Games night arrived again, and so did the gamers. Adam T was first to materialise and chatted with Sally whilst I freshened up and bought beer and Quavers. Then Martin, Joe, Adam H and Ian all came through the door and we got cracking, kicking things off with a six-player Phantom Ink.
Adam T and I teamed with Joe (our happy medium) and Adam H and Ian were ethereally clued-to by Martin. The secret word, unbeknownst to us, was Helicopter. We asked Joe would would happen if you buried it for a year, and he replied with SYC, which we figured to be sycamore. But Ian and Adam H figured it too, and Adam T's eureka moment prompted them to guess, knowing already that the study of whatever the word was began with AER. They jumped in ahead of us and guessed correctly, ending the game after about five minutes!
We split into threes with Martin, Adam T and Joe all keen to wrestle with Carl Chudyk's cards-with-a-billion-uses battle of Aegean Sea. I introduced Ian and Adam to World Wonders, with its delightful wooden bits.
In World Wonders, we're buying buildings each round - and occasionally, wonders as well - and trying to surround them on our board; surrounded building being worth points. Connecting to natural resources is also points, and so is the lowest-value resource on your player board, in a mildly Knizian twist. We found that the flexible towers were at a premium, and unsurprisingly Adam regularly bought what I wanted from market. Ian began fretting that he was going to be last, despite the alluring cluster of wonders he'd built on his board.
We wrapped up World Wonders to find to nobody's shock that Adam had won:
Adam 36
Sam 33
Ian 32
And began playing Misfits, which I didn't realise Adam hadn't played yet. He kicked things off by placing a column in the middle of the table, and I thought this wouldn't last long. But it did.
After about 6 minutes though we were running out of options, and someone was going to take the fall. That someone turned out to be me when I rejected the idea of placing my last cube and tried to shed a column, with catastrophic results, The entire thing fell, including the base, and Ian started a new tower from scratch:
Which despite our best efforts at sabotaging him, Adam won in short order. And, after Martin accused Joe of being a filcher and he turned to beam radiantly at me, unfortunately too briefly for me to get a photo, Aegean Sea finished at the same time!
Joe 13
Martin 10
Adam 6
Who knows what occurred, or if it'll ever make the table again. Everyone seemed happy to experience it though. New groups assembled with with Joe leading the Adams off to play Robo Trick and Martin cajoling Ian and I to play Armadora, possibly the ugliest game I have ever seen, with some artwork that is so generic it's almost not, and an everything-dipped-in-honey glossy finish. This photo sadly fails to capture the dazzling sheen whenever any light caught the surface.
But the game itself is dickish fun. There is a shared board with a bunch of gold scattered around it. On our turn we can either place one of our tiles somewhere on the board, or place two 'palisades' (wooden bits) that divide the board into smaller territories, with the caveat that no territory can be smaller than four squares.
Although our tiles have varying number values (most are ones, but there are 2's, 3's and a 4) and they are placed face-down, the palisades are what really make the game spicy, as we all try to cordon each other's tiles off from the juicy gold. When there's nothing left to place all is revealed and the player/s with the highest tile value in each region claim the gold. I'd ducked out of a couple of battles in one part of the board, and it turned out well for me, as Martin snagged two big areas from Ian:
Sam 19
Martin 18
Ian 3
Meantime Robo-Trick was still going and unfortunately I cannot illuminate what was happening, as I've never played it and was distracted by Armadora. But we had a couple of cracks at Accuse! in the meantime...
The first one I ended too soon by taking a bit of a wild guess, holding two characters in my hand making me somewhat overoptimistic. There wasn't enough info for either Ian or Martin to subsequently figure out the murder, but we played again and this time Martin ended things, but found his accusations unfounded. I was next to go and took my first win of a game I am pretty shite at.
Robo Trick finished as well with the happy filcher taking another win!
Joe 2
Adam H 0
Adam T -7
And with a bit of a drive ahead of him, Adam T bade his farewells and left the five of us to play MLEM, the bonkers luck-pushing cats-in-space area-control and moons game.
Ian set off for the various moons (moon bonus) as Martin and I raced for the planets (planet bonus) and Joe's previous strategy of going for Deep Space at every opportunity was tweaked to just doing so now and again. Adam played shrewdly, as one might expect, but found now and again that shrewdness and dice do not make good bedfellows. After a lot of dice-chucking and several rocket explosions, I chickened out of the active mission just in time - ka-boom - and ended the game by placing my last cat.
Sam 32
Joe 24
Adam 20
Ian 15
Martin 10
And that was that! Thanks all, it was golden.
A very fun night. Aegean Sea was utterly befuddling. I can't decide whether Chudyk has gone too far this time - but I'd happily revisit it with Martin and Adam now that I've taken the first steps...
ReplyDeleteRobotrick was as nuts as ever - I foresee Adam T becoming very good at it now he's experienced its robotic quirks. In any case it was a close game, with all three of us in contention. As Adam H pointed out, it's sometimes worth (assuming you have a choice) not taking a meagre points card in favour of taking a penalty if that sticks your opponents with bigger penalties.
MLEM was more fun now that I chose not to just die trying to reach deep space each time - but there was a round where the ship nearly made it after I'd bailed; not sure I could have coped with that... thanks all, and Sam for host/blogging.