The Final Frontier

Since bagging a copy of the much sought-after Alien Frontiers, I've played a two player and a three player game, neither of which have totally wowed me or the other players involved. There seems to be a very slow build-up, while the first few colonies are laid, and the area benefits taken. Then, just as players players start jostling for majority on the map, and things begin to get interesting, the game ends.
Before I totally dismiss it as 'not for me', I wanted to play a full four-player game, and had heard of a place where I would find no shortage of willing participants. And so tonight, for the good of Games Night News, I girded my loins, and set out for the wilder, hairier shores of geekdom, the Area 51 monday night games club.
It is a fairly daunting place - I'm well out of my comfort zone among the hard-core geeks, and always spend the first 20 minutes fighting a strong urge to run.
Tonight this urge was more powerful still with the knowledge that I could escape to the warm comfort of Sam's for a four-player game of London; but I had made my decision, and was determined to stick it out.
After 10 minutes of looking over people's shoulders, watching them play all manner of terrifying-looking games ("More sex demon acolytes!" one woman cried as I hurried away), a game of Billabong (Australian rules draughts, as far as I could tell) ended, leaving three people looking for something to play, and I stepped in brandishing the box.
The four of us were Becky (a doctor), John (a german student at Manchester) and Luke (a physics student at Cardiff), with me teaching the rules, and within ten minutes we were off and running; AF remains one of the most straightforward games to teach.
So how was the fabled four-player game?
Well, as predicted there was much more jockeying for majority on the board, from early on. There was also a lot of semi-aggressive card-play, something we had largely ignored in previous games. It is always a fairly tight game in terms of points, but Becky got an early lead, and once she'd nicked my Alien Monument and had a full compliment of ships, her win was assured, with 11 points. I came second with 7, and I can't remember how the other two placed.
Everyone seemed to like it, especially Luke, who pronounced it more fun than Catan, but I'm afraid I remain ambivalent. It's too finicky, there's loads of chin-scratching about what to do with your dice and cards; the cards can have powerful effects on the colonies, but only really once the colonies are down there, and the pacing just feels . . . off to me.
There's a real vogue at the moment for games where you roll your dice and then decide what to do with them, whereas in a game like Stone Age, you decide what you're going to do, and then roll the dice - much simpler, and in the end, more fun.

Still, I did what I set out to do; I made it to Shell City, I rode the Hasselhoff - I'm not in any great hurry to return, but ohh my god Ascending Empires on the next table looked like so much fun - someone's going to have to get it or I might have to go back there!!