Print Page - Spirit Games Wednesday Night

6th Jan 2010

Our first wed night of the new year so we got to try out some new games from christmas not yet played:

First up was Pony Express (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4843), an amusing little race game based on the Wild West. The idea is to be the first to deliver mail to Sacaremento. Most of the squares on the board have a little symbol which when landed on during movement have an action (Gaining action cards, gain gold, fight indians, visit the saloon or train station). If you land on the same square as one other player you have a duel or if there are multiple players you have a gamble. The basic mechanic is rolling a set of poker dice (blind) and bluffing or not about what hand you have which will then determine your movement. Someone near you can call your bluff but if they get it wrong you are sent to jail (lay down your piece).
Duel's involve placing a marker on the board and then your playing pieces on opposite corners of the board. You then, marble style, flick dice at your opponents piece, you have three shots each if you knock out your opponent they must pay you half their gold or if you hit an innocent bystander you go to jail.
If you have to fight the indians it is a similar mechanic to the duel, except that for each indian you known down you get 1 gold and for everyone left standing you have to move back one square.
Finally when you reach the Sacramento you have 3 mailboxes, you start on the first and then each subsequent turn you move onto the next. IF you make it to the last mailbox before anyone else reaches Sacramento you win the game otherwise you have a duel to the death or someone is arrested for shooting an innocent.
This was great fun and look forward to playing this again, it is a good start or end of session game. This game was won by Phil.

We then went on to play Letter of Marque (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4817) which is another bluffing kind of game. Each player has a set of Cannon Cards, treasure cards and Ships in thier colour 2 of the 5 ships have a cannon marker on the base meaning the ship is protected. At the start each player shuffles their treasure cards and places one out with a ship on it. Each round the players can either collect a ship still at sea, turn over another treasure card and place a ship on it or use one of 3 cannon cards to attack another players ship.

If you collect a ship the treasure card gets put on you bounty pile the ship is removed from the game, if you place another treasure card out you place one of your remaining ships on it. Finally if you decide to attack another players ship you place your cannon card next to that ship and look at its base, if it is blank you grab the treasure to you pile and discard the cannon card to the box, if it has a cannon card on it the ship is protected and the defending players claims your cannon card as treasure.
This was a great little game and should be played again soon.
Sally won this with a good margin: Sally:37, Paul:26, Phil:25, Carole:22 and Philsy:20

Finally, as we had to leave early, we played Incan gold (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4466). This is always a fun little game and this was true to form. The final results were: Sally:51, Phil:51, Carole:16, Paul:12 and Philsy:0

Wednesday 13th January (a bit chilly)

So I made it, trekking through the snowy wastes of Tamworth, along the fabled A38 pass to finally reach the promised land of Spirit Games where there’s always a free chair and ne’er is heard a discouraging word. Or at least not until someone brings out Power Grid.

But no grids involved tonight, just poker dice and a simple single track board. Looking at the track that wound it way from Sacremento to Gulch (or some such) I noted the Indians standing impassively on the bluff. “We’ll be meeting later.” I thought.

Movement in Pony Express (yes there is a point to this purple prose) is easy, you literally make it up as you go along or for as long as the other players are willing to let you. Now, I don’t play poker, I can’t play poker so I was having to use the instructions to plan my moves but I’m sure that would come in time.

Carol and Frog made early and effective use of the railways to romp three quarters of the way home in the early stages. Frog managed to scupper himself somehow (Indians?) and I managed to scupper Carol with a particularly evil lasso card which pulled her all the way back [evil chuckle]. Paul, yes this was his game, languished at the back pretty much the whole time while I was somewhere in the middle.

Frog got first shot at the Indians and proved himself an effective shot although nothing could beat Paul’s Pele-esque banana shot, too bad it went around the intended targets. My first shots weren’t so much off the board as nearly out of the shop. Glasses where moved at one point.

The game ended with Sally and Carol duelling for the win. Carol shot first and in a scene reminiscent of all the best 70s westerns killed us all including Sally, her intended target. Sadly for Carol Sally had been holding on to a “Miss” card which meant that as she was still standing and not in prison for the Great Middle of the Board Massacre gave her a clear win.

After that I gathered up my victuals, saddled my horses and pausing only to wipe sand from my boots hit the road home.

Wednesday Night - 20/01/2010

Players: Zarni, Oscar, Sally, CrazyFrog + friend ^-^
Started the night off with Turso as it's a very nice simply game to teach new players due to its simple game mechanics.
Sally was the winner.

Players: Zarni, Oscar, CrazyFrog, Sally, Phil.
Then moved onto Factory Manager which I'm starting to like alot, its quicker than PowerGrid to play.
All the players tried different strageyies, including a very strange route where Phil's electricty bill went through the roof.
The game was setup so the enrgy cost increases were 0 for the first 2 rounds, then slowly increased.
I got not idea which method I tried, except to keep the electricity bill low if possible and the production of boxes and pallets equal throughout the 5 rounds.

Score:
CrazyFrog: 292
Phil: 262
Sally: 259
Zarni: 254
Oscar: 209

Wednesday 20th January.

Players: Peter, Richard and Carl.

