Friday 29 April 2011

Gods and dwarves

An extra Thursday games evening was quickly arranged during the day and four happy gamers found their way to Sam’s home for a supplemental to the usual Tuesday meet – me, Sam, Hannah and Adam. Joe was otherwise engaged, but like a boy with his face pressed against the window of a toy shop, he texted during the evening for the occasional update.

It was an evening of new games, with Sam keen to try a rather attractively designed games Tsuro. This game of path-building across a 6x6 board was was quick and required a certain amount of forward planning, assuming no one crossed your path. The game simply requires the player to stay on the board as long as possible. We were a bit stumped as to what strategy there was, if any at all. Adam came away as the winner, with Sam in second and Hannah and Andrew joint third.

Then we played Ra, a new game for Hannah. But the rules are simple and clear, and even in the first round, we could see her making the sort of astute choices that a seasoned Ra-player would make, including picking up an auction track that contained three gold tiles. Adam used the power of the gods to good effect, and ended the game with lots of buildings. I had a long Nile, but it didn’t flood in the last epoch.

Hannah 40
Adam 38
Sam 33
Andrew 29

We ended on Saboteur, a game of gold mining with dwarves. It’s a fast moving game, and one that raises suspicions of your fellow player at every turn, since some of you are honest dwarves and one is an evil saboteur dwarf (decided randomly by drawing a card). We’d just begun the first round when Hannah asked how she’d know if she was a saboteur. By this we could then deduce she wasn’t, since the card has “Saboteur” written on it in big letters so we started again.

An attempt at a joke by Adam made Sam suspect that he was the saboteur, so he threw down some broken tools in Adam’s way to stop him. Adam replied in kind, trying to stop Sam, thus perfectly recreating the kind of bitter personal dynamics caused by mining for gold. As it turns out, no one at the end of that round was the saboteur! We should all have been friends.

As a game, it was okay. Perhaps it works better with more people and therefore more saboteurs, since if there’s just one (probably) then they’re fairly easy to spot. At the end of the third round, everyone counted up their gold, and Hannah had won again! She had six nuggets, compared to everyone else having five. At this point, there was a most ungallant insistence that Saboteur was non-Leaderboard, just to stop her running away with the season. Otherwise, the points ratio category will begin to resemble the Scottish Premier league, with Hannah being both Rangers and Celtic rolled into one.

The leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Sam1254.54.54
Adam1049.54.95
Andrew1248.54.04
Joe731.54.5
Hannah4246
Steve284
Quentin242

Wednesday 27 April 2011

Seven Up

A return to the regular Tuesday evening schedule was greeted by a bumper turnout. As well as this season’s regulars (me, Adam, Sam and Joe) Quentin, Hannah and Steve were able to attend. With so many players to accommodate, new potential games were considered. Quentin had brought Sherlock Holmes, and he tried the soft sell by telling us that it really wasn’t that good.

In the end, Quentin’s reverse psychology didn’t work and we chose I’m The Boss!, a game of wheeler dealing and backstabbing. The rules were explained by Joe, and we began tentatively but before long people were forcing their way into share deals by sending others away on sudden holidays. There was still a lot of confusion, though, and it wasn’t always clear who was needed for which deal. This is probably due to our inexperience. Nevertheless, we all ploughed merrily on until the end, where Hannah came out a clear winner, 4,000,000 points ahead of her nearest rival, Joe.

Hannah 35m
Joe 31m
Adam 30m
Andrew 26m
Quentin 19m
Sam 19m
Steve 10m

It had a mixed reception, with Sam not enjoying it that much, and Steve baffled for most of the game. I thought it had potential, and Joe’s wife laughed when she found out we were playing it, since apparently Joe’s been trying to get someone to play it for weeks.

Since it was only half past nine, another game was suggested. Seven Wonders was chosen. With seven players each player would only get to see each hand once, so any hopes of seeing a good card a second time around were futile.

Joe played an interesting game, building no natural resources at all. This meant he couldn’t finish his Statue of Zeus, but he made up for it with a wide selection of blue buildings. I didn’t bother with the military at all, hoping the minus six points I got for being a hippy would be balanced out elsewhere. As the third round began, so the lack of resources around the table began to tell, as several players struggled to build anything at all. As the points were totted up, it was Steve who’d won, again proving that diversification is a winning strategy as he picked up points in each category, while not winning any outright. Hannah came second by the slimmest of margins – and she too didn’t win any category.

Steve 55
Hannah 54
Sam 50
Andrew 47
Adam 46
Joe 40
Quentin 36

A great night for Hannah, as she came first and second on a night with seven players, and therefore she picked up lots of points and she glides into first place with her points ratio which I think is the highest we’ve seen. Not such a great night for Quentin.

And at least the Leaderboard is looking a bit fuller now.

The leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Sam1044.54.45
Andrew1040.54.05
Adam836.54.56
Joe731.54.5
Hannah2136.5
Steve284
Quentin242

Friday 22 April 2011

"Your purples are fine," the doctor said

The gap between an early games evening (brought forward to Monday) and a late one (put back to Thursday) is long indeed, so it was no surprise to see the four regulars (myself, Sam, Joe and Adam) eagerly arriving at Chez Joe for some table-top action.

