Spirit Games Wednesday Night - 2009

[Zarniwoop]

Wednesday night Board Gaming Returns for the new Year.

[Zarniwoop]

Tonight we played a game of Red November which is a fun game where you play gnomes trying to save you sub from destruction until you can get rescued. We managed to salvage several fires, floods and timed disasters. About a third of the way round the time track things started to go wrong, Phil's gnome feinted from having drunk grog which triggered several more events but then Sally and Myself also feinted causing more mayhem. Having survived being unconscious we had the Kraken to deal with, Philsy having the only Aqualung in the game left the sub and tried to defeat it but unfortunately failed leaving no-one else able to do anything about the disaster and so our crew failed.

Finally to end the evening we had a game of Marrakech which is another beautiful game. This was a close game where Phil eventually won with 44 but with Sally on 43, and Me on 42.

[carldjcross]

The highlight of last night on our table was Phil wandering past to the pub muttering that he had just passed out drunk  . Richard's face was a picture until he twigged.

After a quick two player Dominion (which I lost 30 to 33) Carol, Richard and myself had a go at Settlers: the Reunification Edition or whatever it's really called. All agreed it was pretty and actually the board wasn't as hard to read as I first feared it might be. A predetermined board meant that each of us had the resources the others wanted so we pretty much had to trade from the off. My only worry was it seemed the best strategy was to concentrate on one or at most two parts of the board leaving a lot of "dead" board which of course came up a lot in resource rolls. I certainly enjoyed it more than vanilla settlers. Richard won and I suspect Carol came second with a sleevefull of cards.

After that Richard and myself had a go at Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear. The game is a squad level WWII light wargame that has a really good score on BGG. I thought it was okay, I'm a frustrated minis wargamer really with no painting talent and not enough money to get someone else to do it so I'm always up for a wargame. Richard hated it and as it was getting late we agreed to give it up and go home. I would've won though! 

[EvilGinger]

That you where winning was probably a lot to do with why Richard "hated" conflict of heroes, as we all know quite how much he loves to win.

As for the war games figures I have to plug EvilGinger Miniatures a bit and say that I am quite happy to paint figures for people at very reasonable rates. I will have to bring in my Carthaginians for you to have a look at.

On the lighter side if you want a proper go at Conflict count me in next week.

   

[carldjcross]

[puts fingers in ears] no, no, I really haven't got masses of 15mm AWI and WWII Germans that NEED painting...I'm not listening, not listening....

And to be fair to Richard (although he clearly loves to win!) he hated the randomness of it and most of the good rolls were in his favour (including a nasty natural 12 rolled for his rifles assualting my Maxim gun).

[EvilGinger]

I would quite happily paint and base 15mm figures for 50p each but if you really cant afford it then I am not that evil as to case you for it just remember if you win the lottery or similar

As for Richard well he is my friend and a good sort but one of my cardinal vices is poking gentle fun at other peoples.

[carldjcross]

Thanks, I'll bear your very reasonable rates in mind if I ever get the urge to get the minis out again. To be honest at the minute I'm enjoying the fact that everything you need to play a boardgame comes in the box and the vast majority of the time spent "on the hobby" is playing and not some sort of preparation. But you never know I tend to be fickle with these things.

As for Richard well he is my friend and a good sort but one of my cardinal vices is poking gentle fun at other peoples.

Richard's big enough to take a little gentle poking I reckon, hang on that didn't quite come out right...

[Zarniwoop]

Tonight myself, Jim, Phil and Evilginger played a game of Carpe Astra a game of political intrigue where each player is attempting to win support from various guilds to become the ne3xt galactic emperor.

We had a very close game which, after a recount by the joint 3rd place candidates there was a slight change in order.The breakdown is as follows:

Jim 10 pts (All of the Priests - 6pts, 2nd Place Traders - 2pts, 2nd Place Engineers - 2pts)
Evilginger 9pts (1st Place Engineers - 4pts, 1st Place Political - 4pts, Joint 2nd place Militia - 1pt) Tie break with 2 credits
Me 9 pts (1st Place Trades - 4pts, 1st Place Settlers - 4pts, Joint 2nd Place Militia - 1pt)
Phil 8 pts (1st Place Militia - 4pts, 2nd Place Settlers - 2 pts, 2nd Place Political - 2pts)

Then we played Through the Desert which is about building camel trains between oasis in the desert. There are numerous ways to score points and in order to stand a chance of winning you need to score some in most of them. In the end Phil beat me and Evilginger convincingly leaving me in second place and Evilginger a valiant third.
 

[EvilGinger]

Through the desert was the point at which fatigue and Phils devious plot of plying me with beer designed to help him in Carpe astra finally  cut in. I am normally a lethal player of GO type games and through the desert has a large element of this with significant scores available from blocking off areas of the board.

[carldjcross]

While you were doing that Carol, Sally, Frog and myself were having a go at Lost Cities: the Board Game (hereafter known as LCtBG 'cos I can't be bothered to type that again frankly) before diving into a couple of games of Roboralley. I'd not played it before and as you all probably know, it's harder than it looks!

Anyway, back to LCtBG. If you know the card game version then you'll know that its a game all about hand management with the player trying to put down as many cards of the same suit in numbered sequence as you can. The risk/reward element comes from the low scoring suits scoring in negative points.

Liked the card game - compulsivly play it on Xbox Live! - and this is very similar but plays up to four and adds a few new elements like the board (obviously) and the ability to start the sequence high and count down. The Indy Jones meeples are nice and grabbing stuff on the board adds a welcome new level of tactics and tension.

