London 2012 (it was nearer 20:30, actually)

It's a little known fact that when Mitt Romney dismissed a certain venue's preparations for hosting games, he was in fact referring to my new flat, which is still largely unfurnished and devoid of cutlery or crockery, leaving its hosting abilities in doubt.

However, I do have two chairs and a stout table and so I was able to accommodate Sam in a test run of my facilities. Fridge? Check. Roof? Check. That's all we need, isn't it?

We played Biblios at first, hoping to unlock its enigmatic strategy. We played two games. Sam won the first and I won the second, and neither result threw any more light on what we were supposed to be doing.

Then for our main game, we rolled a die to chose between Lords of Waterdeep and London. It chose London, and so this old favourite (then fallen out of favour and so about time for a revival) returned to the tabletop.

No chest of drawers, but I do have a Dreamcast. Oh yeah!

It had been a long time since we'd played London. So long that rules were frequently checked, forgotten and then rechecked. We were both quietly proud of our lack of poverty as we played, but I thought I was in the lead halfway through, with money in the bank and boroughs on the map. Sam suddenly placed three big-scoring cards, and then activated them for a final burst of victory points. He admits it was a bit of luck, since all of those cards arrived in his hand at the same time, but points are points. And what do points make? Winners.

Sam 99
Andrew 85

A pleasant return to game which is much improved by not knowing the winning strategy, and a successful trial of my hosting abilites, and once I get some more furniture in a couple of weeks, it may become a suitable venue for GNN's refined tastes.

Welsh Rare Bits

For the first week of the Easter holidays, Charlotte, the girls and I went to Wales with old friends Rachel and Henry and their three daughters. Both R and H are keen gamers, and Charlotte will happily play a game in the evening, so while I was sure that Henry and I would find lots to get stuck into between days on the beach, long walks and cooking, I was interested to see which games would be hits and misses for the four of us.

We took a bevvy of two-player games, including Hansa, Manoeuvre, Commands and Colours: Ancients, and the big daddy, Twilight Struggle. The first game Henry and I broke out on arriving at the cottage near Pembroke was Manoeuvre. It's a game of Napoleonic-era battles, players assuming control of one of eight available armies, ranging from French, English, Ottoman all the way to the United States. Each army has eight units to go on the board, typically 6 infantry and 2 cavalry units, and a dedicated deck of small cards with which to battle and issue orders. The gameplay is simple; discard and draw cards, move one unit, attack with one unit.

A total rout by the French. Marvellous.

The typical attack by a single unit is very unlikely to eliminate its target, merely flip it to its weaker side, and next turn your opponent may well be able to restore it. So you really need to try and plan attacks so that you can add cards from your hand to strengthen the attack, possibly bringing in more units, leaders etc. The game plays in about 40 minutes once you know what you're doing, and is great fun. We tried out a few of the different arrmies - and each has it's innate strengths and weaknesses.

D6s, D8s and cartoon beer. Mmmm . . .

In the evenings, Charlotte and Rachel joined us. For the first couple of nights, the main event was a few rounds of Pickomino, which works brilliantly as a casual game with four - the perfect combination of push-your-luck, nicking each others tiles and not quite knowing who's winning until the final tally. It also allows for a lot of chatting in-between goes, which is certainly a plus as far as Charlotte is concerned.

Grubby dice. Unacceptable.

The first big game we all tried was Manila, which I got in the Euro Maths Trade the week before we went away. Though some of the mechanics (auction, worker-placement, a smattering of share-manipulation) are very familiar, it's nicely different from lots of the other games we play, definitely has its own niche, and plays in under an hour. It's essentially a game where you're playing the odds and betting on which boats will make it ashore and which will end up in the shipyard. It didn't quite catch fire for the four of us - though I can imagine it going down well with the GNN-ers.

