Fingers on the Pulsar

Friday, and Andrew braved the freezing temperatures to join me at the house while Sally was out babysitting. With the boys already abed we got straight into the meat of the evening - Pulsar 2849.

can't rotate on blogger

This is a space exploration game that calls for Vangelis on the soundtrack. It uses action selection much like Yspahan - dice are rolled, and the dice you take dictate what actions you can do on a given turn. The actions themselves are relatively simple - you can use dice to move your ship around the board discovering planets or setting up gynodynes (:get points), advance your technologies a la Ascending Empires, or set up transmitters that boost you up the score track or give some other canapé-like-advantage.

double six: expensive

But when you take a die, the die you take affects your position on one of two tracks that affect the rather crucial turn order and income - the higher the die you take, the more likely it is you're falling back on one (or both) of the tracks. Low dice aren't useless, but if your strategy involves moving a lot around the board you don't really want to be picking up ones and twos.

The game comes with individual player boards for the advanced game, and maybe we'll use them next time: the rules explanation and game itself were both over in just over an hour! And that included us eating a lot of crisps, as well. However we were both playing with a freewheeling attitude and noted the potential for AP even without the player boards. Certainly a very accessible game though for when you have that Eclipse yearning but don't have three hours to play it in.

Sam - 100 and something
Andrew 90 something

Next up was another new game to Andrew: Tokyo Highway. I've so far lost to Stanley and Matt and I was determined to win this time, but the tactics still elude me, and Andrew collected a debut win when he got his last car down before me. Such a mad-looking confection though, and the only game I know that comes with tweezers.

tarmac

I thought Andrew might not want to take on any more new rules, but he was mad for it so we busted through Fields of Green, a cross between 7 Wonders and Carcassonne. Designed by someone called Vangelis. Like 7 Wonders you take a card each turn; like Carcassonne you add it to an expanding world (a farm, in this case) in front of you. Water feeds crops, crops feed livestock, livestock make money. It's SO REAL.

Except Buildings score points.

water!

I don't imagine will be bumping 7 Wonders from the pantheon any time, but it's a sweet enough game. Despite Andrew outscoring my previous two games v Stan, I managed to dig for victory:

Sam: 52
Andrew: 46

And with our farms happily established, highways built and epic silver die tumbling across deep space... we were done.

Play it again (and again at) Sam(’s)

Under a chilly cloudless Bristol sky, six gamers braved the weather to congregate at Sam's house for the week's regular gaming meet.

We started as a group of five (Sam, Joe, Ian, Matt and me) so we whiled away the minutes until Martin arrived with a quick game of Cartegena. This is a simple game of maximising your inadequately small hand of cards to get your band of pirates out of jail and into a boat.

It soon became apparent that positional play was everything. Knowing when to shoot ahead and when to fall back is key, and Sam had a better idea of when than the rest of us.

Sam: all 6 pirates escape
Joe 4
Ian 2
Andrew 2
Matt.0

Martin had arrived mid-game and once we were done guiding pirates down tunnels, we split into two groups of three. Ian, Sam and Martin chose The Quest For Eldorado, a Knizia game of racing through various types of terrain.

I didn't really follow it, since I was busy learning the rules to Azul, another new game. In this game, players take turns picking up tiles to fill their five by five grid. But in order to get a tile onto the grid, you have to fill up a row (of 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 tiles) with all the same colour. If you pick up tiles that won't go on a row, they count against you as negative points.

It had, for me, just the right amount of analysis paralysis. Thoughtful but not an ordeal. In the first game Joe, the only one who'd played before, won with a strong final round.

Joe 82
Andrew 52
Matt 44

The Quest For Eldorado was still being quested. I remember, in the early stages, seeing Ian firmly in last, apparently distracted by every cave he went past.

But I was soon consumed by a second game of Azul. This game was far more combative. At least, that's how it felt to me. Matt, though, seemed to have spent the first game learning, since he scored well in end-of-game bonuses and pushed Joe into second place.

Matt 97
Joe 88
Andrew 60

The Quest For Eldorado had ended long before we had, and Ian's early obsession with caves was paying dividends, as he was now in a strong first place. Sam appeared to have stalled mid-game while Martin ran Ian a respectable, but very definite, second place.

Ian
Martin
Sam

In the interim, while they waited for our second game of Azul to end, they played three rousing games of Eggs Of Ostrich. Each one remarkable for the cries of anguish from Martin, unable to predict his opponents wily ways.

Game one ended...

Sam 17
Martin 8
Ian 6

Followed by...

Ian 8
Sam 7
Martin 5

And finally...

Sam 7
Ian 3
Martin 3

And so, with the rueful observation that they had become worse at the game the more they played, all six of us were together again.

However, there was no appetite for a big six player. Instead, we simply swapped ends of the table, with the Eldorado Questers taking up the Azul challenge. Me, Joe and Matt decided to play Ra as our approximately Azul-length game.

Matt, though, merely continued as he had during Azul. He had a poor first round that gave me a glimmer of hope, but while I built up my Nile and Joe went for buildings and civilizations, Matt played for buildings, pharaohs and got the sun tile bonus.

Matt 56
Joe 40
Andrew 34

Their game of Azul had ended

Ian 56
Martin 54
Sam 40

They even had enough time to squeeze in a little NMBR9. Martin's quote "Once you get a hole, you're fucked" proved to be an accurate assessment of his situation.

Sam 90
Martin 56
Ian 47

And so ended the evening for most. Joe was offering lifts to the Eastonites, so they sped off and I was happy to call it a night at 10.40.

But Sam and Matt had one more game inside them. I got a text from Sam as I was getting ready for bed, telling me that Matt had beaten him at Tokyo Highway “by a car.” I’ve no idea what that means, but I hope to try it on Friday.

Until then, it’s good night from me, and it’s good night from them.