We started off with my new bargain shop find: Clue(do) Express.

A quick-fix Clue(do) game that strips away all the gubbins that people don't like about the game and especially the moving about the board bit. Leaving a game of rolling dice, clever deductions and Phoneix Wright style j'accuse.

Richard won the game by some way but was feeling ebullient enough from a professional as well as
gaming success to share his secret formula with us. Which will come in handy when I play it again and play it again I will since it does everything that it's big brother does but in about 10-15 mins which is just about right for Clue.Do.

After that we were joined by Phillsey to play Anno 1701. Ostensibly based on the ultra-hardcore German PC (and now Wii and DS game) but really a very close relative of Settlers of Catan. As well as building up your colony on your very own board you're sending your ships out into the nearby archipelago to found new colonies and since its Settlers potentially gain new resources.

1701's version of the robber is the dastardly pirate who appeared to be following me around which was tonight's excuse for loosing so badly. Peter (Stuyvesant for the purposes of this game of course colonial history fans) was the winner.

Wednesday 3rd Feb

Game: Rush n' Crush

What's it like? Car Wars/Battlecars crossed with F-Zero. Race game with weapons.

How long did it take? 1 hour (1 lap game).

Players: Sally, Phillsey and myself.

Having tempted Sally in with the prosepct of a Smallworld we switched tack at the last minute and went with new-to-me Rush n' Crush.

Apart from sounding like a mid-90s arcade game I'd heard good things about it from a couple of people. I'd also heard that it's best not to let Phillsey get too far ahead so that was the sum total of my game plan.

True to form Phillsey sped away from the starting blocks at speed using a good part of his available boost points to leave Sally and myself in his wake.

After a small altercation at the back we decided that Phillsey was the bigger threat (being about a quarter of the board ahead of us at one point) and concentrated on catching up with him.

Reckless driving (and squandering of my handling points) got me so far but in the end I hit the same nasty corner that Phillsey had glanced off but full force and at speed leaving only a column of smoke and a regretful whisper on the breeze.

With Phillsey home dry Sally deftly chicaned around the deadly last corner and would have easily come in next turn.

A fun, simple race game that would need more strategy to play and lead to some interesting choices if we played more than a single lap.

Wednesday 17th February.

Players: Paul, Carol, Phillsey, Sally and me.

We started the evening with Risk Express. After playing and liking Clue Express and failing to resist this out of print game on eBay we gave it a go.

No board in this dinky version but instead a number of cards representing countries or groups of countries. Printed on each are a number of symbols (infantry, cavalry, artillery and a general) in a number of “battle lines” only one of which can be filled per roll. Battle lines are filled by simply placing matching dice on the card. And that's it. Once you've chosen your attack there are no more decisions to make you just keep rolling until you've filled the lines and take the card or until you run out of dice since you discard one every time you fail to fill a line.

Player interaction comes in the form of attacking cards in other player's territory however once a continent is complete it's unassailable.

To be fair Risk was never a stranger to dice and this version does a pretty good job of simulating it's bigger brother which will also tell you if you'll like it or not. Just like Risk this is often random and encourages you to push your luck a little too far. A couple of us broke our armies on Australia before it fell to Sally and was of course then safe from attack.

Sally won (I think! I've entered it onto the Geek which is now down) and there was a decent amount of interaction as cards needed to fill sets where passed around the table.

And so on to Endeavor.

From early on it was obvious Phillsey was building up a strong lead with his large army but it was all reasonably peaceful until the endgame where both European and colonial territories changed hands several times to make those all important scoring chains.

Speaking of chains those sneaky abolitionists managed to emancipate the slaves that Paul and I had invested in leaving us floundering at the back.

Phillsey won with a very respectable 64 with Carol coming in second with 49.

24th February 2010

We started the evening off with a game of Infinite City (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4873) which is a great little game, the rules are light as each tile has clear instructions written on them. Each player starts with a hand of 5 tiles and they take it in turns to place down a tile into the city, placing one of their tokens onto it and following the instructions written on it. PLay continues until one person has used all their tokens when play continues until everyone else has had one last turn or the fifth power station is placed when the games ends immediately. Players score 1 point for each of their tokens in a group of 3 or more plus any score on a card they are on. They is also a bonus score for having the most tiles with chains on. This plays really well, is easy to pick up and the artwork and tiles are superb. I managed to win this game, but my excuse is that it is technically Carole's copy not mine :)

We followed this up with a game of Ad Astra (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4647) I always like playing this game there is a lot going on and plenty of replayability. That said I had a particularly bad game with more than my fair share of bad choices :(, Philsy on the other hand had a really good run and romped home to win, however the rest of us were not too far behind.. honest...

3rd March 2010

We started tonight off with a game of Blue Moon City (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2936) which is always a classic, we used the mini exanpsion tiles in tonights game which I had managed to finally get my own copy. They add some new special powers usable when on the tile throughout the game. I found that this extra powers were well balanced within the game and placing the times at the four corners meant that was more incentive to explore the outer edges which helped keep the game flowing. I really enjoyed this and Sally ended up a resounding winner of this game.

