Henchman Hunches

A couple of weeks back everyone was kind enough to let me inflict my embryonic best-selling game Henchman upon them. At some stage I'd like to do it again (not this week!) and have designed a slightly more pleasing board and purchased some lovely meeples to that end, so aesthetically it should be a more enjoyable experience (though in the short term the Henchmen will still look remarkably like my business cards).

I've been mulling it over and come up with some changes:

There are now just four types of Follower, clearly labelled with their type and value:

B (Bishop) - 6

K (Knight) - 5

C (courtier) - 4

S (sentinel) - 3

The followers no longer have a 'specialist area' where they score more (too fiddly I think) and I've scrapped the advisors. Each player starts with one Bishop, one Knight, two Courtiers and two Sentinels, and it'll be possible to generate extra followers during gameplay (the same Followers you start with will be available 'for purchase' - i.e. another Bishop, Knight, and two each of the less valuable pieces).

There are now SIX areas to put your followers in. The Keep, Chapel, Chambers, Cloister and Court all get you influence (ie victory) points, and there are points for finishing 1st/2nd/3rd in these places. Additionally the Court (no matter where you place) gives you the option of trading in money to raise additional followers. Paying for extra followers costs you twice their value PLUS the number of the current round - - so a Bishop costs 12+1 gold to recruit in round one, a Sentinel costs 6+6 in round six, etc.

So how do you generate money?

You raise money by placing followers in the sixth area, the Treasury, and the money they raise is equivalent to their value; so a Bishop in the treasury would get you 6 gold, a Knight would get you 5 gold and so on.

Apart from the Cloister, there are limits to how many followers can go in each area - Keep (10), Court (8), Chambers (6), Treasury and Chapel (4 each).

Placement remains almost as it was when we played; in player order, as many or as few followers as you want (into one area at a time) and you can return to areas you've already placed followers in to add more. EXCEPTIONS: You may only lay ONE FOLLOWER AT A TIME into the Treasury.

I hope this ups the ante in terms of encouraging people to get more followers - I know we played an abridged version last time but it felt like getting more followers didn't help much - with this new system I think if you don't get more followers you might find your early lead would be exactly that, and nothing more.

Oh, and there's a useable dungeon now. I'm returning to my original idea of Henchman cards sending opposition pieces to the dungeon for one round. (Again, this will encourage more followers). So when you play a Henchman card you send your opposing player's LOWEST-SCORING follower in that area to the dungeon.

Henchman cards are still played in turn order, but now they are played ONE AT A TIME - and you can pass. As before, you can play multiple Henchman cards to the same area, and use 2 Henchman cards for one area as a joker to be played into another. When all four players pass the Henchman round is over - so if you pass hoping to see what others do and they all pass too, you CANNOT lay Henchman cards. Mwah ha ha! - etc.

Finally - you can only pick up Henchman cards by playing a Follower into the Cloister. That's where they hang out, see? There'll still be a display of 4 cards face-up at the start of each round, and you can take from there OR the top card on the deck. And there won't be Henchman cards for the Treasury, so your Followers are safe in there!

Finally the King is still around, and he is worth +4 in court and +2 in any area - except the dungeon, where he cannot be placed, and the Treasury, where he will give the HIGHEST SCORING player an extra 3 Gold. If there is a tie for highest scoring player they get an extra 1 gold each. The starting player places the King but DOES NOT lay any followers - he must wait for his next turn.

I think that's it. This is what I'm mooting for the scoring areas (1st/2nd/3rd)

Cloister (unlimited placement): 6/3/1

Keep (max 10 Followers): 8/4/2

Chambers (max 6 Followers): 9/5/3

Court (max 8 Followers) 10/6/4

Chapel (max 4 Followers): 12/7/5

Ties for position share the points (rounded down).

Treasury: (max X Followers): Does not score.

(X: number of players.)

What I'm hoping is there'll be some levels of intrigue to it, and some different ways of winning that aren't just going after the Chapel every time. But only by playing will we truly know...

