Mars Attracts!

After last week’s lull, everyone was back from what they were doing, and there were seven of us players huddled in Sam’s kitchen, eager to chose cards and action them in an order usually determined by a number on the card itself.

Gonz, Joe, Matt and Ian played Mission: Red Planet, the Citadel-esque game of colonising Mars. Martin, Sam and I went for Concordia. I was interested to see how it played with more than two-players. After last night, I had a good impression of it, but I remembered how badly A Castle For All Seasons did when scaled up to more players.

Martin had read the rules before he arrived, so we were ready to leap into the game quickly. Martin and I went for the Architect move first, which I seems to be the obvious choice at the start of the game. Sam tried another tactic, of not moving his colonists at all until much later. It didn’t seem to make much difference in the long run.

We all struggled over getting particular resources, and Martin kept us all entertained with a stream of inventive terms of abuse whenever he felt frustrated. It’s that kind of game: managing your hand successfully and trying to think a few turns in advance.

By the end, both Sam and Martin had plenty of colonies everywhere while I had very few. I started buying up colony bonus cards, just so they wouldn’t get them. The plan seemed to work.

Andrew 113
Martin 101
Sam 100

Mission Red Planet was still not finished but, according to Joe, Matt was in a commanding lead. We decided on a new game (on sale cheap at The Works) Havana. This little Cuba spin-off is another card management game, but with far fewer chances (only one, actually) to get used cards back into your hand. The cards have number son, and you play two at once so that the numbers make a two-digit figure. These numbers define player order (lower number goes first).

It’s a smart system, but I wasn’t prepared for the lack of options towards the end of the game. Sure, you get all your cards back once you have only two cards left, but so does everyone else. I was poised to win, but Sam – who’d been somewhat bemused for most of the game – played a hand that allowed him to go first and he built buildings worth 10 points in his last round, stealing the win from me, and leaving Martin in third.

Sam 22
Andrew 16
Martin 13

By now Mission Red Planet had ended, and Joe’s prediction proved accurate

Matt 68
Gonz 48
Joe 39
Ian 28

They played Port Royal while we continued our game of Havana, and it ended with Joe, drawing card after card, hoping to steal third place from Matt, but also giving Ian hope that he might be able to overtake Gonz at the very last. Then Joe went bust, and all those hypotheticals came to nothing. Besides, Gonz could’ve bought something too: he had more money.

Gonz 12 (wins on money tie-breaker)
Ian 12
Matt 6 (wins on money tie-breaker)
Joe 6

Then, Joe, Martin and Gonz left. Us remaining four stayed for a “quick” game of Love Letter. Matt raced into an early lead, winning the first two rounds, but couldn’t get that last win to see him over the line. At one point it was Ian, me, and Matt all tied on 2, while Sam had none. He won the next round, giving him hope of an unlikely win. A short-lived hope, however.

Ian 3
Matt 2
Andrew 2
Sam 1

I lead on the form table by the thinnest of margins.

						Points
Andrew	2	2	1	1	4	10
Matt	2	3	1	2	2	10
Sam	3	1	3	1	2	10
Martin	3	2	1	1	3	10
Gonz	1	2	3	1	4	11
Ian	1	2	4	3	3	13
Will	2	4	2	3	5	16
Joe	4	3	4	4	2	17
Anja	2	5	5	5	5	22
Steve	4	5	5	5	5	24

The Resistance is Futile!

Tonight was the first "big" game night since my return from Japan, so I brought some Japanese Green Tea Kit Kats by means of celebration with me. Kit Kits are very popular in Japan because the Japanese pronounciation sounds very similar to "kitto katsu" which means "surely win" and they're often handed out at exam times, etc. I should've kept this in mind and made sure I ate them all before I arrived at Steve and Anja's. Instead, I shared them around. And I think Anja took two, which may have been the decisive factor.

The secret of success.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. We (me, Steve, Anja, Sam , Adam and Joe) began with a rare contribution to the communal games cupboard from myself in the shape of Tsuro Of The Sea (or Tots, as Joe calls it). This new version of the classic lacks the purity of the original and the dice rolling slows things down, but having several menacing dragons marching around the board is quite exciting and I think we all did well for lasting as long as we did. In the end, it was Adam who sent Anja down a path straight to a dragon, and took first place.

Dancing with dragons

1. Adam
2. Anja
3. Sam
4= Steve
4=Andrew
5. Joe

After this, we split into two groups of three. Sam and Steve were tempted by the gleaming newness of Mission: Red Planet, and Joe was happy to talk them through the rules. Adam, Anja and I went old school. Perhaps inspired by Chris' recent rediscovery, we went for El Grande.

I'll leave it for the others to fill in the gaps regarding their mission to Mars. But it seems like Joe managed to avoid Instructor's Curse this time.

