Sam, Joe and Steve chose gleaming science fiction, with Ascending Empires – a game that promised 60-90 minutes on the box, but which took up most of the evening. I shall leave it for others to explain the various cries of victory and defeat, and Joe’s constant moaning about “the yips”, but the scores were:
Sam 39
Joe 29
Steve 24
It certainly sounded like more fun than our somewhat academic battle of wits. Quentin, Adam and myself (Andrew) chose the more sedate, more homely and more carciogenic lifestyle of tin miners in Cornwall with Tinners’ Trail. After a brief refresher on the rules, we began to explore our somewhat water-logged tin mines.
The first round saw us all scoring pretty evenly, but then Adam took a bold decision in round two and chose not to turn any of his points into victory points. Certainly, I’ve seen games in the past when not scoring in a round had no ill-effects in the long term, but this time it was to prove costly. Quentin and I scored sensibly in each round to balance out Adam’s last minute flourish. As it was, I couldn’t tell who’d won at the end, and after a couple of recounts and rechecking of rules, the final scores were announced:
Andrew 99
Adam 96
Quentin 88
A great game, and not just because I won...
Okay, yes: because I won. This was my first first place of the season, and well deserved, even if I do say so myself. But by the time we’d ended hundreds of years of Cornish mining, the other half of the table had barely got out of their own space quadrants, so Quentin suggested a little something that he brought along.
Dancing Dice is a curious version of liar dice, only in this game you split your six dice into two groups of three, hoping that they won’t come last when compared to other people’s dice. Because if you do come last, then you drop down the scoring track towards zero. Initially, us new boys (Adam and me) fell into second and third but I managed to put together some smooth moves and halt my decline while Adam crashed out earliest, putting him in third. I then decided to get up (get on up), as Quentin blamed it on the boogie as he fell past me and off the scoring track into second place. This gave me my second win of the evening, and an unfamiliar desire to rush home and write up the blog.
I had to wait for Ascending Empries to finish, though, as there were still victory points to be won before the game could end. Once it did, we all said our goodbyes and set forth into the cool autumn evening.
The leaderboard shows that despite Adam’s continuing bad run (only one win in his last eleven games) he increases his lead. No one changes places – Steve couldn’t overtake Jonny and I am still one and a half points behind reclaiming my third place. But at least my points ratio is a bit more healthy.
The leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Adam | 21 | 102 | 4.86 |
| Sam | 23 | 94.5 | 4.11 |
| Joe | 18 | 73.5 | 4.08 |
| Andrew | 22 | 72 | 3.27 |
| Hannah | 10 | 44.5 | 4.45 |
| Quentin | 8 | 35 | 4.38 |
| Jonny | 7 | 28 | 4 |
| Steve | 8 | 27.5 | 3.44 |
| Paul | 2 | 6.5 | 3.25 |
| Chris | 2 | 5.5 | 2.75 |
| Sally | 1 | 3.5 | 3.5 |
| Matilda | 1 | 1.5 | 1.5 |
Ascending Empires was a lot of fun. It being our first game, a few questions came up, most notably; how do you get to the higher tech levels when you only have four research stations? We decided that you could move them at will, though the rulebook seemed to have nothing to say. Now I've checked online. . .
ReplyDeleteIn fact, the four research stations were cities! You have four each of colonies and cities, and eight research stations. Doh! They can't be moved - so you basically get 8 levels of tech - moving to level two in all four tech types, or level four in two tech types, or some combination of the two.
However, if someone destroys your research stations, you don't lose the tech level, and can redeploy the building, so it is possible to get more than 8 levels of tech that way.
So we played wrong - very sorry about that. I fear I will always think of the pillars as research stations in games to come now.
But still - great game. I think there'd be a bit more aggression early on in subsequent games. Well done Sam, a deserved victory.
In fairness I had two things going for me - one, Joe and Steve did a bit of fighting 'early doors' which left me free to scheme at will, unmolested. Two, by the time we started I'd had enough beer to be fairly lassez-faire about my flicking, which seemed to pay off.
ReplyDeleteJoe, by comparison, had the spaceship version of darts elbow.
Oh, and well played Andrew!
ReplyDeleteYes both Sam and Steve were flicking very intuitively — I kept freezing up. But I did have a very satisfying shot with my newly minted battleship, right across the board from my home planet, and smash! Straight into the front room of Sam's orange planet, scattering pot-plants and cushions everywhere. Unfortunately he'd popped out for sugar.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, no-one attacked any starships, or mined; we were wondering how to drain those last VPs from the pool — mining would be the instant way to do that. Take two troops from a planet for 1VP, 3 troops for 2VP (of course, the latter would leave you a planet down if it was your last go.)
I think the other thing we didn't do, was that after I took the last VP (did I, or was it Sam?) the other two players should have had a go each. Not that it would have made a difference to the scores.
I described to to Chris as Agricola crossed with Subbuteo, in space. There was the sense that you couldn't do all the things you wanted to; but flicking spaceships around seemed to make up for that.
ReplyDelete"more sedate, more homely and more carciogenic lifestyle of tin miners in Cornwall" - Brilliant! They were clearly pretty lonely too, with only one allowed in each mine...
ReplyDeleteCome on Wallace, where's the industrial revolution/flicking game!
ReplyDelete