Canal knowledge

The last week of the season, and it was the core four once again who braved the tediously biting winds to gather round a warm table at Joe's place.

We chose Canal Mania as our main game. Since we were all new to it, it seemed like a fair way to round off the season. It's a little bit Railways Of The World, and a dash of Ticket To Ride, with a hint of Brass thrown in for good measure.

First, you pick up contracts for routes and you play cards in order to build them (a la Ticket To Ride). You then ship goods cubes around the network (hence the Railways of the World reference) and there are lots of fiddly rules that don't make much sense and are easy to forget (a bit like Brass).

Sam's green ship glares at a cube

Perhaps its similarity to other games was Joe's undoing, as he began with the very RotW-style tactic of finding a corner to himself and trying to exploit it. But he did not realise that using other people's networks is not a last resort as it is in RotW, but is a necessary way to score points. He was soon in last place and found himself falling further behind as the game went on.

Sam in 2nd (green) and me 3rd (black) with Joe (red) off in the distance

Adam did well. In retrospect, that was to be expected: if you mix together three games that Adam's good at, you get another game that Adam's good at. Sam looked ill and confused for most of the first half of the game but once Adam was far enough in the lead, he started combining his network with Adams to claw his way into second place.

Adam 68
Sam 57 (wins on tie breaker)
Andrew 57
Joe 38

After this, we chose Call To Glory as a nice way to round off the evening. I wrote about how I thought this would be a different game with two players, and so it was. Certainly, the games were much shorter, meaning that holding onto to your hand was a bad idea. It seemed better to put your cards down quickly and see if anyone would beat you before all nine suits were showing and the game was over. In the end, it was Sam who ruled the roost, with the previous Shogun (me) reduced to the status of a bum. Oh the humiliation!

Sam 106
Adam 84
Joe 72
Andrew 67

Which leads us to the final scores. On the form table, Sam just falls one result short of the perfect five, but his end-of-season form is impressive. Adam rises to second after being stuck mid-table for some months.

						Points
Sam	1	2	1	1	1	6
Adam	2	1	2	2	3	10
Steve	4	2	1	1	2	10
Hannah	4	1	1	2	3	11
Anja	2	3	4	2	1	12
Will	1	1	2	5	5	14
Andrew	4	3	3	3	2	15
Joe	3	4	5	4	3	19
Jon	3	5	1	5	5	19
Quentin	1	5	5	5	5	21

And in the Division, it's been a topsy-turvy season, with both myself and Joe in pole position at one point. But as the season closes, we see that Sam wins on both Points and the Medal Table, but there is a new name engraved on the GNN Hall Of Fame, as Anja stakes her claim to immortality by taking Points Ratio with clear blue sky between her and second place.

On the Bracknell front, it was a close run thing but Chris just beats his rival James in terms of points, while James wins according to the medal table. Also, Chris takes the prize for most points scored in a season out of everyone: in the last three months, he has clocked up an impressive 1,799 points in all of his games.

Congrats to our glorious winners! And there's no end-of-season break for us hardy gamers. The whole thing starts all over again in seven days time!

Shared Glory

Due to unforeseen circumstances, a Thursday night gaming possibility opened up and I sent the clarion call across the rooftops of Bristol; stirring the hearts of men and womenfolk alike, rousing them from their screens and up, out, into the rainy night, to make their way through the darkened streets on a pilgrimage that no God recognises, but a journey that nonetheless ends in the human heart.

At least I imagined it something like that, but in reality everyone was too busy apart from Andrew, so we ate kettle chips and drank whisky while bumping up the 2-player leaderboard stats. 

First to the table was Lords of Waterdeep, a big hit with GNN last year in both Bristol and Bracknell. And as such it needs no introduction. Some games I play and love only to go off fairly rapidly (Dominion) while others are stayers (Tinner's Trail). Waterdeep is definitely the latter. Like any game you can play it too much but it survives the maths trade cull every time.

The threat of the sentient crisps was negated by the magic bowl

One thing I like about Waterdeep is the strategy/luck balance, with the former daintily fringed by the latter. Last time out I just couldn't get the quests my Lord wanted, this time they fell into my lap and as a result I outscored Andrew in the final count-up:

Sam 196

Andrew 179

With statue-placating and owl-bear domesticating in the bag, we moved on to a recent purchase of mine, Call to Glory. This game has a little of gin-rummy to it, but it's one of those where an extremely simple ruleset is abetted by some nice depth of play. The cards represent strata of Japanese society but the theme (though the cards are beautiful) is very light. It's all about collecting sets - but in this instance having a set is not necessarily a guarantee you'll finish the round with the set intact, because there are many of the same type of card so ownership of that particular stratum (from farmers to emporers) can change if and when an opponent gathers more of them than you do.

Three shoguns, all called Dirk

There's also a key aspect of which card to discard and when, exactly, do you play your sets? We both hoarded in the first round, played much more liberally in the second round, and struck some sort of balance in the third and final round (officially you play 4 rounds but we plumped for 3). In every event Andrew outscored me, however, pushing his results up each time as mine deteriorated. Final reckoning:

Andrew 191

Sam 128

It's a very nice game and one we both look forward to playing with more people. Even if the tin it comes in looks like an over-elaborate chocolate box...

Just as a fight to the death started, the doorbell went