Forged in Europe

Tuesday's GNN was a lightly-attended affair, possibly with the forthcoming Novocon affecting people's plans. Adam T arrived at my house early enough to watch me making a mess in the kitchen as I burnt some chicken for the family. Then, after tea was consumed, others arrived: Laura then Martin joined Adam in the front room until the decks were clear enough to game on them. We began with Adam's new library addition, Furnace. 

Martin prepares scathing BGG commentary

We are industrialists bidding for factories (cards) which, once that's resolved, we run the factories which either give us resources of coal/metal/oil and/or convert said resources (- oil, mostly) into cash, which is points. The bidding system is canny: everyone has bidding chips numbered 1-4 and you can't bid on any factory with the same colour chip (ie, you've already bid on it) or the same number. 

When the bidding is done, the highest bidder gets the factory but any outbid chips pick up compensation in the form of the precious resources: meaning you often want to be outbid in one factory in order to run another. 

Then everyone runs their factories and turns base metal into gold. In round one (of four) this is pretty straightforward, but as the cards multiply the cognitive load escalates, leading to brow-furrowing, dark muttering and do-overs. Here's Adam's factories on the final round:

Holy industrialisation

It's not a terribly long game at all, but whether the factory fun lived up to the bidding brevity; the jury was out on that (except for Martin, who was like a reverse Henry Fonda trying to get the accused in for a life stretch). Despite his chagrin, however, he still did well enough. With the fewest factories, I was the only one completely certain of my score. A shame it wasn't a good one.

Martin 78 'give or take five'

Adam 68 'couldn't do the last step'

Sam 54

Laura 43 'but I'm not really sure'

After a brief post-mortem we moved on to a palette-cleanser in Gang of Dice; new to Laura but not exactly tricky to pick up. 

A happier Martin

The game was chiefly noted for Martin's speedy odds calculations and exhortations that everyone else risk everything to beat him. I won only two rounds in the entire game, I think Laura three or four. Adam may not have won as many as Martin, but he chose his moments well, ending with a vast stack of chips.

A happier Adam

Adam 64

Martin 45

Laura 33

Sam 20

Then Laura left to recharge her batteries for the weekend. We didn't need much debate to settle on Babylonia as our next conquest, with Adam and I agreeing before a tile had been placed that we needed to 'stop Martin'. It was a game of some quick ziggurat action as both my opponents claimed bonus tiles early on - Martin would have had a third had I not stopped him with my pesky farmers.

caption here, ideally

We created an odd division of thirds across the board with Adam and Martin largely playing in front of themselves and me occupying the middle space. Despite my ziggurat chicanery, Martin established an early lead and built on it as Adam ruminated into his beard and I into the room, only slightly louder. 

Although his point scoring dwindled somewhat and we hauled him back, our resident Babylonian had done enough to claim yet another win in this devious game. 

Martin 145

Sam 133

Adam 106

We moved onto Sea Salt & Paper. 

revenge

I eschewed my habit of calling stop in favour of some last-chances, helped by a couple of strong scores early in the rounds. We all did some dastardly sharking and after 20 minutes Martin was poised on 27 points with me on 21 and Adam 16. I pulled off a dramatic - and slightly spawny - win with a 15 point haul to propel me over the line.

scores

And that was that! See some of you at the weekend - NOVOCON IS HERE!!!