We then had a quick game of Loot (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4689) whilst we waited for the other game to finish. This is a lovely little game which is quick to learn and play with superb artwork and excellent quality cards. Sally was the outright winner of the first game of this, we had a second round where I managed to win but it was a lot closer.

Finally we rounded off the evening with a "quick" game of Citadels (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=476) this is a lovely little game which has some lovely artwork on the cards and is quick to pickup and play. After a long game Phil was the Winner but the scores were extremely close (Phil:29, Andy:26, Paul:26, Sally:25, Carole:23)

Wednesday 10th March

First, an apology: apparently I've been missing the 'e' in Carole's name, an unforgivable omission which I'm going to put right straight away.

Tonight's happy bunch of gaming elves were: Paul, Frog, Sally, me and e' it's Carole (sorry).

We started off with a four player Scrappers which was always going to be interesting since there were five of us leaving Sally and myself to make some sort of weird Beeblebroxian composite creature; shudder at the very thought of it.

You know we really should stop being so nice to each other. We spent most of the game politely grabbing the bits we needed until someone won. Only in the closing stages of the second game was there any takethatery going on. Frog won the first game (and didn't tell us until we were half way through the next turn) and I won the second after Sally had wandered off to interrogate the computer. These two facts may not be related.

Sator (etc) was our second game this evening. This is always a close game and I'm always surprised it's taken 2 hours. You always just on the verge of winning if you can only move that little piece there. Of course by the time your turn comes around again that piece is either on the other side of the board, wedged in a corner or has been destroyed entirely. Frustratingly good fun.

Paul came close until we all ganged up on him leaving the way clear for Carole to execute a daring spell enhanced jump between platforms to win.

No session report from me last week since I was playing a practice Star Wars Minis game with Frog in which Darth Vader met a very uncomfortable end indeed. But that really is another story.

Wednesday 17th March

Tonight we started off a couple of games of Bucket King an old classic, Frog and then Philsy being the winners of these.

We then moved onto a one-lap race of Rush & Crush, this is a really neat little racing game. After quite a lot of pushing and shoving, mine laying etc. there was a collective burn everything and push for the finish line. Car after car crashed and burned until in the end Sylvia won.

We ended the evening with Franks Zoo another classic game, always fun playing this one, a set collecting game where you need to collect certain animals to avoid penalties. One player starts by placing a card and then each other player plays more of the same animal than the last player or trumps it with another animal(s) indicated on the placed card(s). The last player to place cards grabs the pile once everyone else has passed. This was won by Philsy....

Wednesday 31st March

Apparently Andy was dying to try out Sector 41 and hadn't as yet managed to persuade his family to do so. Good job Paul, Frog and myself where there to oblige then.

I do like a good space exploration game and it's surprisingly difficult to find one. Lots come close (Dust, Galactic Emperor) but fall somewhere along the way, often, it seems to me on the (s)lightness of the game/time it takes to play axis. No such trouble here. 2 hours it said on the box and 2 hours it was rules explanation included.

The board is randomly laid out using tiles with various galactic features marked on them, face down of course to be explored as the players send out their ships into the inky blackness. The game's USB is the ability to bend space by pushing a row of tiles up one tiles worth hopefully moving the dilithium crystals (thems your points then) nearer to you and/or further away from everyone else.

My first impressions where that there's an awful lot of luck in this game. Not so much of a problem since this is quite a short game. Both Andy and myself fell foul of early asteroid belts and I was beginning to think this was a celestial Snakes and Ladders with it's miss a (actually 2 or 3) turns and various bits and bobs that zapped you around the place.

We made up for our early bad luck by finding a couple of good point seams near to our bases and ended the game first and second but I'm still not convinced it was down to a large dollop of luck.

And on to a “quick” game of Carson City before going home.

If this game were being pitched to Hollywood execs it would be Puerto Rico meets Hacinda. Probably.

Players compete to own packets of land and build various point scoring buildings on them. Scores are multiplied by nearby buildings or geography.

Since this is a western themed game you can of course fight over the spaces using revolver counters and a good ole dice roll.

To be honest I can't remember that much about it now (it was last week after all and it was very, very, very late by the time we'd finished) beyond than two salient points:

1)It was very good.
2)I completely cocked up the last turn and threw the victory Andy's way.

Future plans for this are to start the evening with this and end it with a suitably silly Bang if enough gunslingers can be found.

Wednesday 7th April

There's been a lot of buzz about a game themed around evolving organisms these last few weeks. This isn't it and I haven't played it yet (whatever it's called) but Usuruppe or Primordial Soup is sufficiently like it to jog Richard's memory to bring this.

This is a fairly abstract game where each player attempts to feed his organisms so that they can thrive. To be full each organism must eat one cube of each other colour in play at which point it happily poohs out two of it's own colour.

It's a lot more complicated than that of course; for a start the organisms float around in the primordial soup pretty much at the mercy of the currents. As the game evolves so do your organisms gaining Cosmic Encounter style rule breakers like being able to move at will or only having to eat one less of the colours than everyone else.