Down through the centuries (and along the M4)

This weeks round of games nights here at Bracknell separated over two nights confirmed something to me which I had suspected for a little while now. Martin Wallace's London should never have been sold as a two player game. The restrictions that a third or fourth player puts on the resources is impossible to over come without some major tinkering. I had spent some time on the BGG forums looking for a suitable solution but could find none that didn't shoe horn a raft of severe changes that could actually make it worse. With these problems in mind James and I (Chris) embarked on a game on Monday night as I was keen to introduce him to a more heavy euro game. London is a fairly tricky game to explain even to seasoned gamers and I felt James dealt manfully with the 'cognitive load'. After a few openish rounds he was buying boroughs and opening shops left right and centre. However with all these types of game the first attempt is often a training game (Unless you are Adam or Hannah.) and what your objective should be isn't apparent until it's over. So it wasn't a surprise that I ran out the winner...

Chris 89
James 62

The game is not a short one and with the rule learning thrown in it was all we could play that night.

On Tuesday Paul made his bi-weekly pilgrimage to Bracknell for some good clean honest gaming fun.

We started off with a couple of games of Aton. With a few games under our belts we are starting to see the subtle strategies involved in this seemingly innocuous game. The first match was a straight fight for Black bonus squares and temple number 4. The second evolved into quite a difference of approach as I discovered cramming the first temple with all my counters changed the pattern of the game completely. Both matches swung my way finishing thus;

Chris 40
Paul 17

Chris 54
Paul 32

Then we moved onto a personal favourite and GNN classic Stone Age. Paul professed after the game that he hadn't actually 'Got it' until today and his new found enlightenment certainly provided a close game. Stone Age is a game which scales to two player perfectly, and with the reduction in huts to two stacks of seven it creates a further aspect of being able to effect the timing of the games end. We found our game ending prematurely with half the deck of civilisation cards left to go. The final tot up saw my civ card haul match Paul's impressive hut multiplier but my better axes and field scores pushed me ahead.

Chris 151
Paul 141

We had just enough time for Paul to thrash me at a third game of Aton as my wacky temple 1 obsession backfired on me.

Paul 40
Chris 22

The Cuban Facile Crisis

Today's game was in memory of Joe’s skeletal and rather stinky cat, Otto, who this week finally went to the great cat basket in the sky. Or, in this case, outside the back door. Otto was around twenty years old by the time he died, and Joe regaled us of Otto’s mysterious life, such as the month he went missing, only to reappear one day smelling of old woman’s perfume.

To celebrate Otto’s passing, we decided to play a brand new game which is far too complicated to be called “fun” but what the Hell. There were four of us: myself (Andrew), Joe, Steve and Adam and the game was called Cuba. To be exact – Cuba: El Presidente, since we played it with the extension pack.

Joe talked us through the rules, most of which resembled rules from other games. It was pretty confusing, with a smorgasbord of cardboard pieces and board-areas to comprehend, and it took us an hour before we were ready to start. The first round was marked by Steve’s usual confusion over the rules, as he misunderstood the need to keep certain goods in his warehouse or lose them. This left him with no goods and only one peso to his name going into round two.

But his woes didn’t last long. In such a complicated game there are always ways to score points, and mid-game it was Adam in the lead with Steve and Joe vying for second with me in last. My mistake was to buy the casino – a building that offered the chance to exchange money for victory points. I think I was a bit swayed by Adam’s success with pubs in our last game of St Petersburg, but in this game, there always seemed to be a better way of getting points so my casino turned out to not be such a great move after all.

The game is cruel, especially in the final stages when you realise that an extra coin or one more resource would get you extra points. But by then, it’s all futile. It seems that there’s no point in buying buildings in the latter stages of the game, since they won’t have time to pay for themselves. And bidding for votes in the last round seems to be a double-edged sword, which could hurt you as much as your opponent. In other words, a really rubbish sword. One that you wouldn’t want in the house, let alone use as a last resort when trying to catch up with Adam.

By the end, we’d played long past eleven o’clock and it was with some relief that the last round came to an close. We couldn’t catch Adam, who was able to extend his lead in the final stage. I caught up with Joe in the final round, with Steve coming in second.

Adam 63
Steve 57
Andrew 54
Joe 54

I enjoyed Cuba, despite it's rather convoluted rules and not-too-clear rule book. It was always pretty close. It's one of those games where you win by doing what your opponents aren't doing. I also think that getting some sort of idea about when to be starting player is important. I can't tell if it's deep, or just really nit-picky.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	14	64.5	4.61
Adam	13	60	4.62
Andrew	15	52	3.47
Joe	8	28	3.5
Dan	2	8	4
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Steve	1	4.5	4.5
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5

Photo credits: Joe

Late night in St Petersburg

Perhaps today saw the dawn of a new rule: no new games to be learnt after 9.30. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Tonight started early with Sam, Joe and myself (Andrew) warming up with a quick game of Hey! That’s My Fish! As is only proper for such a cartoonish game, we played it completely straight as if we were up against Karpov or Kasparov. I don’t remember the scores (it was non-leaderboard) but Sam won, followed by myself, then Joe.