We also played London, which is a favourite of Rachel and Henry's - it doesn't quite do it for me, and had a suspicion that it wouldn't be Charlotte's kind of game either, which turned out to be right. It's a game you really need to play a few times to get your head around and develop a strategy - there's simply no way a new player can hope to keep up, which can be dispiriting enough to put you off for good. I had played a couple of times with R & H before, and with Sam, enough to have a grasp of what to do, though that still put me in a distant third place. I can't quite put my finger on why it doesn't grab me; it's something to do with the complexity of the way city-size/boroughs/poverty/money formulae interact - it remains just a little too opaque for me to be enjoyable, though I can imagine getting into it as a 2 player over a few successive nights and finding it satisfying. I think it lacks the elusive 'fun' factor for me.

Another of our 2-player daytime staples was Hansa - a very stripped down Euro about trading in the Hanseatic League (not to be confused with recent GNN newbie Hansa Teutonica). In a way, it's similar to London in that the various components are symbiotically linked: money allows movement and buying of goods; goods allow placement of markets; markets allow conversion of goods into VPs, and get you more money. It's all wrapped up in a very pretty, refined package, and plays in about 20/30 mins. It can be played with four, but loses a lot of the strategy, I've heard.

Hansa by firelight.

As well as London, Henry had brought Ora et Labora with him, the latest big game by Uwe Rosenberg. Having bought it during last half-term, he and Rachel had not got round to playing it, despite a couple of attempts - on opening the box I could see why. If the number and variety of resources and playing boards weren't terrifying enough, the combined rulebooks, covering set-up, general rules, specifics and a multi-page glossary of buildings are positively fearsome. We decided not to attempt this with the women, at least not without a thorough playthrough between the two of us, and so we tackled it on a grey afternoon.
As it turns out, there was little to fear, and lots to enjoy. The rulebooks, if taken in the correct order, have you set up and playing within 20 minutes, and we found we could happily ignore at least half of them.
It is very much in the vein of Agricola, with players building up their monastery in either Ireland or France, felling forests, clearing peat bogs, brewing beer/making wine and gradually amassing victory points. It is apparently closer to Le Havre than Agricola, though graphically it definitely takes its cue from the earlier Rosenberg game. It took us a couple of hours to play, and at the end I was a little bit underwhelmed - it's very wide-open compared to Agricola, and consequently felt a bit flabby. In Agricola, you're operating at the bleeding-edge of subsistence, and every action counts. The world of O & L feels altogether more of a cornucopia, and whilst there are clearly strategic paths aplenty to amassing VPs in bulk, the fact that they are floating around from the very beginning and relatively easy to come by makes it feel less focussed. However, though we didn't manage to get it to the table again during the week, something about it has stayed with me; building your little cloister into a vast, all-encompassing monastery; brewing fine beer and distilling barrels of Irish Whisky, all wrapped-up in the cosy, inviting Agricola-esque hues. I want another go, and if any GNNers have their eye on a new game, I'll happily play it (not buying any more games, see?)

On wednesday evening, the four of us got to Lords of Vegas. I had my concerns, especially since the 'gambling' aspects of Manila had been a bit of a damp squib, and I couldn't remember quite how straightforward the mechanics of LoV were. As it turned out, it was a perfect fit - tense, exciting reversals-of-fortune, enthusiastic dice-rolling and a close finish with Rachel (I think) eeking a win against Henry. Henry particularly took to the risk-reward spirit of it, at one point betting $25 million on a single roll in Rachel's casino in a bid to scupper her plans. He lost.

Lords of Vegas: busy board, busy tablecloth.

We played again on thursday night, and it was even better, and closer, me edging in to first place on the final strip pay-out by virtue of my newly-acquired four tile casino. It was more coherent than when we played it at GNN, and I think we should give it another go. There are subtle strategies for staying in the game in the face of what seems like a runaway leader, which may have eluded us on the two outings we've given it.
On Friday night, we played Catan for old times sake, and R & H cleaned up, Rachel eventually squeaking the win from Henry, Charlotte and I languishing 3rd and fourth.

Ah, the familiar coastline of Catan. With an off-shore stockpile of cities.

Back on the two-player front, Henry and I had dabbled in a bit of Commands and Colours: Ancients, which felt a wee bit fiddly compared with the ultra-streamlined Manoeuvre, though with a more epic, majestic sweep, and probably a bit more depth. We'd also played a few games of Igloo Pop with the older daughters, and they played a few games of Alhambra and Mr Jack amongst themselves. We also played 6 player Shadow Hunters, though that was a bit unsatisfying - four of the six players won . . .

