun was having some eye issues. Hope she will be fine soon.Darren and Sophy brought a friend. The friend turned out being my junior in Elementary school (he was John's junior as well). I was happy to meet Fu-Shing people in the States. Janice was always a lovely conversation starter. We had a good 2 and a half hours meal time. After the dinner, 4 people came to my apartment for a game. Solomon called during the dinner time to apologize for missing the dinner. He was tied down by the work but he would join us directly for the game.
Sophy, Darren, and his friend were thinking to play the Settlers. When we were assembling tiles, we realized some tiles were missing. Maybe Totof put some tiles in the Cities and Knights box. So, we opened the Power Grid box and I started to explain the rules. We chose France map since it looked easy. (would it be really easy? you will see) At this time, Solomon had not showed up. So, we took time to explain the rules. If you want to know more on the rules, please see this post. Everyone was smart, so it just took me 10 min to go over the rules (my guests picked up the rules fast, proud of them).
Darren and Sophy were experienced. I recall Darren brought a black hurricane last time when we played United States map. This time, Darren picked up the black color again. It seemed like black was his color. After 10 min, Solomon showed up. He had not eaten yet. So he was sitting at the same table watching us play and eating his dinner. I could tell he wanted to try the game. So I offered him my seat after his meal. He picked up the knowledge fast. Power Grid was fun when the pace was not too slow. If a player played too slowly (by considering the consequences too long at a turn), the fun of the game would get cut dramatically. But, it was hard to balance the pace especially some beginners were involved. I saw my guests' learning curves. My guests were trying different strategies. Bidding part was easy to catch up. Deploying part was ok to catch up fast. But the budgeting part was sophisticated. The beauty of Power Grid was about budgeting and balancing your in and out capital. You learned practical strategies as the game moved on.
During the game, I saw my guests slowed down in order not to reach step 2. I saw Darren's friend and Sophy switched to clean energy power plants. I saw Solomon and Sophy competed for high efficiency power plants. This time the game played conservatively. The rival did not get bloody. In the game, everyone seemed to have a promising future. Hard to predict the winner. In the end, Sophy got the trophy. It was an impressive turnout. She planned well since step 2 from an observer's point of view. She told everyone the victory was a luck thing. Sophy was modest.
This time, we tried to control the play time. So, we ended the game around 12:40 am. A three hour game. Not bad.