Adam arrived and Alhambra was brought out from the games cupboard. After its recent début a couple of weeks ago where I came stony last, I was interested to see if I learnt from my mistakes. I didn’t, since I didn’t didn’t manage my hand or cards as efficiently as the other three, but I did avoid running out of cards completely, so some improvement there. Sam, Adam and Joe, meanwhile, always had a healthy handful yet still managed to complain bitterly about their limited choices. I guess there’s a middle road to be travelled, somewhere between hoarding and thrift.

Joe spent a lot of time fretting about the Arcades, hoping to sneak an improbable win due to everyone else having the same number of Arcades thus giving him more points despite being in second. Adam focussed on high-scoring Chambers and Towers, and got first place in both building types. But Sam took first place overall with a neat display of firsts and seconds across the board, matched with a nice long wall. You know: to keep the riff-raff out.

Sam 109
Adam 106
Joe 92
Andrew 89

At 9.30, the night was still young. But we forgot that we were not. St Petersburg was chosen as a nice game to wind down with. It promised a 45 minute game on the box, and we had memories of it being quite a quick game. But tonight, it stretched out to Tolstoy-esque proportions. Sam was given a quick résumé of the rules by Adam, and I listened in for a quick refresher. I also commented on the similarity to the "aristocrat" counter's semblance to a photo of Joe I took on my aging mobile phone of him at dusk looking thoughtfully out to sea. He didn't believe me, so here it is...

Once we started the game I had a massive stroke of good luck. Without really thinking, I chose a gold miner as one of my first cards. Then three more came up in the next round, so I was able to buy them for ever decreasing costs! This set me up quite nicely with a large income early on in the game. So I began to focus on big-scoring buildings.

Meanwhile, everyone else picked up some aristocrat cards to give them a second lot of income, and before long my monetary advantage had gone. Adam invested in two pubs, allowing him to exchange roubles for victory points (those Russians do love their alcohol). Sam seemed confused for much of the game, but still played a balanced game with a good mix of cards. Joe was upset at some of the less narratively coherent gameplay choices. Specifically, why would you want to change Peter the Great into a Carpenter's Workshop?

I’m not sure St Petersburg is at its best at the end of an evening. I forgot some of the rules, and I think we all did, since asking to take a go back and do it again was pretty common. And even I started to get impatient by the end, so I can imagine how Sam felt since he had the early shift with his kids next morning. But at the end was a set of results that you wouldn’t believe if you’d seen it in a movie:

Adam 120
Andrew 111
Joe 111
Sam 111


The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	14	64.5	4.61
Adam	12	54.5	4.54
Andrew	14	48.5	3.46
Joe	7	24.5	3.5
Dan	2	8	4
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5

Do You Want To Play a Game?

Having missed out on the last THREE get-togethers, I thought I'd post up what little gaming I've managed to get done outside the GNN fold. Since last monday's impromptu game of Alhambra at mine, I've only managed to play one game. One third of a game, truth be told. But it was Twilight Struggle.

I had my mate Pascal staying on sunday and monday nights. He plays a lot of chess, and as a result is fairly skeptical about my obsession with 'modern games'. That is to say, he totally gets the obsession bit; the cardboard sniffing, the rules ingesting, the meeple fondling — him having had a long-standing thing about new pens — but he still needs convincing that they're actually worth playing.

I've slowly begun to win him over. Earlier in the year, he and his girlfriend Helen stayed and we introduced them to Settlers. I say 'we'; you all know about Charlotte's galeforce indifference to gaming — but she does like a bit of Settlers, and a bit of Alhambra too, in a casual, after-dinner sort of way. She draws the line at Stone Age.

Settlers went down well, as I thought it would. And more recently, Pascal and I have managed a game of Dominion, which he grasped quickly and enjoyed. A couple of traditional gateway games; one a tried and true classic, the other a very clever mechanic, together designed to illicit that face they do on cornflake adverts after taking the first mouthful — the pleasantly surprised 'I had no idea boardgames could be this much fun — I'm going to have to re-design my entire life so that it revolves around them' kind of face.

