Beer & Pretzels 22 - Games Played

[Zarniwoop]

Day One of B&p 22 Sat 14th
Well we arrived early and grabbed a table in the alcoves.

After providing some assistance carrying stuff into the venue, we grabbed some coffee and discussed what to play.
In the end Carole, Myself, Gary, Vince and Dave decided to go with Kingsburg, which is an excellent little game. You compete over winning the support of various advisor's to earn resources to build or defend your province. We tried one of the expansions with this game, which gives the players a larger selection of buildings to choose from allowing for different strategies.
This was a closely fought game, despite me losing a battle losing me the Farms bought the previous round, I stayed up with the pack. The final scores were: Me - 29, Caz - 24, Vince - 37, Gary - 31 and Dave - 33

We followed this with Speicherstadt a bidding game with a very interesting bidding mechanic. This is one of those games where the learning to play is relatively easy but mastering the wining tactics takes a little longer. Players compete to get and complete contracts, goods, firemen and merchants to help sell their goods. All these add to your VP at the end of the game. This is extremely fun to play easy to pickup but hard to master. Final scores: Caz - 41, Melissa - 34 and Me - 28.

Next on the play list was Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas this is a game of spacial awareness. Each player has to use a series of spells and/or action cards to move/rotate walkways in order to create paths to collect their books of power. There are also several spells that can aid in hindering the other players, as always this was a close run thing with everyone hunting for their last book when I won but it was close game down to right cards on hand.

Our next game was Magnum Sal players compete to extract salt and sell to the market or complete the kings orders. Players start with a limited amount of men which they send down the mine or apprentice to sops to earn income. There are several buildings that provide additional actions that can be taken, also players can buy tools and sets of these earn an increasing amount of money at the end of the game. Money is what what players need to win the game, we started with 4 players but after several replacement players we finally got reduced to 3 and so the final scores were: Me - 103, Caz - 98 and Frog - 59.

Finished off the day with Cargo Noir this is a beautiful looking game from Days of Wonder. This is essentially a bidding game but you have to acquire cargo to trade in for VP Cards of differing values plus some special cards that allow you to have additional ships, extra warehouse space or Syndicates that earn you money if you have to withdraw from a bid. This is a really fun game and is getting a lot of table time. Final scores: Paul - 100, Frog - 80 and Matt - 110.

[Zarniwoop]

Day Two of B&P - 22 Sun 15th
Well we arrive for another day of gaming and start of the day with a game of Infinite City this is a really fun tile laying game for up to 6 players. Players lay down tiles into the city, placing one of their markers on, and follow the instructions on the tile. Scores are made by having 3 or more of your tokens in a chain linked orthogonally, certain tiles also have a point value and finally the person with tokens on the most tiles with chains on them scores that number. The various tiles allow you to shift, replace or destroy other tiles and other manner of mayhem. A great game with bags of appeal, final scores: Gary - 21, Melissa - 15, Paul - 10, Caz - 13, Richard - 11 and Tony 12

We then played Merchant and Marauders this is a fantastic game but takes a while to play. We all seemed to go for the full merchant option, though from the start we seemed to hit a lot of rough sea events making travel between ports a little fraught with danger. The scores throughout the game were quite close, people managing to complete missions, verify rumours and trade in goods of high demand all earning glory. We lost a Captain to the first Pirate battle but the game does allow for the player to pick a new Captain and get back into the fray. Several rules were missed/overlooked as is usually the case, this being only my 3rd game. Several players were close to a win but final rumour plus a hidden stash of cash won me the game.

Played another game of Speicherstadt, a popular game over the weekend. Luke - 30, Me - 27 and Roy - 24.

Finished the day off with a couple games of Nuts! this is a quick, fun game about squirrels and nuts what can be wrong with that. Always amusing, a good little filler.