And in amongst it all, Henry and I found time to take on not one, not two, but three games of Twilight Struggle. We got to it a couple of days in to the holiday; Henry had hankering for a game since their last visit to us in September 2011, when I had just received it in a Maths Trade (we took one look at the rules back then and put it away). Since then I've only played it twice, so we were both eager to explore its intricacies.

In actual fact, we found it to be nowhere near as daunting as its reputation might suggest, especially since, on advice gleaned from Ryan Sturm's most recent How to Play, we all but ignored realignment rolls, further streamlining the learning curve. It is an awesome game, and we found that the game lasted longer, getting to later rounds without an outright winner, the more familiar we got with the cards and strategies. That said, Russia won all three games, though Henry, determined to break the Soviet stranglehold, put up a valiant fight in the last game (and enjoyed getting to prod me in the chest as he played the Kitchen Debates). And it's not stupidly long - all three of our games lasted between two and a half and three hours; though none lasted beyond turn six - an epic struggle that went the full ten rounds could last four, even five hours. In that sense it bucks the general trend, in that the better both players know the game, the longer it will take.

All in all an awesome week of gaming, perfectly intertwined with a very lovely week away, thanks to Henry and Rachel and their delightful girls. Roll on the new season of GNN, my loins are girded!
JB

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

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..

SeptCon Report!

FRIDAY

With Andrew sadly unable to come, and me unable to coerce another member of the GNN club out into the sticks - perhaps it sounded a bit scary - it was just myself (Sam), Paul and Chris competing for the SeptCon championship, a veritable Olympics of gaming both for those competing and anyone who can be arsed to read all of the below.

We converged at a picturesque cottage in the village of Foxham, and having met the farmer and his wife, their dog, three cats, and helped them bring a van-load of fresh meat into their kitchen, we sat down to commence a marathon of gaming, starting with a 7 hour session on Friday night.

Poison was first. This was new to both Chris and Paul but it's an easy one to explain so after doing my best impersonation of Reiner Knizia in a cape we were away. Everyone opened with a low-scoring round but Paul, the variant king, then began experimenting with strategy and this went horribly wrong in his second round. Chris scored a second zero in a row as I picked up a couple of points, and Paul's improved third round score - and my terrible one - wasn't enough to recover from third position. Chris came first to set the tone for a successful evening for him - but we all agreed that 3 players is exactly the wrong number to play Poison with, as unless someone plays aggressively it's very easy to slip into a pattern of everyone picking up their own colour.

Chris 6

Sam 14

Paul 17

Our gaming loins girded, we moved swiftly on. Paul and Chris had been playing Ticket to Ride so that became game number two. Contrasting styles here as Paul and Chris started building immediately and I started hoarding, looking to build a strong playing hand for later in the game. A slight misunderstanding over the rules too as Chris and Paul play the (correct) rule of only being allowed to build ONCE along the dual-track routes in a three-player game. I'd misunderstood this and thought we were playing the rule that the same player can't build both routes to block people off. It didn't change my strategy much though and everyone agreed that each player could break this rule once and once only.

My card-collecting routine (the Hillmann-method) paid off well come the final score, hoarding obviously gives you a lot of flexibility so when I was blocked I had alternative options, and I completed all my routes to end the game. Despite Paul completing extra routes I made first place, with Chris just sneaking second:

Sam 137
Chris 102
Paul 100

After a bit of tea, next up was 7 Wonders. This seems to be Paul's bête noir from a comprehension perspective, I think I explained it a lot better than last time but he still professed to utter bafflement and could not repeat the second place of his debut a few weeks ago. Instead Chris finished first in what was actually quite a tight game, to surge back into the lead overall:

Chris 42
Sam 39
Paul 37

Three reasonably fluffy games aside, we moved on to the meat of the evening: Stone Age. This was - again - new to Chris and Paul, but it's such an intuitive game it didn't take too much explanation before we were off and running. The newbies both enjoyed this - Chris especially so - but early on Chris seemed to be stumped as to what his tactic was. And despite my stressing of the importance of cards for a long time it was only me picking them up as the others went through a lot of hut-building. Despite that though, Chris staged a very decent first score in the end as his hut-multipliers popped up in the closing stages and he nabbed them. I was under the impression I was miles ahead - possibly because Chris kept saying I was, in a belated and disconcerting bit of NLP - next time I'll not be so blasé!