First up was Citadel. Since it was the first time since Stabcon that we’d played it, there was a quick run through of the rules before we launched ourselves into a world of medieval town planning in the face of a constantly shifting monarchy and a shockingly high crime rate of thefts and murders.

It’s a game that encourages suspicion and double-crossing. The Architect, for some reason, was particularly picked upon by thieves, while the assassin roamed unchecked. Meanwhile, Sam was building a wide and varied selection of buildings, and quickly became the person to attack. Of course, he then took defensive measures to protect his lead. In the last round Adam used a warlord to take out one of my buildings, thus giving him second spot.

Sam 36
Adam 26
Andrew 22
Joe 19

Citadel had been suggested by Joe as a quick opening game, but it proved to be surprisingly lengthy, taking a little over an hour for the game to end. Not to be deterred, though, we chose Tinners’ Trail as the next game. Adam was quickly told the rules, but perhaps not quickly enough judging by how quickly he grew accustomed to them.

I chose to score big in round one, and then not score at all in round two. That was my strategy, but it failed in the face of three other more measured approaches. With no capital to buy more mines in round two, I was left behind in terms of mining capacity in rounds three and four. Adam, meanwhile, took to the game like a duck to water and soon became Cornwall’s own Rockefeller with six mines to call upon in the last round.

The tensest moment of the game, though, concerned the track used to decide whose go it was. Joe said that the counters moved up to the highest available space and that’s how we played it before, whereas Sam and I expressed surprise since we hadn’t played it like that in our first game at all: instead everyone kept to their original track. Joe firmly insisted we had, sparking a brief debate about how we'd played it before. But when Joe went to the toilet a quick conflab between me and Sam confirmed our original memories: we hadn’t played like that. We didn’t press the matter though, since even if we had played it our way (which, according to Joe, we hadn’t) we were wrong, and the rule book was quite clear on this. This controversy was perhaps the closest that our little games night has come to fisticuffs, but any unpleasantness was avoided by simply not mentioning it again and watching Adam win while the rest of us tussled for the minor positions.

Adam 81
Joe 76
Sam 76
Andrew 73

So now it was eleven o'clock: time for Sam to head back to get enough sleep in order to face his two young sons the next morning. But Joe had other ideas. He suggested a new game: Poison by Reiner Knizia. Just the mention of that name is enough to make grown men happily submit to sleep deprivation, and Sam is no exception. He agreed to a brief one-round taster but after the first round Joe just happened to mention that a full game would last only another three rounds. Sam was already hooked and saw out the game to the end.

In this card game, picking up cards and scoring points is bad but if you really have to pick them up, then it helps to specialise in picking up one particular colour so if you had the most, they wouldn’t count against you. It’s this kind of cunning twist that we expect from Reiner Knizia, and this is where this post's title came from. At the end of one close round, I reassured Joe that "your purples are fine," by which I meant: he had the most purple cards. These innocent words were twisted such that I appeared to be talking about Joe's plums, and much hilarity ensued.

Once the laughter had died away, Joe mentioned that, according to the internet, there didn’t seem to be any strategy. But having already played a few rounds against his super-intelligent children, Joe clearly had an advantage against us newbies. Adam made the early running, but was undone when his strategy suddenly stopped working in round four. So much so, that it pushed him from first to last! Sam and myself, meanwhile, managed to erase the humiliation of our first round with a clean zero-point last round, putting us in joint second.

Joe 23
Andrew 27
Sam 27
Adam 32

This doesn't change the Leaderboard in terms of points scored but, as usual, I already find myself drifting to the back of the pack regarding points ratio: in this category only 0.06 of a point separate first from third.

The Leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Sam837.54.69
Andrew832.54.06
Adam628.54.75
Joe523.54.7

Thursday 21 April 2011

New Additions

Nurse! Gas and air!

I can't keep up with Joe's prolific collection but yesterday I found myself in the Orc's Nest (we just don't help ourselves with these shop names, do we?) and managed throw a large amount of cash in the shop assistant's delighted face to purchase Troyes (a Joe recommendation, so he'll be paying me cost if I don't like it) where gamers "recreate four centuries of history in this famous city" - dunno much else -



















and At The Gates Of Loyang, a Uwe Rosenberg creation that has lovely looking meeples in it:




















Not that I bought it for the meeples; obviously the intracacies of Chinese peasant culture was the selling point for me. In Area 51 they say the worse the artwork is on the box, the better the game - so Loyang should be a cracker. The lady on the front looks like she's just heard the lewdest joke imaginable about that leek and turnip arrangement.

Anyway, two additions to our growing brood, and what with Tigris and Euphrates and others in the wings, maybe Adam and Andrew need to hold Joe and I back before this game-playing hobby becomes this game-collecting obsession...


Tuesday 12 April 2011

The perils of inter-railing across Europe twice in one evening

Our usual Tuesday night shenanigans were re-arranged for Monday due to prior commitments and with Joe unable to make it, there were three of us clustered around Sam’s kitchen table like moths around some board games. Ticket to Ride was chosen, since Adam was attracted to the box’s newness.

