East Berks round up.

I've been a little bit tardy with the reports from this end and thats a shame because we've started a new set of competitions to mix it up a bit. For both James and myself with two player games and the bi-weekly three player, we have decided to put all of the games (Their names anyway) into a hat and draw them out each week. The aim being that we should get to play all of them over the period of a year. This meant that we had a starting point for a mini league of our own for both nights.

On the two player week we have played two rounds and the results are as follows;
Nile - James
Hey Thats My Fish - James
Agricola ACSAB - Chris
Airlines Europe - James
Ticket to Ride - James

So James 4  - 1 up with plenty of games yet to go.

So on Wednesday Paul joined in the fun after missing the previous meet up owing to an administrative cock up. Names out of the hat this week were Airlines Europe again and Carcasonne the Discovery.

Airlines Europe has quickly become a game I totally suck at and in no quick time I was seemingly behind. With my tendency to back the wrong horse and jump on the band wagon when the optimum moment had gone left me up the creek without a paddle. I needed it to be a game of two halves. Obviously. Anyway, I did rally, but my battle with James over the high scoring Air Abacus stock was an example of how not to play the game. I was exactly one card behind him at all times, therefore each stock card I bought James added another. Paul must have been mentally rubbing his hands with glee. Eventually the game finished and the Air Abacas score was significant in giving James the win.

James - 100
Paul - 86
Chris - 77

Then on to Carcasonne the Discovery. Tabling this game was just the reason we chose to go down this route of game selection. Paul hadn't played it in probably 12 years. However he has still retained the instinct for tile placement games and didn't suffer any hinderance. In fact his skill and natural tendency to be a helpful chap often spilled over into helping his opponents. Which was nice.

I managed to stay a little ahead throughout the game, scoring little amounts here and there and cashing in on the odd biggy. Both Paul and James appeared to be stuck in potentially high scoring places but needed highly improbable tiles to make them pay off. In the end it was me with the last tile of the game that managed to slot in an unlikely setting and gain around 10 points.

Chris - 60
James - 56
Paul - 51

Our mini league stands at C 1, J 1, P 0

Notable mention must go to the mint choc pringles that were as foul as they sound. Unsurprisingly, rather like eating plain pringles after several after eights. I managed 4.

Easy Jet

Games Night had a late start this week so the beers and nibbles were slid across the table and Airlines was frantically laid out while reminders of long-forgotten rules were barked about. So perhaps it can be forgiven that one massive oversight shaped the game – the shape being that of a huge bulging sack of cash.

            The game started with James, Paul and Chris buying up expensive routes without a care in the world. Business was booming as little coloured jets peppered the skies. They could have sat back and smoked big fat cigars, each of them wheeling and dealing like there was no tomorrow and no end to their teetering piles of dosh.

            Then someone suggested it was too easy. There had to be a reason nobody was struggling. There’s often struggle. Why was struggle absent? It dawned on the bemused players that instead of being dealt a starting pot of 8 million each from a bank of 30 million, Paul had dealt out 30 million to each player in the extra rush of setting up.

            The wealthy air barons could but shrug and carry on. Times were good.

            A second rules mix-up was rumbled. The game had slowed with every shares card on offer being a red one and that being the only little plastic airline that hadn’t got off the ground. Nobody wanted to pick up red. Should one be able to pick from the pile? Chris had firmly warned that they couldn’t. They double-checked. They could! Hurrah. The game warmed up again. Paul bought yet more expensive routes, launching green airlines way ahead. James took over control of black airlines, which Chris had built up. Then Chris took pity on red and decided to mould it into a sky-dominating  mega-power. But it was too little too late, though he had grabbed a menacing dominance in points-aplenty Abacus Airlines. And that’s where it ended. 

The view from 30,000 feet

            The trio stubbed out their imaginary cigars, dragged out their victory point chips from behind their towers of cash and counted them up. It was close. Except for Chris. But he had provided jobs for those dear folk at red airlines. Bless.

James 95, Paul 94, Chris 86.