Sam 265
Chris 236
Paul 145

Time for one more game before we packed off to bed, but as it was gone eleven we went for the relatively brief 7 Wonders again. I ignored armies for a change and concentrated on sciences, but I made a fatal error in thinking my wonder allowed me to build a discarded card at the end of each age. No, Morrison! Only at the end of the second age, you fool! So my perceived brilliant move of burning a card for money in a plan to pick it up later (when I could afford to build it) came to naught. 9 points down the drain, and Chris pipped me for first.

Chris 55

Sam 51
Paul 30

The embryonic leaderboard (1st/2nd/3rd=3pts/2pts/1pt) showed Chris currently in first. Could he hang on to that position in the morning?

SATURDAY

Like some middle-aged family man - oh - I woke early and pottered about while those useless layabouts slept through a couple of hours of potential game time. After breakfast we pretended to be normal people and actually went for a walk in the country, taking farm dog Oscar with us. It was a beautiful area, the perfect place to sit indoors all day pretending to be Cornish miners or something.

So that's what we did. After our little perambulation we cracked open Tinners' Trail and explained it to Paul, who was in for another day of learning enough collective rules to start a new, bureaucracy-loving coalition. Chris opened the game with a canny bit of play, encouraging Paul and I to buy mines at cheap prices but leaving himself with lots of room to develop his own, and having done so he was the only player at the end of round one to invest any money - establishing an early, daunting 18 point lead. It was a long way back for Paul and I, but we gave it our best. Incredibly I pipped Chris by a point in the final reckoning, but only after he failed to give himself enough time to gather all his copper and tin in round four, fatally building a port when he should have been mining. A dramatic end, then, saw the final scores as:

Sam 150
Chris 149
Paul 90

We broke for lunch, making a swift trip to the shops followed by a fry-up. So far no fruit or vegetables had passed our lips for nearly 24 hours - Chris even suggested 'crisps' as a side dish to his planned meal of hotdogs - so if we ever do this for a week the winner will probably be the one still alive at the end of it. After eating, Web of Power was broken out the box. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a placement game with each player building cloisters across Europe and advisors to link countries together in scoring opportunities. We didn't play the proper rules for half the game, but it was the same for everyone and I nabbed another win as Paul finally broke out of third place:

1. Sam
2. Paul
3. Chris

After the delicate logarithms of Web of Power we decided to go with something that would melt our brains a bit more and Paul and Chris were keen - or willing, at least - to play London, so we gave it a shot. Not trusting myself to explain this one properly we went through the rule book a bit and it was mostly confusion-free; after a few rounds the newbies were up to speed - but Paul suffered both for unpaid loans and excess poverty, taking some severe penalties as Chris and I contested for first.

Sam 74
Chris 61
Paul 24

Perhaps because I was feeling the stress of explaining - badly - several sets of rules, it was the first time I didn't massively enjoy London, feeling it a bit of a grind. Certainly by the time it came to explaining The Adventurers I couldn't read any more rules and had to pass them onto Paul and Chris, the latter having an extremely juvenile giggling fit over the idea of sunbeams coming through a passage. Really, Chris!

Paul was a picture of maturity and calm next to him, at least until he suddenly decided to hurl a digestive biscuit at the window. He said he was aiming for the dog, but it was clearly a comment on Chris' behaviour.

Anyway, this deceptively simple game isn't alone in making the rulebook like some kind of test of stoicism, but we eventually got there and probably spent marginally more time on the game than we did on the rules - at which point Paul triumphantly claimed his first pole position. We all survived the Raiders-style traps but it was Lord Jefferies of Croydon who'd loaded his pack with the most treasure:

Paul 27
Sam 25
Chris 18

It was now early evening and, possibly gripped for a nostalgia for simpler times, we elected to play bean-growing-game Bohnanza. In this mini-classic you grow beans. That's it, basically. And despite my sluggish start I managed to consolidate my strong leaderboard position with another victory as Chris and Paul tied for second:

Sam 22
Chris/Paul 20

We broke again for food and, as winner, I was allowed to choose three games we could then argue over as to our next battle of wits. I was hoping we might go for Year of the Dragon, but after much enthusiasm from Chris and placid amenity from Paul we went with my second choice, Stone Age.

