escaping the factory...

yesterday was scheduled to be rio grande games factory manager, but unfortunately i felt that between a long day of work followed by that sport of the gods (why, yes, i am referring to bowling!), i knew that starting factory manager around 10 pm would mean another long haul night of games...

...not that there's anything wrong with that. but after gaming late every night all last weekend, i opted for something lighter and easier:

cartagena? yeah, that'll do.

the game takes it's inspiration from the 1672 jailbreak of pirates from the prison-fortress in cartagena, colombia.  the game uses cards to move pirate meeples through a passage from the prison to a sloop waiting to set sail.  the players objective is be the first to move all six meeples to the sloop.

playing this time are ed, sarah, and i! 

since the battery on my camera died, i had to rely upon the cell for pics.  i know the quality is "meh", but that really is ed's face!

the rules are pretty simple.  use the cards in your hand to move your pirate meeples to the next open space matching the symbol on the card (bottle of rum, cutlass, tricorn, jolly roger, jail keys, and flintlock pistol).  if the closest symbol has a pirate on it, you can leapfrog the symbol and place yours on the next open one.  

to get more cards, you can fall back to the last occupied symbol.  if there is one pirate there, you get to draw one new card.  if there are two pirates there, you get to draw two cards!  a symbol can never hold more than three pirates.  each turn every player gets to take three actions to move their pirates or collect new cards.  

smart cookies that they are, both ed and sarah picked up on the rules quickly.  

but in the end, they were just a bit short as i moved the last three of my pirate meeples into the sloop in one go, but they did have some constructive criticism about my playing style:

 of course that could have been the pabst talking...

today's game?  dominion.