The game progressed unremarkably, with Adam making good progress, including picking up the 21-point rail link, and looking good for the win. Sam chose to pick up extra routes mid-game: a decision that was to prove costly. Then we realised that Adam was down to a handful of carriages, and the game would end soon. This left Sam in an appalling position, with a number of unfinished projects. I, however, was still confident of a solid second place.

Then came the revelation. Sam’s terrible score was no surprise, but only hours after the golfer McIlroy collapsed in the last few holes of the US Masters, similarly Adam had made important errors in calculating his final moves. First, he was missing a link for one of his routes, which knocked him back. And the longest route was snatched away from him by me by one link. Add on to this the scores from unused stations, and my victory looks almost comfortable.

Andrew 104
Adam 89
Sam 28

Since this game had been finished quickly, a second game was suggested. Adam and Sam were keen to erase the memory of past mistakes, and so they played a much tighter game. Meanwhile, I went for a crazy, romantic attempt at getting two of the longest short routes and the Edinburgh to Athens trip as well. In the end, I didn’t even get across the English Channel. Or, in fact, as far as the Benelux countries. In a game full of complaining over unwelcome cards, Sam fretted about Adam’s in-depth knowledge of the longest routes, but still managed to fulfil all his commitments this time.

Adam 125
Sam 106
Andrew 60

A game of Galaxy Truckers had also been suggested at the start of the evening and since it was still only 9.45, a shortened version (rounds two and three only) became the last game of the evening. Sam is an old hand at this, and cruised to an easy win, while I was amazed that my ramshackle ship made it to the end of the game at all. Adam was slightly undone by building a ship bristling with double engines and lasers, but a lack of batteries to power them. As such, he drifted further and further behind in round three.

Sam 74
Adam 57
Andrew 30

So, despite the early promise, it wasn’t the evening I had hoped for. I had rashly said I would write up the notes for the blog after I’d taken first place in the opening game. And now I have to write about me coming last twice.

The leaderboard...


PlayedPointsRatio
Sam5204
Andrew5193.8
Adam3134.3
Joe284

Wednesday 6 April 2011

WALLACE DESIGNS EASY GAME SHOCK

The planets must have been in some funny positions because despite the lure of a completely blank leaderboard, a mere three gamers sat around the table last night - Joe, Andrew and Sam (me). Adam was playing football, Quent job-swotting and Jonny looking for a missing cat.

My mooting of The War on Terror was greeted with a round of indifference - maybe I should have worn the balaclava - and instead we set up Joe's new purchase - Martin Wallace's Tinner's Trail. As entertainingly explained on the box (along with honest nods to games he had purloined mechanics from) the game was closely based - as close as any game can be without drowning in rules (I'm looking at you, High Frontier!) - on the tin and copper-mining in 1800's Cornwall. Each player is basically prospecting for the resources in question and contending with fluctuating sales prices and a shitload of water in the mines.

The game is made up of four rounds and in each round players use up a limited (ten?) amount of spaces on the time track, building a mine taking up two spaces, pumping out water taking one space, and so on. In WallaceWorld boats and trains not only improve the production levels of your mine, they also dry it out a bit too, so these were popular. Other tools at your disposal are miners - always handy - and adits, draining systems that link between mines and both increase the mine's capacity and decrease it's water levels.

Despite Stanley's repeated requests for me to go up and sing him the dinosaur song, I managed to get off to a decent start by grabbing a slightly less damp mine than most and removing all of the water. I didn't get around to actually removing any copper or tin though, so Joe and Andrew made the early running on the scores; trading their hard-dug cash in for investments, the things that actually win or lose you the game after round four.

Joe was aditting like crazy, not building very many mines, while Andrew and I prospected a bit more and spread our mines across the board. After round two I reaped some cash in and made the first big investment, but round three saw Joe the most productive miner as his adits had their moment in the underground sun. Come round four we were all in the money, but Joe had left an unoccupied mine looking very attractive and after a bidding war that took the price up to record levels I swooped in to grab the tin and copper and make a third big investment, enough to cement first place:

Sam 139
Joe 107
Andrew 76

We all thought this game was great - very nice looking, great mechanics, and enough interaction to keep things interesting without feeling like you're in a war. And not too long, either! Well done, Wallace.

We rounded the evening off with a game of Roll Through the Ages. At this point Joe (little Joe) decided to wake up again and I spent a bit of time going up and down the stairs to soothe him to sleep. However I can't pin my woeful performance on him this time; changing strategy mid-game from getting-developments-as-quick-as-possible to getting-loads-of-workers-who-don't-do-much did for me. Andrew and Joe contested this one closely, both of them building lots of cities and taking the odd disaster minus-point in order to push their developments on. Andrew took first place though, with his Empire scoring a whopping 15 points for him:

Andrew 35
Joe 29
Sam 15

Leaderboard:

The two results above mean the three of us stand, like football managers who can only manage a draw when a win was vital, level-pegging on the leaderboard. Early days yet though. And maybe next week I can play a whole game without infant interference!

The (world's most boring) Leaderboard...


PlayedPointsRatio
Joe284
Andrew284
Sam284