Game night at the Taco house part 2

Turns out that Dragon’s Lair here in Austin has a great many of the games suggested by Stephen Baldwin (as described earlier). We were greatly and pleasently surprised to see the famed Setlers of Catan there, in addition to the many variants on it.

However, and this saddened us greatly, a minimum of three players are required. And the same went for the also highly touted Niagara. So very sad. Sometimes we can only round up a few tacos for games. So we asked a very helpful person there, (was his name Mike?), and he showed us — after lamenting that there is a great scarcity of 2-player games — a few that were good.

Lunch Money looked like fun — “A beer and pretzels sort of game”, said our guide — but 20 bucks for a throw-away card game seemed a bit much for us. The Lord of the Rings game looked interesting — “a collaborative game where the players work together against the game” — but we ultimately passed on it. And finally, we landed on Carcassonne (the original). Lots of fun, easy to learn, and takes about a half-hour to play.

The deal is you lay down tiles strategically and make a land-grab, all the while competing with your opponent(s) to make cities, roads, and cloisters. We appear to be King of the Clositers (picking up 4-5 of the 6 cloister tiles a game), thus creating Taco University on a regular basis. The Tacos played 4 games of it last night, and it was fun and different at every turn.

Btw, we asked Mike for his ultimate game recommendation (which, alas, was a minimum three player game, we think), and it is Betrayal at House on the Hill.