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Finally had another day of face-to-face gaming back on the 17th (I’ve been bad about cat-herding lately). And while Patch couldn’t make it, everyone else did, so we had four for a day of some shorter games.

Up first was the usual Circus Maximus. With a 2+ year gap, we had to re-learn a few things again, and there were some more pre-game questions on heavy chariots and the such. With four of us, everyone had a “speedy” team and a “heavy” team (my split was possibly the most modest, since my ‘speedster’ wasn’t entirely optimized that way; also, I had fairly low endurance on both teams—not helped by the die rolls).

On turn 2, Mark opened the demolition derby with three attacks on two different teams. This ended with all three chariots wrecking as they failed rolls after getting their wheels damaged. Mark’s red chariot and Jason’s orange chariot ended up landing on the same space, and the red driver and Dave’s brown driver cut themselves free and made it over the wall, with the orange driver being dragged to death.

Things were somewhat more sedate after that, though Dave’s white team and Mark’s Blue team both ended up wrecking after about a lap (only white’s driver made it to safety). Of the three teams left, Jason’s yellow team was in a fairly good lead, though movement finally started working out for me and my purple team started narrowing the gap with some good cornering.

Headed into the final lap, my green team got an early move, and managed to come alongside yellow. I’d forgotten I had taken a heavy chariot, so what started as a couple attacks just to try and scrub down his top speed a bit turned into a serious ram from my chariot. His horses got injured, slowing him a bit, and then the wheel gave out in the final turn, just leaving my two teams to finish.

Going into the final straightaway. Orange (Jason) technically finished first, but died two laps earlier.

After that, we tried out a game Dave had gotten a while ago, but had yet to play: Braggart. It’s basically adventurer Mad-Libs. You’re all in the tavern trying to impress the audience with your tales of derring-do enough to get some tips for drinking money.

It’s simple, but took us a while to wrap our heads around what was wanted. You get cards that are the elements of a boast, and each round you either boast (put cards down), or go off to get more cards. The person with the best boast keeps all his cards for scoring, everyone else picks one card from their boast to keep for scoring. There’s complications with special actions from there, but that’s the essence.

Of course, as with Mad-Libs, the boasts can be fairly hilarious. Jason had a good round or two at the beginning, and that carried him through to a fairly comfortable lead at the finish (which is when the deck of cards runs out). I did okay all the way through and was a couple points behind Dave’s second place. Mark had some aggressive plays near the middle, but it didn’t really pan out for him, and he was in fourth.

I certainly hope to see it again, as it was a fairly fun game with a bit of thinking. I think all of us are going to need some defensive driving lessons the next time Circus Maximus hits the table though.