This time it was a much tighter affair, but I squeezed into first place:

Sam 227

Chris 207

Paul 206

It was fast approaching midnight so we had a little non-leaderboard game of poker then called it a night, with me now perched in first place overall.

SUNDAY

By the time the morning rolled around our initial zest for gaming two days before was starting to sag slightly, as the perpetual analysis - not to mention the intense pressure of competition - ground us down into faded husks of our former selves, like large ghostly meeples smelling faintly of sausage. The three of us living together in one house, gaming for all eternity, was no longer the beautiful ideal it seemed on Friday night. Nonetheless we remained committed and borderline enthusiastic, so we embarked on a game of Ra. Now I started off reasonably, but halfway through the second round I had three victory point chips to Chris and Paul's ten or so each. I was not confident at that point, but I managed - more by luck than judgement - to wangle first in a dramatic final round that saw us as close as possible:

Sam 33

Chris 32

Paul 31

Everyone quickly agreed to a rematch, but this time it wasn't so close, and Chris found that his very strong bidding hand in round 2 actually hampered him as he couldn't bear spending it on the pitiful offerings I was calling Ra on. As he clung on waiting for a justifiable expenditure to arrive, the round was closed out with him picking up very little, and his stronger third round couldn't rescue him.

Sam 54

Paul 34

Chris 21

On the final straight now, and we had time for one short and one long game. TransAmerica was the former, and it was another buttock-clenching final-round fight, this time Paul emerging victorious:

Paul 12

Sam 16

Chris 20

This was actually one of the best games of the weekend, and if we play it again on a Tuesday I highly recommend adding the 'Vexation' rule; utilising two tracks of your own colour to block off other players from your network. It transforms the game from a diverting filler to a devilish highlight.

And so: what game to end on? We debated Collosseum, Galaxy Truckers, another game of London? But it was a third and final Stone Age, the 15th game in a marathon session to rival StabCon. Very, very tight this time, with all of us focussed on our strategies and not deviating an inch from them. In the end my year or so of Tuesday night practice paid off again, but Paul's hot breath was leaving droplets of mist on my mammoth-fur waistcoat:

Sam 204

Paul 200

Chris 170

So SeptCon finally ended with GNN regular Sam (me, worryingly talking about myself in the third person) taking the glory. Admittedly I knew all the games and the others didn't, but I like to think of that as dedicated research undertaken specifically for this competition. Hopefully next time Andrew will be there - anyone else care to join us???

FINAL LEADERBOARD

Sam 38pts

Chris 28pts

Paul 23pts

Here's a frog Paul found.

Once around the kitchen table in eight millenia

Six gamers gathered in the familiar surroundings of Sam’s kitchen for this week’s games night. A night that would encompass building step pyramids, the growth of London and colonizing new planets.

We split into two groups of three players with Sam, Jonny and Quentin giving themselves the task of rebuilding London after the Great Fire in Martin Wallace’s London. Meanwhile, I was up against leaderboard high-fliers Adam and Joe as we set up Alien Frontier: the game of space exploration according to the rules of Yahtzee.

Adam was new to the game, but quickly built up a fleet of ships (ie, dice) to expand his victorious empire. Joe could’ve stopped him, but he forgot he had a plasma cannon. Meanwhile, I underused my cards and played an unfocused game. The most fun was inventing advertising slogans for the various parts of the planet ("Come to the Heinlein Plains: Where the trading is always... one to one"), and describing them in the dulcet tones of a sales assistant ("Is this your first time at the Asimov Crater, sir?").

After the game ended, there was a brief autopsy on the game, and we found it lacking. It seemed to be all about the mechanism, and little to do with interaction. I wondered if it wasn’t simply too short. By the time all of the areas of the planet are colonised, there’s only a short period of battling for supremacy before the game ends. Joe decided it could go in his next trade, and it’s hard to disagree.

