Last night we had my parents and sister over for dinner. Jenny's boyfriend Casey came later and once we could tear Dad away from the History Channel we played a couple of board games.

Banana Republic
This is a card game where you try to bribe some politicians and get the most votes. The winner becomes the president of the republic. You can also play killer cards on a stack and try to off an elector so no one gets the vote. Up until last night, Mom had never lost this game. Here are the final votes:

66 Diane
24 Casey
18 Jim
0 Sara
0 Danny

Tikal
Tikal is a tile-placing, piece-moving, board-exploring, treasure-collecting kind of game. It won the Spiel des Jahres in 1999. Casey jumped to an early lead and spent his time building up a temple to level 10, which I promptly took over and put a guard on, giving me those points for the rest of the game. Then he tried to poach two of Jenny's temples, which she had built up to 8 and 9 repectively, but she put a guard on those and stranded his players. Nice work, Jenny. Final scores:
172 Danny
112 Jenny
106 Casey