Then, Stone Age. A game where each and every one of them knew each and every rule. Otherwise, they might have started with a pile of gold each. James declared how he’d never won a game of Stone Age yet. Would his luck change? Plus, he was in the Stone Age doghouse as Chris showed Paul how brown three of the dice were. Because one other time, James had absent-mindedly chucked the dice into Chris’ unfinished cup of tea, instead of the throwing cup.

            From the off, James got his wheat fields growing. Paul and Chris started gathering the resources. Early tactics were unclear, though James resolved to forego any plans with nothing ever having worked for him before. But somehow, it was all working rather well for him. He had food in abundance and was quietly buying up the huts and racing round the scoring track. Paul always likes to manage a large population and had soon bred such a colony that placed end to end would stretch all the way... well, further than Chris and James’ populations. So Paul struggled for food, often feeding his men logs instead. Plus the odd brick for, erm... protein?

            Chris is usually the axe-man of Stone Age but he seemed unravelled in his plans and nervously gobbled down the Midget Gems. Surreptitiously (and unopposed),  James started to collect up all the technological advancement cards in some daring semblance of an actual plan. At the same time, he concentrated on not further browning Chris’ dice collection in a glass of coke, or sipping from the leather cup.

            At the game’s end, Chris’ final gamble came unstuck for the lack of a single log (probably eaten by Paul’s men) and he couldn’t quite leapfrog Paul into second place. James could tell he’d finally won a game but all were quite shocked at the enormous margin by which he’d done it. Over-producing wheat fields, many huts – often paid for with gold, and a full set of technological advancements. Victory (in this) at last. He’d prepared a speech, but Chris had to rush Paul to the station to get him on the last train home. They said.

James 261, Paul 141, Chris 139.

The League of Three

Tuesday night at Joe's was a minority affair, with Andrew off flexing his linguistic muscles and most of the Easton crew unavailable. Adam was there, of course, and he joined Joe and myself for what promised to be my inaugeral game of Brass.

However a promise was all it remained, as having been to Plymouth and back on a job-hunting mission, I was too tired to take on, let alone learn, a Wallace epic. So apologies to Joe and Adam for being a bit of a damp squib in that department. The saga continues... not a par with the Forsythes perhaps, or the Ross/Rachel odyssey of Friends, but I do what I can.

Nonetheless there was still drama to be had. Joe and Adam were interested in trying The League of Six, so that's what we started with. Joe's eagle eye for mechanics spotted that we'd played something slightly wrong last week - not a game-changer, but the player turn re-ordering is decided according to the amount of guards used, rather than horses gathered (the horses still determine turn order on delivering goods). Having been burnt by a multiplier-strategy last week, I was much more cautious in my choice of where to deliver goods. But after a crazy opening where three of the best tiles were flipped over on the towns of Lusatia, Joe remembered that he had several of the tiles in his bag as I'd somehow left them here last week. They were shuffled into the pack and the subsequent 5 rounds were much tighter.

Real tax collectors eat Pringles

I had played before, Joe had play-tested with me, and Adam picks up games quicker than any of us, so I didn't know how this one would end. But Joe gave us a salutary lesson in taxing Lusatian towns and delivering the goods to the best places, allying his in-game point-scoring with a decent collection of multipliers:

Joe  79
Sam 70
Adam 68

I once again enjoyed this game. It is fairly abstract, but it has lots of canny little things about bidding and player order that I like. Adam seemed less enamoured, saying he wasn't sure he understood it. Phew! Imagine if he had.

Next up was Airlines Europe, making it's second bow in Bristol after a debut some months ago now, so long back we needed a heavy rules refresher. For those unfamiliar with it, players buy shares in different airlines (in Europe) and spend money developing those airlines. Nobody runs any of the companies though, so there's an element of suspense as you often don't know if your shares in a particular airline are about to become the minority share, an action that led to a fair amount of cursing and name-calling on this occasion, though it was all allegedly in good heart.

You can't play it without doing this

It's a fun game, but as we noted last night, very different to it's perceived predecessor Ticket to Ride in terms of mechanic and scoring, despite other visual and card-managing similarities. Despite some little bursts of AP, it moved along fairly swiftly and turned out to be a game of fine margins. Adam's decision to keep pace with me on the Abacus Airlines turning out to be oh-so-Hillmannesque and decisive, as the four points he took for sharing first place in shares on them pushed him into first place over all. My four point 'loss' shunted me back behind Joe, who had regrets of his own about how he could have won.