So this visit, I cast about for the obvious 'next step'. Alhambra? Stone Age? A five-hour card-driven chit-based war game about the Cold War?

Pasc doesn't need patronising — if he's going to get in to something, he wants to get as much of what it has to offer from the word go, really. Added to which, we have a shared love of espionage thrillers, steely movies like Le Samurai, The Ipcress Files, and much more recently Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; films that don't hide behind special-effects and chrome, but evoke a cool, dark world of international intrigue.

That all said, I hadn't played Twilight Struggle, which was, of course, the main reason behind my deciding it was the one we needed to play this time. And I wanted to show him that games could be grown-up; that they're not all trolls and zombies, or resource-management. Or zombie management.

Sunday night, I mentioned it, and showed him the box. On monday during the day, he brought the subject up a couple of times, but it wasn't until about 9.30 on monday evening, after sausages, cider and red wine, that we actually got the board out. 'Right, just tell me which are the snakes and which are the ladders', he wisecracked.

Despite being someone who actively dislikes learning rules, he absorbed them patiently, and by 10pm we were embarking on the first round. By midnight, we were finishing the second round, and I suggested we might pack it in. It had been a hugely steep learning curve, and while I was sure I'd want to try again sometime, I was suffering the effects of a vastly heavy cognitive load. And the Drambuie was out, too.

But Pasc, quite rightly really, wanted to push on — we'd only just got to grips with the rules, after all.

In the end we got to the end of round four, the first of the mid-war rounds. And his instinct to keep going was spot on, because the game really did click. Those last two rounds were much more aggressive, vying for influence in all seven regions of the board, and hatching longer term plans. I can see how deep it could get, once you know the cards, and the likelihood of scoring rounds in each stage of the game - pushing operations in South America to force your opponent to take his eye off the ball in the Middle East(to anyone who knows the game I'm going to sound like a total noob, I appreciate).

I think Pasc enjoyed it — I know he enjoyed having a tour of the upper-echelons of the hobby.

It would take a long, rainy sunday in the black mountains to really make the most of a game like Twilight Struggle. But for someone who confessed earlier in the evening to having fond memories of Cluedo, he certainly stepped up to the plate. And I have him to thank for finally getting TS to the table.

Oh and he won. As Russia. Well he didn't really win, because we only played four rounds, right?

And I was reading the rules for both of us. And it was beginners luck. Look let's just say he was in the lead when we abandoned the game.

JB

When your creations turn against you

Tonight, games night had a slightly different atmosphere. Instead of playing the latest game bought by Sam or Joe in a moment of weakness, we were play-testing Sam’s very own gaming creation, Henchman.

In this game, each player has to gain favour with the King by winning control of various parts of the castle. To do this, each player places his pieces in turn, but the pieces’ identity (and, thus, their scoring potential) is kept a secret until the end of that round. Then, once everyone’s pieces are identified, it’s possible for each player to send in their henchman (in the form of cards you have in your hand) to try and tip the balance in one area. A cross between Stone Age and El Grande, really. The King is dying (yet is still surprisingly mobile) and the winner gets to be the King’s heir!

Once we started, we soon ironed out any unfair, incomplete or unworkable rules in the first round so that the rest of the game ran pretty smoothly. Once I got into it, I started to enjoy it and I liked the idea of just sending a single weak piece into one area with the hope that your Henchmen can force a win. When I was starting player, I had the chance to place the King, so I put him in the Throne Room, hoping that the lure of maximum points would entice the other three players into a big fight while I scored points in the other areas. As it turned out, that didn’t happen and I was able to win it quite easily, giving me a healthy score for that round which carried me through to the end of the game.

Andrew 84
Adam 81
Jonny 62
Sam 45

Sam’s distant last place made him cry out “I’ve invented a game I’m shit at!” which means that he joins Dr Frankenstein (creator of his monster), Dr Faust (his deal with the Devil) and Simon Fuller (the Spice Girls) in creating something that quickly grew out of his control.

But I’m sure that with a little fine-tuning, there’s definitely a neat little game here. There is a dungeon area on the game board, but no real way to send pieces there. If you could do that, then it may add a little spice, as those in the lead get pegged back by those desperately floundering in fourth.