Adam 11
Joe 8
Andrew 7

Since, by this time, London was still only in the 1800s we began a game of Roll Through The Ages. Thinking back, we should’ve steered clear of another dice game after "Mr Boxcars" won at Alien Frontier, but instead we dug it out of the games cupboard and set up the game.

Adam, true to his laissez-faire attitude to the plague in Notre Dame, was adept at rolling pestilence, hitting myself and Joe. Mostly myself after Joe invented medicine while I discovered quarrying. Apart from that, my tactic mostly relied on expecting Adam’s luck with the dice to run out any second now. This didn’t happen. Joe had almost no food for most of the game, but still managed to come second.

Adam 35
Joe 17
Andrew 11

By now London had finally reached the twentieth century and the evening came to an end. I’ll leave one of them to write up their adventures in the big smoke before I add the leaderboard.

GNN Reports: On the other side of the table Quentin and Jonny were discovering what it's like to experience a game without Joe around to explain it properly. I covered the rules as best I could without really clarifying the theme very well. Then I jumbled up the decks during my 'example' hand and subsequently we had to replay the first round...

Anyway, despite some confusion over building and running cities, we managed to play the game and everyone got the hang of managing poverty so well we finished with equal points. But Jonny hadn't generated a lot of victory cards in his cities, and Quentin had been hampered by his card options in terms of making cash, and was left with three unpaid loans. Final scores:

Sam 65
Quentin 45
Jonny 43

A great result for me, but I'm sure at least partly down to my shortcomings as a game guide! Nevertheless both Jonny and Quent seemed to enjoy it so hopefully it'll feature again soon.

As for the leaderboard, such is the curious nature of the Q system, despite Adam coming first twice and Joe coming second twice, both see their points ratio dip slightly.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	7	38.5	5.5
Joe	7	28.5	4.07
Sam	6	24.5	4.08
Andrew	7	20.5	2.9
Jonny	3	13	4.3
Steve	3	9.5	3.16
Quentin	1	4	4
Matilda	1	1.5	1.5

By the way, Adam did offer to have Roll Through The Ages as a non-leaderboard game. And he said this after he'd won which was very gallant of him. But when I saw it actually lowered his point ratio, I put it back in.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention Jonny's spicy nuts!

Wallace strikes gold in London

The final meeting of this season’s Games Night regulars has been put back until tomorrow, but Sam and I met up with a view to do a bit of writing, but we were unable to resist the pull of a new Martin Wallace game in the games cupboard.

After Yorkshire and Cornwall, Wallace turned his geographically-based historical eye to London. This game begins after the Great Fire and ends just as the first Underground stations are being built, and it's up to each player to exploit this fruitful period to their advantage. Anyone with any knowledge of the history of London will enjoy seeing the likes of Christopher Wren, hospitals, monuments and the invention of sewers being played out before their eyes.

After a quick run through the rules, we began in a feisty, experimental mood as Sam took a loan and built early while I quickly built up a large amount of cash. The game is finely balanced. Players have the option of playing plenty of cards at the same time, but risk gaining poverty squares for playing too many cards. But you can reduce that risk by building in boroughs. But that gives you more cards, which means more poverty points... Definitely a game which runs the risk of analysis paralysis.

But we both really enjoyed it. There was definitely a pleasure in watching technology progress and famous buildings being built. Or not, as the case may be. I chided Sam for not building Nelson’s Column, but on the other hand he did build Buckingham Palace. For my part, I mostly bought land on the south side of the Thames and, true to history, I built the Crystal Palace and didn’t have the underground.

It was also very difficult to tell who was winning. In the end, Sam squeezed past 79 points to 76. Definitely one to revisit, and I’m sure this will soon become a games night favourite. Whatever will Wallace’s next historical odyssey be? A game based on the suffragette movement, perhaps?

(The illustration I chose, by the way, is a new street lay out for Charing Cross proposed in 1920. I thought it would fit in nicely with the overall theme of imaginary Londons being created with each game.)