Richard started the game doing his usual thing of building machines, keeping back resources to buy higher value genes as early as he could. Peter however decided to carry a big stick and go all out for aggression buying the "eat other players" gene early on. I did mention that there is often only one of each gene didn't I? Phillsey and I went for altogether more peaceful powers.

Peter did for my chance of getting anywhere near the top of the score track by eating several of my organisms in the middle game putting me forever behind, not helped by the essentially reactive powers I'd chosen. Richard was snapping at Peter's heels with Phillsey making a late break for the top but the billy goats gruff strategy worked well leaving Peter comfortably ahead at the end.

This is a very gamers game with lots of thinking but surprisingly few choices. A pleasant enough way to spend the evening but not one I'll be asking to play again anytime soon.

Wednesday 7th April

Tonight we had a game of MagBlast (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2962) which claims to be a 10-20min game but more realistically that is per person that plays!! This was at Pete's request as he had managed to escape from the computers this week.

After a few early culls (myself included) it was a fight between Phil, Carole, Pete and Sally, having pulled together a quite awesome fleet Pete had to bail so I took over for a brief period, followed by Phil after his elimination by the Girls. It was then a straight duel between the girls, where I believe Sally was victorious.

Whilst the Mag-Blast epic continued I took some of the vanquished into a game of Krysis (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4853) which I am really getting to like a lot. I still have only played the basic game but at the moment there is enough gameplay and variety there is no great compulsion to try out the variants. Each player runs a team of extreme archaeologist's trying to get as many gems and artifacts out of a mine as possible. Sometimes stealing them from opponents campsites, selling some to the bank for victory or carrying them to home for safety. Always a fun little game, which is not too complicated and plays quite quickly.

Wednesday 14th April

This week Richard bought along his copy of Dominion: Alchemy (http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/66098/dominion-alchemy) the latest expansion for this card game. As usual the quality of the artwork is of a high standard and the gameplay sufficiently different to make this an interesting addition to this line of games.

You know have a Potion treasure card which is required in order to purchase certain cards, there is also the addition of new cards with some very interesting actions available. I will not go into these as quite frankly most of them I have already forgotten as they was a lot going on :) Suffice to say that I enjoyed this very much and would definitely like another go of it sometime, if only to try and get a higher score as I did rather appallingly in my game, Richard having gotten a fantastic combination of cards going scoring him most of the Province cards and leaving him with quite a significant winning score...

After this we played an older but still classic game "Thurn and Taxis (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2899)" which Richard wanted to learn how to play, so after talking through the basics we got started. Both myself and Carole have played this game a lot as we really like this game, but despite this I managed to make some disastrous choices meaning I wasted my first two turns. I then spent the rest of the game trying to catch up, which I did not too bad a job of but Richard had made a firm grasp of some of the strategies of the game and forced the end game leaving Carole and me with nothing we could do on our last turns. Needless to say Richard won...

Wednesday 28th April

Tonight we had another go at Carson City (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4867) but this time starting early so we could have a proper go :)

We had Phil, Sally, myself, Andy and Carole this time and having played before had a slightly better idea of what to go for. Various different approaches were made either grabbing points early or land etc. After a pretty good game where we had a lot more skirmished than before at key moments in the final round there was a lot of points added to the score for everyone......

The Winner (by only 1 point) was myself, then Carole, followed by Sally, Andy then Phil (? not sure if that is the correct order for the last 3).

A fantastic game which I will always be up for playing anytime as there is enough going on for it to remain interesting and there is always the variants that we have still to try and a mini-expansion.

Finally we played Infinite City (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4873), another classic that is always good to play. I seem to have lost my mojo on this one and I never really contended for this game, the eventual winner was Andy with Carole another close 2nd

Wedensday 5th May

First up tonight was an old Knizia game, Stephenson's Rocket which turns out not to be your typical railway game of shifting cubes around the board but something altogether more Kniziaish.

There are many ways to score in this game, oh so many ways; being the first to join towns, having the most stock in a given railway, having built stations along the way and probably a few more I've forgotten. Thing is if there are that many ways to score how come I consistently failed to score pretty much anything at all?

Some of the blame has to fall on other rail barons bypassing my preferred towns, something that Phil suffered particularly badly from despite peppering the South East with more stations than Connex South Central. Some of it almost certainly was down to me not "getting" the rules.

It all felt very abstract and again, Kniziaish and isn't a game I'd rush to play again.

Richard won by some stretch having merged a few lines forcing other players to discard valuable stock. Personally I was surprised Andy didn't score more (although he came second) since he seemed to be scoring consistently throughout the game. Those poker chips can be hard to read sometimes.

Sadly Andy's luck didn't get any better in our next game, Pirate's Cove where he suffered the longest streak of bad dice rolls known to man. And it had all started so well for him too since he managed to keep out of the firing line for the opening vollies as Phil, Tim and myself tore each other to pieces.

It was a close game but I managed to edge a victory :o by forcing Tim to soften up the Royal Navy for me allowing me an easy couple of points. The last turn as always ended up with a jamboree on Pirate Island.

Light and full of luck Pirate's Cove was the perfect game to end the evening on as we all yo-ho-hoed our way home.