After this, Jonny left and the three of us decided to have a quick leaderboard game because, God knows, we don’t have enough points on there already. Sam and Adam chose Trans America and although I’m shockingly bad at this game, I agreed. For a while (ie, the first round) it looked like my fortunes may be changing as Adam kindly helped me link all five cities. But following that, the game fell back into a familiar pattern as I crashed out in two rounds (scoring eight and six points).

Sam 3
Adam 10
Andrew 14

Meanwhile, the leaderboard continues to reward those who have nothing better to do with their weekday evenings so for just one day, I've decided to order it according to points ratio.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	12	54.5	4.54
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Adam	10	44.5	4.45
Dan	2	8	4
Andrew	12	41.5	3.46
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5

Copper bottoms out while tin foils plans

Today was the first “proper” games night of the week (ie, one that had been arranged more than twenty-four hours in advance) and four doughty players (Me – Andrew, Sam, Jonny and Adam) were in attendance for the feast of joy that is Board Games.

Adam and I arrived bang on time, seemingly not jaded at all after three games evenings in the space of a week. While three of us waited for Jonny to arrive, we tried a simple yet cunning game called “Hey, That’s My Fish!” In this game, penguins hop from one chunk of floating ice to another, collecting fish and leaving gaps wherever they once stood. Each player must be careful not to get trapped behind these gaps, but Sam showed himself to be the master of cutting himself off with a plentiful supply of fish that he can take at his leisure. It was non-Leaderboard, but just for the sake of complete-ness the scores were Sam 35, Adam 30, Andrew 30.

Then Jonny arrived and he chose Tinners’ Trail as tonight’s main event. We set up and set about filling Cornwall with water-logged holes as we chased the price of tin and copper up and down the markets. I began with a simple strategy: finish ahead of Adam and you're bound to finish first. A strategy that, for once, was not true.

Adam started slowly, investing no money at all in the first round. I had the (slightly soggy) East Cornwall area all to myself for most of the game while the other three battled for the rest of the county. But Adam was on the receiving end of some poor rolls and despite an incredible run in the final round where he actually earned over £100, he couldn’t make up for his early slow start.

But as the final round began, I couldn’t tell who was in the lead. Myself, Jonny and Sam all had quite a presence on the investor board/score track. In the end, Sam took the first place, with me in second and Adam taking third from Jonny right at the end.

Sam 115
Andrew 108
Adam 101
Jonny 100

Afterwards, Adam told me how I could’ve played it differently so as to win, but I think he was just sublimating the desire to tell himself how he could’ve avoided third.

After that, Jonny sped home and Sally was tempted by the lure of the Leaderboard to a game of “Hey, That’s My Fish!” Adam was keen to play again, suspecting the game had hidden depths. Sally was given a guide to the rules – of which there are only two, more or less. The game was fast and deadly (for the fish) and by the end the scores told a very interesting story.

Sam 28
Sally 26
Andrew 24
Adam 22

Adam, for the first time in months, finished a game outside the top three. Meanwhile, Sam surged ahead with his second win of the night.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	11	49.5	4.5
Adam	9	40.5	4.5
Andrew	11	38.5	3.5
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Dan	2	8	4
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Jonny	1	2.5	2.5

Peak Games

On the same night that we overdosed on strategy, Chris had summoned the Bracknell group...

+++++

Another instalment of the Bracknell GNN saw Paul and Chris (me) join up after James explained he couldn't make it earlier in the day.

We decided to kick the evening off with Aton, a new game to Paul. After listening intently to my 'expert' explanation of the rules he manfully tried to look less confused than he actually was and agreed to proceed. My recent experience and Paul's lack of showed early on as I bounded round the scoring track and filled up the temples with blue counters as I went. After the first scoring round I was in a commanding position. However, the penny dropping in Paul's mind was almost audible as he embarked on a determined fightback. Alas to no avail as a second scoring round saw me launch over the line.

Chris 45
Paul 28

Buoyed by his finishing charge and the realisation that the black squares really are a winning move, Paul asked if we could play another game of Aton. The first game had finished quickly and it wasn't even 8pm yet so we set up another round. As is typical with this more abstract type of game, once my opponent actually grasps the rules I'm often left clinging to their coat tails as they forge a path of superior tactics and logic. Paul duly obliged and by the end of the first scoring round was in a formidable 10 point lead. I shifted my strategy to one of trying pinch cheap points to close the gap but unfortunately Paul cottoned on to this and began to block. The game ended a closer affair than the final scores suggest, Paul getting a couple of useful 4's in his hand before the final scoring round.

