Friday 21 August 2015

Quantums of Solace

On Thursday Andrew can usually be relied upon to make his way north for a game or three. But having played on Monday and Tuesday he was gamed out. Ian - spared Monday - was still tempted though, and - having played a couple of games of Age of War earlier with the boys (I won 9-8-7, then they thrashed me 17-8 playing as a team)- we assembled around a game of Quantum at half past eight.

 dangerous

The game began in exploratory fashion as Ian and I spread our cubes around the board, warily eying each other. Then like predatory bullfighters chucking dice around, we struck. A flurry of blows and the game ended with me beating Ian to the punch by a solitary cube - helped by Warlike, which meant if I destroyed one of Ian's ships I got an extra action... We'd enjoyed it so much - and finished so quickly - we played again, and this time it was to be something of an epic. Ian went on the offensive from the start, and pummelled me against the cosmic ropes until he'd established a 4-2 lead.

I came back into it courtesy of two things - I had a card that bumped my research up by two every turn, and having reached six research and placed a cube I picked up Warlike again and grabbed an Aggression card, allowing me to move my dominance up to six and place a second cube. It was beautiful, if somewhat fortunate.

Battle continued though with the tide of aggression swinging to and fro. And with us both down to one cube left I was again smiled upon by fate as with my dominance and research at four again, another Aggression card popped up. I increased my research to six, and grabbed the Aggression card to increase my dominance and finish the game (I appreciate if you've not played Quantum this is utter gibberish, sorry) (why haven't you played Quantum?!?) It was a slightly underwhelming end to an epic hour-long battle that's probably my favourite game of Quantum so far... basically whilst I had appalling luck with the dice rolls (almost constantly rolling sixes) the luck with the cards was the opposite. Great game.

tactical

We needed something lighter after that so bashed out a quick game of Hey That's My Fish, which Ian had never played before. It was a close finish:

Sam 47
Ian 43

Then we moved onto Take It Easy, supposedly to end the night. Ian's calling was Discworld novels - impressively sustained throughout - and I kept up the literary theme with Moomin characters. We both pulled great scores in round one and decent ones in round two, but my decent form in Take It Easy stayed intact:

Sam 389
Ian 248

We still had a little beer left though, so we ended with a game of Love Letter. I came back from 2-1 down to force a decider! But you know Ian - he's like the Darth Vader of the Love Letter world:

Ian - 3 cubes
Sam - 2 cubes

5 comments:

  1. Cheers Sam, great games. That two games of Quantum, on the same map, can play out that differently is one of the reasons why I like it so much.

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  2. Sounds like a good evening. I was in bed before your first game of Quantum, though.

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  3. The second game of Quantum was awesome. After Ian's opening salvo we pretty much spent the hour fighting each other, almost placing cubes as an afterthought when it occurred to us we could manage it. The fact I got my dominance up to four twice despite losing most of the battles tells the tale of how combative the game was. It didn't feel fair on Ian to end it the way I did, but as Joe Mantell might say, "It's Quantum"

    Sally as back before Ian arrived in the end. I thought we might tempt her into a little space battle but her sixth sense must have kicked in as she vanished upstairs.

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  4. Sounds like it was a fun evening. Sorry I couldn't make, I would have liked to play Quantum. We are still due a rematch after my false win last time.

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  5. I've just discovered there's an expansion called The Void - it's a board tile with no planet on and for every ship you have on it at the start of your turn you get +1 research. I'm not normally an expansions guy (save Waterdeep admittedly) but it sounds like an unobtrusive and seamless potential addition. I've ordered it so we can give it a whirl.

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