Wednesday 5th May 2010

We started the evening playing Chelsea (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4792) I have to admit I liked the idea of this game but failed to play it very well (hmm shocker ;D ). The final scores were: Carole 28, Sally 25, Frog played 3 and Me with .................. 0

We then played Ad Astra (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4647) I really like this game it is always good fun and each game is very different. This was quite a good scoring game but Philsy did romp home with 64, Carole with 49, Me with 45, Sally with 42 and Frog with 39.

We rounded the evening off with an Infinite City (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4873) another fantastic little game that is firm favourite with our little group. Sally won this with 19, Carole 18, me with 9 and Phil with 8.

26/05/10 – Wednesday Night

(http://spiritgames.co.uk/image/comgames/4308.jpg) (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4308)
Roll Through The Ages
Pete: 30, Andy: 20, Phil: 16, Frog: 13
I liked this game very much and need to buy it. I’ve seen it played but this was my first game.
It’s got a Yahtzee mechanic to the dice rolling and based on the result you can do things on the scoring sheet to get VP’s at the end. On the way disasters happen reducing your score and you have to feed your population every turn (some don’t and let them starve). Great game I want to play again next week.

(http://spiritgames.co.uk/image/comgames/4616.jpg) (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4616)
Ra The Dice Game
Sally: 33 Frog: 23
Another Yahtzee type game, where you’re rolling to score in different areas, with a Ra marker keeping track of the scoring and rounds, This event is control via the dice symbol which you cannot reroll and a +/- 2 position movement during scoring to help balance out the players.

(http://spiritgames.co.uk/image/comgames/3578.jpg) (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=3578)
Elk Fest
Winner: Sally
A real easy and fun game using no dice so that’s a winner for me. Object of the game is to get your moose from one side of the river to the other, using stepping stones which you flick into position then your moose can move. If your moose lands in the water or gets knocked over when stones are flicked, he stands up and your go is over. You are allowed during your turn to flick any 3 stones and move the moose anytime during.

Wednesday 19th May 2010

Tonight we played a game that we were told had to be part of our gaming experience... That game was Junta (http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2631).

This was Philsy's game and this was a a full evening game, each player represents a ruling family in a fictitious banana republic. Each family tries to gain power and money. You can either accept the current El Presidente payments or decide (in the right circumstances) to start a coup.Each family can try and assassinate another family preventing them from cashing their loot but only if they send the assassin to the correct location chosen from 5 possibilities.

Whilst this was a fun game in places it just did not really appeal to me, I found I it just a tad too long and not really engaged with the gameplay. I can see why it would appeal to some just afraid this is one of those few games that do not appeal to me.

The scores were: Me - 22, Phil - 20, Carole - 11 and Philsy - 8

Wednesday 2nd June 2010

We started the evening off with a game of Dragonriders (http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2641&no=2641) which is a really good looking game of racing dragons ;)
A pretty looking game with dragon mini's what more do you need to say ;).

Frog showed off his prowess at dragon racing to romp home as the winer of this game.

We then had a quick game of Infinite City (http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4873) a firm favourite of our group. A really easy game to teach but hard to master (well for some of us), a tile laying game where each tile tells you what to do. The artwork on this is superb. IN this game Carole romped home with a score of 27, with Sally on 18 and me finishing with 16.

Finally we had a go at Marrakech (http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4021) another favourite, I mean a game with real mini carpets whats not to like :)

The scores for this were Sally - 51, Carole - 48, Me - 37 and Phil - 28.

Wednesday 16th June 2010

Carpa Astra

Players: Phil, Andrew and me.

We started the evening with Andrew and myself looking and feeling bemused, not that there's anything wrong with Phil's rules descriptions just that it's an odd game to describe. You'll be pleased to know we felt much better after our first turn.

The game started as I suspect it often does with everyone being nice to each other, quietly collecting resources and keeping themselves to themselves. One or two clever clogs managed to grab both cards in a single turn and turn in a bonus or two so all was going swimmingly.

But eventually the gloves had to come off and they did so in spectacular style. I started things by nabbing Andrew's fifth money counter robbing him of a nice bonus at which point Phil and Andrew fell upon me in a pincer movement, mainly I suspect because they were too far away to slander each other.

It's a real disadvantage to go first in this game as I was forced to stand by while Andrew and Phil slandered my vps away in front of my eyes leaving me in last place, followed by Andrew and with Phil winning by a clear 4 point margin.

I'd also played a game of Dungeon Lord with Andrew, Peter and Richard a couple of weeks ago but it was sooooooo long ago I've forgotten all about it apart from how dismally I did, much worse in fact than on my previous and first play. Hmmm, I've not forgotten at all I've just blanked it from my mind in self defense.

Wednesday 9th June 2010

We started off the evening playing Airships (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=3751) this was a very enjoyable game and the components are of excellent quality, something Queen Games (http://www.queen-games.de) seems to do very well. Each player takes it in turn to grab items from an available list, there are up to a set of three in various colours, which match slots on the players board. Each item has a target value you need to reach on one or more dice of different colours. If you meet or exceed the dice cost you can claim the item. If you already have one there it is discarded and replaced with the new one.