Joe 51
Steve 43
Sam 40

Meanwhile, back in the olden days, El Grande was set up and our rusty memories of the rules were given a squirt of WD40 and put back into motion. And what a great game it is. All about bluffing and challenging and not annoying Anja early so she picks on you, using your bloody and bruised body as a stepping stone to greater heights. That's the mistake I made, and I paid for it in spades. At least that's how it felt.

But, in fairness, her tactic was the winning one as she sprang into first place in the final round, despite being in stoney last for the first half of the game. She admitted she wasn't sure how she managed to squeeze into first, and Adam seemed equally bemused, but the scoretrack doesn't lie.

Anja 150
Adam 149
Andrew 125

I'll be honest, I was very relieved that my happy memories of El Grande weren't the result of naive ignorance, and that it is a great game that still stands up today.

After this, the six of us joined together again for The Resistance. In this game, we secretly are assigned roles of resistance members or spies. We are then given five missions to complete. Spies can chose to ruin the mission, by slipping a Fail card into the deck of mission cards. The idea is to sniff out the spies quickly, allowing you to complete three missions before it's too late.

However, our innate suspicious natures came into play. I giggled, Adam was too quiet, Joe protested too much, and Anja didn't give herself a mission. All of these brought us into suspicion. In fact the only one who obviously wasn't a spy was Sam, whose air of bafflement and confusion was akin to James Stewart at his best. Steve was the only doubt.

I had him labelled as a spy, but no one listened to me, and thus it was that he was able to sabotage the third mission to take the victory with his partner-in-crime, Anja.

1= Steve
1= Anja
3= Andrew
3= Sam
3= Joe
3= Adam.

It's a game that's a lot of fun, and it's hard not to have a big smile on your face, spy or no-spy, while you're playing it. And it felt good to have a games night with more than three people there. Thanks everyone! Same time next week! Or earlier, if someone's wife is out for the evening?

On the form table, Steve leaps upwards and congratulations to Anja who takes first place for the first time. Meanwhile, Sam impresses everyone with a perfect score of sorts: all threes.

						Points
Anja	1	1	2	5	1	10
Adam	3	2	1	2	3	11
Steve	1	2	4	3	3	13
Joe	3	1	5	3	1	13
Andrew	3	3	4	1	2	13
Sam	3	3	3	3	3	15

Steampunk and steam trains

Tonight saw the return of an old regular: me! And as I walked to Joe's, I could help but think that all these firework displays were a bit over the top. I mean, I'd only been away two weeks.

Once again, three players were in attendance. The aforementioned me and Joe, and also Adam. From the pile of new games that Joe had got in a trade, we chose Mission: Red Planet. This is co-designed by Bruno Fiadutti, who also did Citadels, and the mechanic is similar. You chose which character you're going to play, and this also effects where in the order of play you go. But instead of building a medieval city, you are colonising Mars using some nifty looking Victorian technology.

You need to have most astronauts in an area to score points during a scoring round (of which there are three), and then at the end of the game you can add to your score with some bonus points from cards hidden in your hand. I enjoyed it. There are more rounds than there are cards, so at one point you will have to play the weakest card in your hand, which at least gets you all your cards back. I tried to avoid playing it until the last minute. I've no idea if that was a good idea or not.

During the game, Adam got picked on, and I thought I'd done enough to see off Joe too. But I reckoned without the wise one's wily ways. He edged past me thanks to his bonus points.

Joe 52
Andrew 50
Adam 44

It doesn't take long to colonize Mars, and we still had ample time for another game. We chose Ticket To Ride: Switzerland, the faster-moving but more claustrophobic version of the Europe-spanning game. Perhaps the biggest challenge in the game comes from when you get your routes to complete at the start of the game, and then you have to look for the towns in question without giving it away when you'd found one. My technique was to glance over the board casually as if it were a pile of magazines in a dentist waiting room. Don't know if anyone noticed.

I got lucky with my routes, and had completed them early on, which lead to me picking up more. And I got lucky with those too, so I got some more. By the end, I had nine routes cards in my hand, eight of which were complete. Joe had the longest route and seven route cards. Adam had six.

We totted up the points, and I sped off into first place, but Joe had a terrible discovery. A route that he spent ages in completing one end was not finished at the other. This cost him in points, and gave Adam a chance. Finally, as Joe's points for longest route were added, the magnitude of his mistake became clear.

Andrew 117
Adam 98
Joe 97

Joe may be cursing his lack of concentration on Ticket To Ride, but that doesn't change the fact that he now leaps up to first. Little else changes in this very sedate season so far.

						Points
Joe	3	1	2	2	1	9
Adam	2	3	1	1	3	10
Andrew	1	2	2	4	2	11
Sam	3	3	2	3	1	12
Anja	5	1	1	3	2	12
Steve	3	3	4	4	4	18