Paul 44
Chris 33

With the night still young we moved on to our main game of the evening. Paul quite graciously accepted my request and puppy dog eyes to play London, a game introduced to us by Sam at Septcon. After a quick rules refresher we were off, blue prints in hand and appointments in the book to see the bank manager in the morning. Early on it would seem that we both had the more cautious approach of the three player game in our memories as we both made small display stacks and concentrated on building as much money as possible. Slowly it dawned on us that the resource restriction of a third player wasn't there and you could play as expansively as you liked. Paul in particular raced ahead in his stack building and showing an utter contempt for the arts and culture as he proceeded to build an empire based on hard economic reality. I however, saw that Paul was starting to burn himself out and plumped for a borough domination tactic and a balanced stack. As we two mavericks of industry forged ahead poverty became a thing of the past in our utopian society. Finally as the two hour mark neared and we had exhausted the card deck the final tot up showed that my 11 boroughs and 6 underground stations out weighed Paul's card victory point haul.

Chris 116 (Money=10, Boroughs=57, VP Cards=25, VP=24, Pov=0)
Paul 100 (Money=13, Boroughs=38, VP Cards=30, VP=19, Pov=0)

I like this game even more now I have played it again but I would have liked to have seen a more restrictive two player version than simply a smaller card display.... Maybe the BGG community has some suggestions..

Just another day in Junkie Town

Like alcoholics pretending that there’s nothing wrong in having a sixth drink because you’ve already finished the fifth and because you’re going to have a seventh, the GNN regulars sent out a call for any attendees this evening for a quick game. Myself (Andrew) and Adam heeded the call and, for the third time in four days the Leaderboard was called into action.

We chose Eketorp as our first game of the evening. This game of Viking-placement is still new and with naive excitement coursing through his veins, Sam started out by sending five of his men to pick up one bit of granite. While he got the piece of granite, it did mean that Adam and me were able to take the rest of the materials without too much opposition. This left Sam in a position of disadvantage that he never really recovered from.

As a three-player game, the balance of the game changed slightly, and there seemed to be far less combat this time. Adam picked up high-scoring materials almost without opposition. Before long, Adam had five -sixths of his castle built and Sam and I were playing catch-up. But Sam turned against me in the final round in a last desperate attempt at getting second place, and although he managed to scurry away with some turf, it was too little too late.

Adam 43
Andrew 30
Sam 15

It’s quite a different game with fewer players, and think it may be better the more people there are. It’s a bit difficult to say, since we’ve only played it twice.

We then searched for another short-ish hour-long game to fill up that annoying final forty-five minutes before we really should have finished. We chose Trans America, and discovered that this was the first time that Adam played the “Vexation rule”. Unfortunately, it was second nature to him, and he easily strode to his second win of the evening.

Adam 2
Sam 8
Andrew 13

I can have no complaints about my third place. In the first round I had some very lucky cards, but spent too much time fretting over my one far-flung station to wrap the round up as quickly as I should.

Although the leaderboard may look a bit daunting for the newcomer, don’t forget, there are plenty of ways to win apart from not having anything to do with your weekday evenings except endlessly racking up points in one game after another.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	9	38.5	4.28
Adam	7	34.5	4.93
Andrew	9	30.5	3.39
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Dan	2	8	4

Henn Lays a Golden Egg

The call came in at just before 7pm: Joe was doing impromptu games. Despite feeling exhausted I knew the thought of handling meeples would keep me awake if I went to bed - is there a support group for this? - so off I went, joining Adam and Andrew at Joe's house - which unbeknownst to us, disappointed Joe. He was hoping for just one opponent to play A Few Acres of Snow with.

Instead we broke out Alhambra - new to me, but not the others who had played some time back. This is a Dirk Henn creation, he of Eketorp and the highly-rated (on BGG, at least) Shogun.

Each player in this game is building their own version of Alhambra - starting with a central fountain they lay tiles around it representing various buildings, sometimes walled, sometimes not. As long as they are accessible from the central fountain these castles can take on any kind of shape - much the same method the Moors adopted for the real deal, I imagine - and to counter your building efforts you need to choose whether to take your turn laying a tile, or collecting the money that allows you to buy a tile in the first place. Come the three scoring rounds players score for the amount of buildings they have for each colour - naturally, the most contested buildings are the most valuable.