Each item grants different things, some of which are additional dice of different colours. You can also build Airships using the same mechanic and these give VP's, also some of the items also give VP's. It played really well and provides enough depth to make it interesting and warrant futher play.

We then had a go at a game of Montego Bay (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4436) Once again this is a Queen Games (http://www.queen-games.de) production, the pieces are of excellent quality as is all the artwork. The board is maybe a tad larger than it needed to be.

The board is 2-sided which side you play depends on the number of players, this seems to be a new trend in games and is very welcome. Each player controls 2 dock workers and during the game there is an option to hire a 3rd called "Lazy Jack". There is a playing order track and each players docker has a corresponding marker to place there (at random) this then determines the play order. Each player has a hand of cards for each docker with values 1-5, they select one card for each and starting with the first docker on the track they are moved the number of spaces indicated on the card. If another player is on that space they are kicked to the space opposite, if that is filled the players piece is moved back to the next empty square.

In the middle is a series of rooms with barrels in, some are broken, some have coins etc. If after the movement they contain barrels the player places that many barrels on one of the ships in port, if they contain broken barrels they have to be removed from a ship.

Play continues in this manner until all players have emptied there warehouses, if a ship is filled it sails and is scored, at the end of the round the ship is port 1 sails regardless of whether it is empty or part filled and scored. The ships are replaced and the turn track is shifted down one so the last player piece now starts the next round.

Halfway through the game this turn order is randomised again and play then continues until there is only 3 ships during part of the round. I really enjoyed this, yes there is a bit or randomness here but there is also some chance of strategy. On the whole a really enjoyable game that I would certainly play again.

To round the evening off we played one of the classics Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1333) I really like this game and it always goes down well. Suits 2-5 players and plays reasonably quickly, this is a tile laying game where you have a bank of meeples and a couple of huts which you place along with some of your tiles. You score for Gathering in the Forests, Fishing the rivers or hunting in the fields. The fields option loses you that man until the end of the game, the others once completed score and return your man for use elsewhere during the game. You also have huts which score for all the fish on the river system you control with it at the end of the game. Normally you can not occupy the same areas as another player but if separate areas merge during the course of the game then you will share the points. This is always fun to play and I fear I do not play it nearly enough as was reflected in the final scores:

Phil: 116, Andy: 102, Carole: 76 and Me: 54

I really need to work on my playing skills, this losing every game I own is getting harsh :'( mind you it was late so maybe I just needed more +:coffee=+::coffee:

Wednesday 16th June 2010

Tonight we broke out Stoneage (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=3874) which we have not played for a little while. This really is just one of the fun games that is is deceptively simple but which requires some thought. You have a number of people in your tribe who you need to allocate to various tasks, gathering food, wood, Clay, Stone, Gold or ploughing fields, making tools or increasing the size of the tribe ( ;) ). With these resources you can then build huts for your tribe or collect Civilisation cards which give your tribe immediate benefits as well as counting towards vp's at the end if you get sets of cards. We had a three player game of this, which alters the placement rules slightly and you have one stack less of Huts. This is always a well balanced game and the final scores reflect this, and during the game the scores remained fairly even. The final tally was:
Paul: 199, Sally: 180 and Carole: 157. Yes you read that right I actually won a game that I own, thankfully the world did not implode. It seems that occasionally I can actually do something right ( ??? )

Finally we had a game of San Juan (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1873) in this game you aim to build 12 buildings, each worth varying amounts of VP's. Each turn you pick a role which allows you a bonus when taking the role's action. In order to build a building you have to pay its value in cards from your hand, some buildings produce goods when that action is taken, others have special functions which aid you during the game, others just have VP values.

Once the first person has built the 12th building then everyone scores what they have built, the highest scorer winning the game.

This is another classic game, that maybe we should play more as I always enjoy this as well. The final scores were:
Carole: 31, Phil: 30, Paul: 27 and Sally: 26. Another close game which is always good.

Wednesday 23rd June 2010

Tonight we had our 3rd game of Fresco (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5014) I was undecided as to whether to buy this game but I am very glad I did. This game is both extremely well made, the components and artwork are superb suiting the theme well and delightful to play. You each play a master painter with a team of Apprentices whose task is to help restore the chapel and Alter. Having not been playing board games all that long I can not comment on whether the mechanics in this game are anything new but they are certainly used well and fit right into the central theme of the game. There is plenty of things to think about on your turn and various actions you can take. I really enjoy this game and every game is different with the added benefit that the game comes with 3 expansions right in the box allowing for plenty of tweaking helping to keep the game fresh and exciting. The rules are short (always good) and mostly quite good and well explained. There are a couple of areas where the rules are less than clear and the examples given do not add much to the clarity, that said getting them wrong did not harm the gameplay that much, ad by this game I had read a thread (http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/528444/moving-the-bishop) on boardgamegeek (http://boardgamegeek.com) that helped clarify the rule. Well for the 3rd game of this in a row I managed to lose but each game has been close. The final tally was:
Carole: 80, Phil: 79 and Me: 72. There was a lot of changes of first place on the score track during the game and it was turn order at the end that determined the final winner.