Adam 87
Joe 83
Sam 82

It's a curious game, clever, and nice to look at, but a little dry and distant at the same time. I'm keen to play it again but I'm not sure it's going to be one of my favourites.

On the form table it's as you were positionally, though Adam tightens his grip on top spot. Joe remains in 5th, but he's poised to leap higher next week with a couple of half-decent results, as that irksome 5 will drop off the table (and potentially the 4 too). It's an interesting quirk of the form table that picking up a leaden 5 (as Joe, Anja and myself have all done early in the season) means you need a couple of weeks to shake it off. But having done so you can make a formidable leap upwards...

						Points
Adam	1	3	1	2	2	9
Sam	3	2	3	1	1	10
Andrew	2	4	2	3	1	12
Anja	5	1	1	3	2	12
Joe	2	1	4	5	1	13
Steve	3	3	4	4	4	18

Lots of fun, thanks chaps.

Hey that's my stock card!

Another Monday and this time a quick scoot with my split bag-for-life full of games over to James' s house. Amongst the collection was my two new editions Hey That's My Fish and Nexus Ops. After a quick study of each Nexus was put away for another day and HTMF was unpacked. There's not much to say about this game that hasn't been said before, and both games finished with me winning by point. I adopted a strategy to limit James's penguins then hopefully clean up at the end. It worked but only just.

Death to the Emperor

Our main game was Airlines Europe. After making the early running by having stock of nearly all companies as opposed to James focused approach I found myself pegged back by his resurgence and a number of fortuitous card draws. Then in the middle passage I made a classic mistake. Thinking I was ahead in the green stock I forged ahead to complete the licences to score the bonus, only to realise a few turns later that James had plonked 4 cards down and was in the lead. Sure enough the remaining green cards turned up for him to whisk away. The wasted time and effort on my part meant that the scores finished 99 to 93 in his favour. Although we both thought he was miles ahead.

So it will be Nexus Ops in a fortnight's time and this should be better now I've properly understood the combat rules…...

Shares and Graces

A rainy evening in Easton! The glitz, the glamour! The closing ceremony of a tiny guinea pig coming out to sniff my hand and then run away again! It can only be the last day of the season. Five players arrived hoping against hope to topple Steve from the top of the Form Table.

We began with a game of Tsuro while we waited for Anja to arrive. Perhaps we were all too aware of the leaderboard, but it seemed more cagey than usual. I was able to wipe out Joe and Sam in one go, but then spent the rest of the game running parallel to Adam, hoping to find a path to escape down that didn't send me skittering off the board. No such luck.

1. Adam
2. Andrew
3= Joe
3= Sam

Then, after some heavily self-conscious conversation about board games while Adam's non-gamer housemate did normal things in the background, the doorbell rang and it was Anja. We decided on the brand new experience of Airlines Europe. This game involves building routes across Europe which only score you points once you've got shares in them. Similar to Chicago Express, this can mean that you spend time and money on an airline only for someone to swoop in as majority share holder and take most of the points.

I got grey shares early on, and concentrated on those. Adam hoarded some cards, and sprang a last minute attempt at taking over purple. Anja had a portfolio that had a little bit of everything, whereas Joe specialised in only about five different companies (out of sixteen. Or fourteen.) Sam cleverly went for shares in a company that had no planes at all! Sounds like a money laundering operation to me, but it was enough to give him a tasty 16 points at the end.

There was lot of thinking and downtime between goes, which allowed us to enjoy Sam's range of unhealthy nibbles and Anja's liquorice (Sometimes sweet, sometimes salty! Try your luck!) and it also gave Sam enough time to take a photo from a chair and then bump his knee heavily into the table as he nimbly leapt off the aforementioned chair. The game was fun in a brain-melty kind of way. As the game came to a close, I had no idea who was first. But I soon discovered...