It's very easy to pick up but deceptively deep, with room for strategy. When is the right time to buy a building? When to pick up cash? Do you use your 'reserve' and keep a building for the future, when it'll maximise your design (longest walls in each castle score points, so the layout needs to bear this in mind as well as the limitations of the tiles themselves). A little gem in the mechanic is the ability to take more than one turn if you pay for a building with the exact price - not always possible when the money cards come up randomly, with random numerical values.

Joe shot off into an early lead in the first scoring round as the rest of us bunched together. Andrew was looking healthy in the second round but slipped back on the third and final round, as Joe came slightly unstuck courtesy of some unrewarding gardens. My uncontested middle-range building allied to a very long wall saw me into comfortable second, but long-game-visionary Adam reaped the rewards of his investment in the most monied buildings to claim first place:

Adam 105

Sam 103

Joe 92

Andrew 68

This game ticked a lot of boxes for me - fun, looks good, easy to play but with depth, and over quickly enough to squeeze in another game afterwards, in this case Poison, a perennial filler everyone is amenable to.

My starting hand had a lot of green poison cards and, though this game is still a bit of a mystery as to what the best tactics are (the obvious ones being obvious to your fellow players as well) the freedom of laying them wherever you like does seem to help. In a tight first round I picked up no cards and nobody scored over 10. The second hand saw me strike it lucky again with a series of low-value cards, with which I managed - inadvertently - to screw over Joe, who picked up a hefty 19 points. Andrew, Adam and I were still in close contention though, and Adam took the lead after round three. But I managed to pull it back for another win in a high-scoring third round:

Sam 18

Adam 22

Andrew 24

Joe 35

Thanks for hosting Joe.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	7	31.5	4.5
Adam	5	24.5	4.9
Andrew	7	23.5	3.36
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Dan	2	8	4

Bite my finger

The call went out this afternoon for potential gamers since Sam found he had an evening to himself. Myself (Andrew) and Dan (a gamer from the pre-GNN period of our history) were available. And in our eagerness to get as many names on the leaderboard as possible, Sam and I decided that this was an official GNN evening. So we got out the referee’s armbands, whistles and timepieces and got down to work.

We chose Citadels as our game. Easy to learn, yet tense enough to make you mistrust your fellow man. We explained the rules to Dan, and the game commenced. I found myself on the receiving end of both the assassin and the thief in round one, effectively giving the other two an one-round head-start. But that’s all part of the game, isn’t it? Dan generously missed a go in the next round when he forgot he was the thief until it was far too late. Sam built lots of green buildings but then was too scared to chose the Merchant since he figured it would be a prime target for the assassin.

I battled back, with two “six coins for eight points” cards boosting my score, and Sam went for an early shut-out by building a lot of lesser cards. In the end, the game was surprisingly close. If the Bishop hadn’t been killed in the final round, I would have won. Meanwhile Sam discovered in some post-match analysis that he could have come first if he’d used his Warlord instead of building. But in the event Dan came away winner.

Dan 35
Sam 34
Andrew 31

A “quick” game of Trans-America was suggested. Again, Dan was a newcomer to the rules, but this is a game that needs barely any introduction, and he was soon up to speed. I started well, winning the first two rounds, but then I was stung for nine points in the third. Sam won the last two rounds to take first place overall.

Sam 5
Andrew 13
Dan 14

Oh, and the explanation for the post title? During the evening, Dan told us about some unused footage from the documentary about monkeys he’s currently making, which involved an alpha male monkey bumming another monkey while a third monkey pushed his finger in his mouth in some weird primate fetish. Unfortunately, some people taking photos can clearly be seen at the edge of the screen. Otherwise it may have been usable.

Bloody tourists.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	5	21.5	4.3
Andrew	5	17.5	3.5
Adam	3	14.5	4.83
Joe	3	10.5	3.5
Dan	2	8	4

Pillage idiots

Tonight saw just the four of us (myself, Sam, Joe and Adam) begin a new season. There was no opening ceremony, but I inwardly enjoyed the brief feeling of being joint top in points ratio before the first game began.

We chose Ascending Empires, the deceptively tactical game of space exploration. At first, it's all about vectors and velocities, as players flick their tiny ships across the galaxy (and Einstein was right – the space-time continuum is curved. In fact, it bends down slightly towards the edges) but before long, a clever use of tech levels is required to increase your options.