We ended the evening with another game of Montego Bay (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4436) This game is quite fun and whilst on the surface it looks like a lot of random elements there is plenty of opportunity to scheme and plan. Another pretty close game where there was a lot of changes along the score track but the final outcome was:
Steve: 42, Carole: 40, Paul: 36 and Phil: 33

Wednesday 7th July 2010
Neil managed another visit this week which was great and he offered to teach me to play Dungeon Lords (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4828) which I have owned since Essen '09 (Speil) (http://www.merz-verlag.com/spiel/e000.php4) but never quite got around to playing.

Well after a run through of the the rules and combat etc we set off with our minions, imps and fresh new dungeons. Now I liked this game from the moment I saw it, the components are really good quality (and there are a LOT of them) and the boards are well made with superb graphics. The rules make a lot more sense when you play the game but as the first year progressed it became apparent there is a lot to learn about what choices to make.

As you progress through the seasons you take a choice of actions which gain you resources (Money, Food, Monsters, Traps, Rooms, Imps etc etc). These are then used to dig out and build your dungeon eventually adventurers come to plunder your creation and depending on how evil you are at the time determines what strength of adventurer you attract. At the end of the year you will have a full party at your dungeon who will then attempt to plunder your dungeon.

As you prepare for battle you have to work out what damage you can deal and to which adventurers. Each phase of the battle the party may use magic to aid them, if they have sufficient points, and you can select monsters, traps etc to hurt them. Every phase they survive they plunder a section of your dungeon. Every adventurer you kill you keep in your prison and score at the end of the game. If you become particularly evil you will attract a Paladin who are much tougher but fickle as they will swap to someone else if they get more evil than you. In the second year everything gets tougher and more interesting as you dungeon has now started to take shape.

I really like this game it is good fun and provides a lot of action, there is never and real downtime and I can see a lot of replayability in this. I can not believe I waited this long to play it I will just have to make sure I play it again real soon.

Quote from: Oskar on 12 July 2010, 19:52:17

Played a few quick games of Zombie dice, I think I won one and lost lots !

....Hmmm. Zombie Dice. A bit heretical but I couldn't really see the point of this game. Push your luck at it's simplest I guess but I much prefer something like Incan Gold. I was rubbish at it too. ;D

And so on to Dungeon Lords. Neil had gamely offered to teach this game to first timers Paul and Sally and although I'd played it twice before I was happy to listen to the rules again. It's not a complicated game by any means but to get the most out of it you need to know how everything works together.

Inexperience showed in the first year as the adventurers rampaged through Paul and Sally's dungeon while Neil and myself survived relatively unscathed, destroying our parties in a turn or two.

Into the second year both Neil and myself decided to go all out for an evil strategy while the other two ran workplace Reiki and aromatherapy sessions for their minions. I was the first to come to the attention of the Paladin but during that year's combat round he must have clocked up some horsemiles as we swapped him every turn. I eventually finished him off but had no more time to see off the rest of the party while Paul and Sally had done significantly better than they had in the first round.

So well in fact that the scores came in at Paul and Neil, 13 while Sally and myself shared the honours on 16.

Wednesday 14th July 2010

Tonight started with a game of Mad Zepplin (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5088), we had five palyers Zarniwoop, Caz, Luke, Frog and Roy. It is a card game with a difference, some huge card with traitors on which have special abilities some good some not so good.
The start player throws 3 coloured dice, this throw is used for the whole round, your cards are colour coded and on your turn you pick up a treasure card and a gold coin, the card will have treasure on it or it wil be a travel card, treasure you take into your hand and if it's a travel card it is kept to one side, once 10 are revealed that triggers the end of the game. if you get a treasure card and you have enough money you can pay to toss the treasure overboard , this puts it in your scoring area, (there are VP' on the cards) if the colour on the dice matched he colour on the ard you have played.

Not sure I understood what was going on,

We then played a game of Thurn and Taxis (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2899), I like this game. Four of us played Paul, Luke, Roy and myself, I'm sure I have reviewed this before, I won this won too, I had a good night for a change. :D

Wednesday 21 July 2010

We had the usual faffing choosing a game for the evening, but in the end our group opted for Atlantic Triangle (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5072) This is a fantastic little game with some lovely little touches. The game is about 18th century Merchants plying their trade between Europe, Africa, the New World and back again whilst having to deal with pirates and storms. Each player starts with one ship, 3 coin and a good from Europe. Players ships move between the continents trading goods and eventually selling goods in Europe for coin. As these trades continue it gets harder to trade goods and the value of goods in Europe fall. At the end of each players turn they play an event card either the one in their and or one from the top of the deck, these clear a port of goods, clear a European Market, Place or Move Pirates and Start storms at sea. As players progress they can invest in more ships, cannons to aid in fighting pirates or bases at ports or insular bases on sea routes, some of which gain you VP cards. Players can also buy VP cards, each card is worth 1 VP and each different card is worth another point the first to 10 points wins. The game is quite fun, though it is slow to get going.
We had to call time on this as Frog had to bail early, but this game does lend itself to be able to stop a any time and work out a winner. So the final scores were: Paul & Caz on 6 points, Frog & Philsy on 4 points.

