Once around the kitchen table in eight millenia

Six gamers gathered in the familiar surroundings of Sam’s kitchen for this week’s games night. A night that would encompass building step pyramids, the growth of London and colonizing new planets.

We split into two groups of three players with Sam, Jonny and Quentin giving themselves the task of rebuilding London after the Great Fire in Martin Wallace’s London. Meanwhile, I was up against leaderboard high-fliers Adam and Joe as we set up Alien Frontier: the game of space exploration according to the rules of Yahtzee.

Adam was new to the game, but quickly built up a fleet of ships (ie, dice) to expand his victorious empire. Joe could’ve stopped him, but he forgot he had a plasma cannon. Meanwhile, I underused my cards and played an unfocused game. The most fun was inventing advertising slogans for the various parts of the planet ("Come to the Heinlein Plains: Where the trading is always... one to one"), and describing them in the dulcet tones of a sales assistant ("Is this your first time at the Asimov Crater, sir?").

After the game ended, there was a brief autopsy on the game, and we found it lacking. It seemed to be all about the mechanism, and little to do with interaction. I wondered if it wasn’t simply too short. By the time all of the areas of the planet are colonised, there’s only a short period of battling for supremacy before the game ends. Joe decided it could go in his next trade, and it’s hard to disagree.

Adam 11
Joe 8
Andrew 7

Since, by this time, London was still only in the 1800s we began a game of Roll Through The Ages. Thinking back, we should’ve steered clear of another dice game after "Mr Boxcars" won at Alien Frontier, but instead we dug it out of the games cupboard and set up the game.

Adam, true to his laissez-faire attitude to the plague in Notre Dame, was adept at rolling pestilence, hitting myself and Joe. Mostly myself after Joe invented medicine while I discovered quarrying. Apart from that, my tactic mostly relied on expecting Adam’s luck with the dice to run out any second now. This didn’t happen. Joe had almost no food for most of the game, but still managed to come second.

Adam 35
Joe 17
Andrew 11

By now London had finally reached the twentieth century and the evening came to an end. I’ll leave one of them to write up their adventures in the big smoke before I add the leaderboard.

GNN Reports: On the other side of the table Quentin and Jonny were discovering what it's like to experience a game without Joe around to explain it properly. I covered the rules as best I could without really clarifying the theme very well. Then I jumbled up the decks during my 'example' hand and subsequently we had to replay the first round...

Anyway, despite some confusion over building and running cities, we managed to play the game and everyone got the hang of managing poverty so well we finished with equal points. But Jonny hadn't generated a lot of victory cards in his cities, and Quentin had been hampered by his card options in terms of making cash, and was left with three unpaid loans. Final scores:

Sam 65
Quentin 45
Jonny 43

A great result for me, but I'm sure at least partly down to my shortcomings as a game guide! Nevertheless both Jonny and Quent seemed to enjoy it so hopefully it'll feature again soon.

As for the leaderboard, such is the curious nature of the Q system, despite Adam coming first twice and Joe coming second twice, both see their points ratio dip slightly.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	7	38.5	5.5
Joe	7	28.5	4.07
Sam	6	24.5	4.08
Andrew	7	20.5	2.9
Jonny	3	13	4.3
Steve	3	9.5	3.16
Quentin	1	4	4
Matilda	1	1.5	1.5

By the way, Adam did offer to have Roll Through The Ages as a non-leaderboard game. And he said this after he'd won which was very gallant of him. But when I saw it actually lowered his point ratio, I put it back in.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention Jonny's spicy nuts!