Laser Quest

Due to a cock up on my part where I bought the expansion for Thurn & Taxis, and the inability of the Yodel delivery man knock on a door even remotely loudly, my promised new games were not in evidence. Paul took the news manfully and considered that we might give A Few Acres Of Snow another try. Even though we played it maybe 8 weeks ago half of the rules were missing from our collective memory. It's not a game that is taken out of the box and played within 5 minutes of recap as it has special rules for a lot of things and, as last time, we found that we played a few rules incorrectly before it was too late.

Fate dictated that I was to play the well positioned but impoverished French and Paul took on the British dandies. Both sides began filling up their respective decks with all kinds of great sounding cards without really fixing on a strategy. Indeed this game seems to the inexperienced player one where you sort of make it up as you go along and hope for the best. Paul decided that he was going to be a pain in the French underbelly with multiple raids all along the rapidly expanding front line. I, however, tried to muster as much military as my puny funds would allow. It was around this point that I realised I'd only been taking one money for trading furs, something I'd done a lot. Then just as Paul and I had traded a couple of speculative sieges the clock chimed 10.30. (It didn't. My clock doesn't even have chimes. It does tick though. It's something Jacquie had before we met. It doesn't go at all with our kitchen décor…)

Where does all the time go? Having a couple more goes each we totted up the scores.

Paul 43

Chris 46

A narrow mid-game win for the French but really it was nicely balanced at that point.

On Monday I also resumed games with James. We had a game of Stone Age which I won but afterwards he brought out a new game that he had received for Christmas, Khet. For those that don't know it is Egyptian Themed laser chess. Your board is made up of a grid of squares and in two corners opposite each other is a piece which fires a real laser. (Tesco style not James Bond). You then have a two types of 45 degree mirrored pieces, one which has a single mirror and a solid back and the other has two mirrors back to back, these can swap places with an opponents piece. There are three non mirrored pieces and one of these is the Pharaoh (King) and this is what you are trying to hit by clever placement of mirrors. You can knock out your own pieces so it is a real head spinner.

I sucked at it and lost both my games pretty quickly. I would like to play it again though.

Lights! Canada! Action!

This morning a newly house-proud Joe sent out an email for gamers to gather at his kitchen where a brand new adjustable light-fitting hung above the table. He wanted to see how it performed in a board game setting, hence the invitation. As I’m the only one not busy/ill/asleep on a Thursday, I was the only one who could make it.

But it gave me the chance to try one of these two-player games that I’ve read about but never been able to play. I wanted to try A Few Acres Of Snow, so Joe talked me through the rules. It’s basically a card-management game along the lines of Dominion or Thunderstone but with far more options available and a map of the north east of America from a weird angle. I was the British and Joe was the French in our set up and we set about rewriting history at around 8.20pm.

I started in a feisty mood, settling in Halifax, which changed hands several times during the game. As did Pemaquid: Both very desirable locations. Less desirable, but still fought over was Kennebec. A wide open space which helps you do nothing. Nevertheless, raiding/settling there did get rid of unwanted cards. I looked up Kennebec on Wikipedia and it’s just a river.

No victory points here. Move along, folks...

Joe expanded his empire south towards Detroit which scored points, but cluttered his hand with a lot of unwanted location cards. I kept trying to lay siege whenever I could, and by the end I had amassed a tidy pile of Joe’s cubes. I think my favourite bit was the option to keep cards in reserve, which you could then pay to use in an emergency (ie, battle). Those cards at first act as a deterrent to any warfare, but if you keep an eye on your opponent’s money then you can attack when he can’t afford to use them so they’re no longer a threat – in fact they’re as good as out of the game. Until he can get more money.

Finally, Joe ended the game by using the last of his settlement cubes and the points were totted up.

Joe 56
Andrew 49

An enjoyable game once it gets going, and isn’t so heavy that the two hours seem like a slog. I had a lot of fun and a lovely mince pie.

Game Time in the Smith's

Joe's prescient comment on GNN applied all too well for Bracknell's split games nights. On the Monday I introduced James to the wonders of Stone Age. Two weeks ago Paul and I had whizzed through a game and still had time for 3 rounds of Aton. This week, with rule intake aside, we found ourselves checking that the side of the box did in fact say 60-90 minutes. Your first game of Stone Age can be a daunting experience especially against someone with a few games under their belt. As with my first game when Sam stressed the importance of culture cards and it wasn't until it was too late that I started collecting them, James found the variety of choices too enticing and embarked upon a balanced approach. Unknown to him, within the first 6 or 7 rounds, I had snaffled all of the people multipliers and was visiting the love hut with insatiable regularity. The game ended when we had exhausted the supply of civ cards which probably had something to do with the length of the game. With all of the civ cards split between us the hut, axe, field and people multipliers went nuts with scores coming up thus.

Chris 318
James 186

James revealed this was his favourite game so far. The rematch in a couple of weeks probably won't be so one sided!