Sam 87
Andrew 81
Anja 80
Joe 66
Adam 60

The end of the evening loomed, but we convinced ourselves that one more game wouldn't hurt. So we chose 6nimmt. This game of bluff, double-bluff, counter-double-bluff and plain luck is a cruel slave and a terrible master. I don't think anyone's quite worked out the strategy, as shown tonight when everyone had a poor round. In the end, Sam squeezed past to score his second win of the night, to send him home rejoicing in his two victories!

Sam 35
Adam 42
Joe 45
Andrew 51
Anja 66

The Form Table shows Steve sitting triumphantly atop the charts, and congratulations to him! I sneak back into second with Adam a solid third and Sam in fourth despite that seven-point millstone around his neck. Meanwhile, Anja can reflect on her choice of that final game. As she ruefully said, you should never accept a game of 6nimmt at the end of an evening, which made her sound like an alcoholic blaming her hangover on that one last drink the night before.

						Points
Steve	2	2	2	1	2	9
Andrew	4	2	2	3	1	12
Adam	2	5	1	1	4	13
Sam	1	1	3	2	7	14
Joe	3	4	3	2	2	14
Hannah	5	4	1	1	3	14
Quentin	1	3	5	5	5	19
Jonny	2	2	5	5	5	19
Paul	3	1	5	5	5	19
Anja	5	2	5	3	4	19
Sally	3	5	5	5	5	23

Finally, the other scoring systems show that I was the winner overall on the old system, with Steve coming top of the pile in points ratio. Adam takes top spot on the Olympic-style leaderboard with Sam's late burst pushing him into second.

Winging it

This week, with James and myself a lot better a regular dosage of games was in store. James had only just recovered from coming off large doses of steroids and therefore didn't fancy challenging his brain to learning some of the new games I had awaiting introduction. We settled for the mind-bending, if easy to remember, Mr Jack as James had really enjoyed his last session with it.

It's not really a game that allows you to be too rusty though, especially if your opponent has had some recent games. (As I had). Therefore after the first round my detecting skills had reduced Mr Jacks alibis to three. And by round three I had him bang to rights and off to county jail along with Sally Decker.

On the return bout I managed to stubbornly keep at least four suspects in the light until the last two turns when it whittled down to two. James was stymied even further as I kept all of the other characters so far away that he couldn't even make a guess. Turn 8 finished and Mr Jack had eluded capture!

We then broke out Carcassonne : Discovery, where scores became tight right at the end but James had done enough to pip me 94 to 86.

Then to Tuesday night. After showing Paul all the new games I had we decided to play last weeks hit Thurn and Taxis. Paul was fast out the blocks again taking the first carriage cards and plopping down post offices in good strategic places. I had opted for a different tactic and began to link up some of the more tricky to get locations and generate longer connections. This paid dividends for me when by a stroke of luck I made a chain from Saltzburg to Lodz and suddenly realised I could take the top bonus for all outside territories. After that I didn't look back as Paul's routes began to look a little more meandering.

Chris - 40

Paul - 29

Although this game took longer than we thought it would we still attempted to learn a new game. Airlines Europe was given to me by my good lady wife for my birthday. A recommendation that that came from Sam (And Joe by extension).

This is an old game brushed up and made new. Designed by Alan R Moon of Ticket to Ride fame, it's a game that takes place over the skies of europe. Because of the Moon connection and the map with interconnected cities some people mistakenly believe this game to be TTR with planes. It's not like that at all. This game is all about buying more stock of an airline than your opponent and pushing up the price, hoping they don't then obtain more than you do. The map and the little planes serve nothing more than level indicators to show you how much you now have to pay for stock.

Aargh! Look at that massive hand!

There are a few similarities to TTR; like the stock deck which functions in the same way as the carriage cards, but all in all very quick to pick up and fast to play. And it needs to be because there a few stock cards to get through before the final scoring card comes up (In a Alhambra style the 3 scoring cards are placed in the deck).

The components are lovely even though I had to mark the wings of the orange planes because they looked like the red and the money was a bit thin.

We quickly ran out of time and didn't do the final scoring correctly but Paul pipped me in the end and we resolved to play it first next week.

Paul - 89

Chris - 85