Joe continued to suffer from twitch-finger but more than made up for it with a canny exploitation of what resources he did have. One of his tech levels allowed him to place men on unoccupied planets, so he spent most of the last few rounds mining. He ended with only four planets on the board, but he also had a large pile of victory points sitting in front of him. I became increasingly obsessed by my inability at finding a grey planet. Adam's intergalactic space empire stretched across the board, with cities almost everywhere. Meanwhile, Sam forgot that just having a presence in all four quadrants isn't enough for a bonus – you need cities there too. His dreams of a six point bonus evaporated, and left him in third.

Joe 24
Adam 22
Sam 21
Andrew 18

A wise man once said “a man who has one watch always knows the time. A man who has two watches is never sure.” Well, the same applies to people describing the rules of a board game. It was still early, so we decided to try a new game, Ekethorp.

Sam may have had the rule book in front of him, but it was Joe who'd read the forums on Boardgamegeek. And so Sam's reading was often interrupted by Joe adding or correcting a little detail. After each interjection, Joe would then say “and that's all I know! I don't know any more” and he'd insist that Sam continue. And then a minute or so later, Joe would remember something else he'd read and would mention that, too.

As for the game, it involves secretly choosing where to place your men (Vikings) on the board in order to get the randomly placed materials, or to attack your opponents castle and steal materials from there. A sort of cross between Stone Age and Garibaldi. Since it was everyone's first go, I'm not sure if anyone had any real tactics. Adam went for the high scoring materials while I went for cheap stuff that no one else would want, hoping to get the bonus points for having completed my castle (which I missed out on by one brick. I mean – a castle with just one brick missing is as good as any other castle, right?). No one was quite sure what Joe was doing.

Adam 37
Andrew 35
Sam 29
Joe 13

An interesting game, pretty tense and nervy. The battles between Vikings were decided by use of cards from 1-6 and there seemed to be an awful lot of sixes out there. That was perhaps the least satisfying aspect of the game, but still I enjoyed it and would happily play it again.

Amazingly, after that game, it was still early. At least, that's what Sam insisted, despite what the clock said, so a quick game of For Sale was agreed upon. Until Sam remembered he never wins For Sale, so it was changed to No Thanks.

Sam 28
Adam 35
Andrew 37
Joe 40

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	3	14.5	4.83
Sam	3	12.5	4.17
Joe	3	10.5	3.5
Andrew	3	10.5	3.5

Bracknell Discoveries

Monday night saw two of the Bracknell branch members (There's only three of us) James and Chris (Me) take to the table again.

Having played the original version of Carcassonne several times we were quite interested to give the game's Discovery variation a play. This version is sold as game in its own right rather than as an expansion, where the fields remain but the cloisters, roads and cities are replaced by individual cities, mountains and seas. The scoring for these areas, although similar has some crucial differences where incomplete areas can be scored - albeit for less points - during play, meaning there was a steady build up of points. Also the escalating contention for the high scoring farms is completely eradicated thereby removing the single winning route to victory that the first version suffers from.

So to the game itself. Initial scoring was spread equally between us but after a run where I picked up a bunch of tiles with cities on I was able to place myself in a strong position and scored accordingly. This proved to be enough as I held off a determined fight back by James to win by 20 points. On reflection we both enjoyed the Discovery version but rather felt that we liked elements of both.

On to our second game of the evening, Aton. Some 3 weeks ago James and I attempted to play this but after one and a half frustrating games we decided to pack it away as neither of us were enjoying it at all. In our eyes it didn't seem to work and was very unbalanced. Convinced that we must have interpreted the rules incorrectly we took another look. Sure enough we had. The crux of Aton is whether you get to place your tokens in the temples first or second but equally important you both get to remove your opponents tokens as well. We had been playing that only the winner of Cartouche 2 got to do that, and as it was generally a low number that won, nobody had a card high enough to remove any counters and the temples just filled up.

Unfortunately for me James is rather good at playing this type of game and wiped the floor with me in the first tie winning by 51 points to 23. In the second match I faired a little better and took the game to an exercise in brinkmanship as we both hovered by the 40 point winning margin. However it was James again who prevailed as I dealt myself a hand of kakka poo and my exchange token had already been used. James sailed past the 40 point mark and into a 2 - 1 lead on the night.

Aton is a great, quick little game with some subtlety to it and is a much much better game if you play by the correct rules