On Tuesday Paul popped over again and it was decided to give new game A Few Acres Of Snow an airing. As mentioned before on the blog it is a 2 player game representing the war between Britain and France over the North East Americas. We started at about 7.30 and optimistically thought we would probably get a quick game of citadels in at the end before Paul's train at 11. Didn't really work out like that. The rules........ I had spent an hour going through them in the day to make the process a little easier when it got to game time. Unfortunately It didn't help. The game plays out like a version of Dominion and London stuck together and as with those two there is a lot of card referencing to be done. It's a game worth persevering with as once you get over the hump of your first 5 moves it starts to flow. However, to the newbie, the extended AP and constant checking of what a card does and what goes with it as well slowed play right down. By 10pm we were hitting our stride and starting to make headway toward each other after a lot of time building up our respective decks. Me, playing the French, had by 10.30 performed a successful siege and chased Paul out of Halifax after he had rudely settled in between my two villages...... then just as we were really in the swing of it it was 10.50 and time for Paul to catch his train.... We decided to score the board anyway as neither of us were anywhere near the game ending conditions.

Chris - 55
Paul - 37

Another one that is going to be played next time for sure.

Just one note on anybody thinking of buying this and wanting to do some research on the Geek. There are many threads saying that the game is "broken" and that there is an unstoppable tactic by one of the sides that works every time. Interested though I was I avoided reading them because it would ruin the game. I will probably never stumble across this tactic either so I don't need to know about it......

Bonjour Bristol

I go away for two weeks, and we have branches? At least it's not factions.
If this continues we'll be able to have a Eurovision style contest - 'Wilkommen, Bracknell - can we please have your scores for Ticket to Ride'?
But really, the more the merrier. If I'd had internet access out in France I'd have joined in. But I didn't, so I couldn't. I did manage to get some games played though.
I was only allowed a small-ish bag of games, so I took my box of card games, Stone Age, Thurn and Taxis, Pergamon, Dixit and Battle Line.

However, the Thurn and Taxis box also contained Settlers of Catan.
In the Pergamon box I'd managed to find space for Notre Dame and Aton, and secreted within the capacious Stone Age box were Alhambra and Lost Cities.
The Battle Line box also held Haggis, Row Boat and Citadels, and the Posion box is far too big for the game itself; much better with Tichu, For Sale, Mu, No Thanks and Coloretto in there for company.

And what did we play?

If it was up to Bea (9), we'd have played nothing but Dixit. It was in fact one of the game highlights of the holiday, playing Dixit in the garden with the girls and my parents-in-law.
I can't think of another game that could be played by six people aged 7 to 70, first-time and seasoned gamers alike, that would be such fun, and a proper game - it's a worthy Spiel Des Jahres winner, and a very unique game.

My father-in-law William is always up for a game, and I had high hopes for Aton, mine and Sam's current two-player favourite. We played once, but it didn't really grab him.
We played a few games of Battle Line, a great Reiner Knizia two-player card game of war in the ancient world - very thematic, even though you're basically making poker hands. But the one that William really took to was Lost Cities; RK again, and a game that really deserves its classic status - everyone I've introduced it to 'gets' it within a single round, and wants to master it. It may be less strategic than Battle Line, but easier to grasp, pick up and play.

Matilda's go-to game was Coloretto, and I played a few games with all the girls; despite the fact that their main strategy was fighting over who got to collect pink, I consistently lost . . .
In exchange for taking them swimming one gloomy afternoon, Matilda and Bea agreed to a game of Thurn and Taxis; Bea won, but they haven't asked to play again. Funny, I thought Matilda might find it an interesting step up from Trans Europa.
Again at Matilda's request, we played a game of Alhambra, and I was reminded of what a great game for three or four it is; and what a long one too, for kids.

And in the evenings, Charlotte and her mum were persuaded to join us menfolk. That's when I realised I'd brought too many games. I couldn't decide what to play; the first night we played Tichu, which didn't go down a storm. I should have learned to avoid card games after that, but the next night, despite showing them both Pergamon and Notre Dame, I ended up suggesting Mu. I found a good teaching method, but we started too late, and it was a giant flop.

Everything changed, however, after I sniffed out a games shop in La Rochelle . . .
I couldn't resist Martin Wallace's new game, A Few Acres of Snow; it's a two-player game based on the battle for control of Canada by the British and the French, which uses a Dominion-style card-drafting mechanic. No, Charlotte didn't play it; and by the time I'd got to grips with the rules, William had headed back to London.

But while I was there, I picked up Pickomino - the Reiner Knizia dice game some of us played at Stabcon with Hammy (he called it Heck Meck). It turns out that if you're allowed to play it yourself, rather than being told what you should do on each roll (Hammy's preferred method), it's really rather good fun. We played it with Charlotte's parents, and I played it with the girls. And finally, we all played it together; in fact we played it every day of the holiday after I bought it.

It's a good little push-your-luck dice game, the pieces are very tactile and lovely, and the worms give it that extra hook for the kids. There's an awful lot of luck, but that's perfect for what it is; and when the dice-gods smile on you, and hand you the single, solitary worm you so desperately need on your eighth dice, well, you smile right back at them. Would make a nice game to end a tuesday night . . .

So Dr Knizia does it again - I could have just packed Pickomino, probably.
Except the box is so small, I couldn't possibly have squeezed the other games in there. JB