We did manage to burn through the deck too quickly though and Sally was suspicious that we had missed something...and she was quite right. We were only making one discard pile when we should have been making one for each suit which would have tempted more of us to pick up cards from the discard and not from the draw pile. Oops!

One for the end of the night maybe when you don't want too much of a brain burner, speaking of which Le Harve was still raging when I left....

[EvilGinger]

I know It was, and I would like a go at that as I am very much an Agricola addict and if I do I will post a review.

[Zarniwoop]

Tonight we started off the evening with Moto Grand Prix which is a motorbike racing game. The game has a heavy carboard count as there is a huge selection of track pieces that allow you to construct a wide variety of tracks. It also comes with some very nice Bike models and player mats which have various dials on used for the more advanced rules. I have to say from the basic game (which we did for one lap to learn the ropes) to the more advanced rules it feels like a bike race and you do have to make choices on when/where to accelerate/brake and its just feels right. There are expert rules which bring in things like slipstreaming, up/down hill effects etc. There is a lot of replayability here what with the various versions of rules to play by, the modular track and the unique dice mechanic. You have the option to "flip" your dice (what dice and how many is determined by where you are on the track) this helps reduce a lot of the luck element and enables you some degree of control of how to position your bike. I really liked this game, being a non-biker, and I would definitely play this again.

We then finished off with a quick(ish) game of Bang! which is another classic where some people are trying to bump off the sherriff and his deputy and one is trying to bump everyone else off. At the start of the game only the sheriff is revealed.  Phil managed to reveal he was an outlaw early on causing a constant 2-way fight with himself and the sheriff which he eventually won.

[carldjcross]

We then finished off with a quick(ish) game of Bang! which is another classic where some people are trying to bump off the sherriff and his deputy and one is trying to bump everyone else off. At the start of the game only the sheriff is revealed.  Phil managed to reveal he was an outlaw early on causing a constant 2-way fight with himself and the sheriff which he eventually won.

  Noooo! How many times have I bought that on a Wednesday night only for you to sneak in a game when I was off L'Havreing?! No fair! [sulk mode off]

[carldjcross]

Speaking of which I was netted into a game of L'Havre when Richard and Peter were trawling for opponents (sorry, I'll stop the bad puns in case you think I harbour some sort of fetish for them  ).

Simon summed it up pretty neatly on the night as "Agricola with ships" and so it is; a game of worker placement and resource management all based around that smelly old French port.

There are enough twists to keep things interesting though. One of the most significant for me was that some action spaces can now be bought which means that if the other players want to use them they need to pay you rent for the privilege (a steal from Monopoly? Unthinkable!) which in turn means that the game is a little less multiplayer solo than its big brother.

The turn track, or as it shall forever be called after Richard's exasperated shouts the "MOVE YOUR SHIP, YOUR SHIP!" track is also a nice idea adding a semi random element to what resources come up each turn.

The theme is a little thinner than Agricola I thought. Who were these people that wanted feeding every turn anyway and why did they want so much more on turn 11 than on the first turn? It was never explained but we have only the French diet to blame I reckon.

The game itself was an grudge match between Richard and Peter (Irish, as has been previously noted in Simon's review) leaving Simon and myself to scrabble around for third place. A scrabble he won with (I think) 67 points to my 62 with Richard and Peter's score nearly double ours. Peter won by 6 or 7 points so it was close.

My mistake was not to buy enough ships early on which would have lessend my food debt and to assume everyone would want to use my Shipping Yard to export goods - they didn't.

Not half as complicated to play as it looks and well worth a dabble.

[carldjcross]

This week we were straight into a game of Moto GP which made it's début at club last week.

I think it's fair to say that some strong and forthright opinions where voiced around the table about this game, definitely a Marmite one.

It's not a fast a furious racer but even with 6 of us turns came around quickly enough although since the turn order changes with race position there was a little bit of “oh, is it me?” going on, often from me I have to confess.

For someone who has only ever “raced” on a videogame it felt realistic enough. Its all about the corners and trying to end your turn on a straight which gives you the maximum options to flip your dice to the opposite side and so to maximise your speed each turn.

We played the intermediate game and so missed out on the joys of slipstreaming and leaning through the corners (with real leaning minis! I won't repeat the lubricant conversation that this started...) which would have given another level of complexity and depth to the game but for a first game was still fun.  I wonder if the game would scale so someone used to the game could use the advanced rules and a child or non-gaming spouse could use the beginner or intermediate versions? Might be fun to find out.

As for the game itself it was a nail-biter right to the end. Darren, Richard and myself started out well but we soon found ourselves at the wrong end of the pack as Phil (winner), Vicky (a close second) and Simon took to the winners' podium.Although at least two of them would be pushing their bikes home afterwards.

Since everyone else on our side of the shop suddenly decided they needed an early night it was left to Phil, me and Rich to finish the night with a game of Hacienda (“th”s optional).

For what looked like an unassuming game I really liked this one and not just because I won for once!

It's an area control game with a big empty pampas plain in the middle of the board that is difficult to make inroads into but also, of course, holds the majority of VP scoring hexes.

I started off with three of the valuable pampas cards which gave me an early advantage but the game ended on a close 139 for Phil to my 146 mainly because I failed to stop Phil linking up two smaller areas and he managed to reach one more high scoring market than me. Rich had gone home earlier at what would turn out to be a reasonable time but we were still able to play around him easily enough.

The last turn ending cattle cards sat unplayed for at least 45 minutes as both of us tried to add as many score multipliers as we could which meant it was a horrific 12:30 (I can't say I wasn't warned though) by the time the game was finished. At least we finished before the table next door though...