We then finished the evening with a game of Mad Zeppelin (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5088) which is a really fun little game where you play traitors attempting to bribe guards to throw cargo off the zeppelin to your awaiting henchman in an attempt to scupper the empire. This game produced a win for Carole with 23 Points, Philsy 2nd with 19 and in last place me with 15.

Wednesday night 4th August 2010

Catan Histories - Settlers of America – Trails to Rails

It's no sectret I am a Settlers fan so it was no hardship to get this new version at all. :)

You are in the 19th century and trying to populate from east to west America by using settlers to forge ahead and build settlements, create a rail network and ultimately deliver your goods to other player’s settlements, delivery of all your goods wins the game.
The board is large and has the familiar hex map, collection of resources is done in the usual way by dice roll, resource [if you don’t get a resource on any turn you get 1 gold] you collect the relevant cards to buy or move settlers, buy rail track, buy or move trains and buy development cards.
After each player turn (starting with the person on the left of the active player) you can build or buy in turn then play moves on to the next player.

Moving your train, you have to move your train to another players empty settlement to deliver your good, you can use other players track but it will cost you one gold for each players track you cross regardless of the amount of track.

Each player also has gold so you can buy cards if you need to so there are plenty of options, if you connect to an isolated city for instance you receive gold to the value of the amount of track to the nearest city. Some development cards allow you to discard the cattle resource card to get 5 gold.

There are also outlaw development cards available which give you 2 gold when you move the outlaw and you still steal a card from the affected player.
The outlaw is moved when a seven is rolled as usual [same as the ususl robber] but no gold.

Two of us played a 3 player game at home to try it and I played a dummy player, I won’t do that again the dummy beat me ha! Typical. ::)

We then played a four player game at Spirit with Carl, Sally Paul and myself, this was a really good and exciting game, there is so much going on, you can’t tell who is in front as the lead is always changing, and even at the end any one of us could have won the game, however the numbers were good to me and because of the amount of cards I got on my turn I managed to do several things and sneak in front to win this one ;D

All in all Brilliant !

Oskar

11th August

Gluttons for punishment as we are four found ourselves huddled around the Settlers of America board once more but this time no one was going to accept any excuses about being new!

For the sake of quickness (we now know it can be a long game) we used the preset setup. From what I remember the West was won much more quickly this game with everybody paying the extra wheat and spreading out more to deny their competitors easy delivery targets. Well most of us, I tried to forge East and it worked for loads of the game until the very last when Sally finished by delivering to a couple of my towns to win the game.

I really like the way the game demands you seed the board with opportunities for your opponents to score with the town and rail placement. This game saw some tense train related standoffs in the middle of the board with judicious use of development cards scoring a couple of points.

Even though it was fairly obvious by the last quarter that Sally was going to win (which inspired some truly unprecedented Andrew Carnegie style philanthropy during the last round) it was still an incredibly close game with all of us within spitoon distance of each other.

All in all a pretty enjoyable way to spend four hours.

Really, has it been that long? What do you mean I never call? ;D

August 18th

Richard's shiny new toy tonight was Innovation which despite appearances is a full commercial game imported from the US I think.

A card driven civ sim with a neat stacking mechanic that changes the values of the cards on the table. It's clear and functional and looks to all the world like a print and play game. Looks aside there are lots of choices owing to another neat mechanic that allows others to gazump your turn if they have more resources.

It can all change on the turn of a card, literally with some instant win cards in the pack, but plays quickly enough for this not to be too much of a problem. Although it wasn't a one-hit win Neil won in a coup de grace which won him the honour of choosing the next game, Neuroshima Hex.

I won't dwell on the promise that it would play in an hour suffice it to say that I don't think we'd had the full rules explanation in that time ;). A beer and pretzels hex and counter wargame with a very crowded board in many ways it plays more like an abstract puzzle game with players attempting to set up chains and set them off before your opponents can. It ended in a draw with me (after doing my best to keep out of the way) and Richard (caretaken by Peter at the end).

...time to go home.

Wednesday 15th September

I was drawn into a game of Antike with Neil and Phil. This seems to be one Phil returns to and every six months or so and although this was only my second game I can see why. What looks like a wargame is actually a more Euro-ish race to VPs (at least until the very end) and is quick to pick up and play. The downside is it plays to its appearance and takes (nearly) as long as those marathon Risk sessions you used to be able to have before jobs/mortgages/kids. Neil had a big day afterwards (hope that went well btw) and wanted to be gone at a reasonable time. Not a chance I'm afraid.

Things went well and peacefully to start with as Neil built a bridge of ships in the Persian Gulf to nab an early points card and Phil and I expanding our territory on land. Significantly no one built temples.

Phil was able to pick up a few easy points from my weakly defended positions in North Africa but it was all pretty close until Phil managed to finish it by (I think) building temples. At least the Gods got there dues at the very end.

Phil won with Neil a point behind and me a point or two behind him.

(Phil and?) I agreed to a game of the tablecloth Kings and Castles this week so you can all look forward to hearing about how I lost at that particular game next week. ;D

Quote from: carldjcross on 22 September 2010, 13:17:59

(Phil and?) I agreed to a game of the tablecloth Kings and Castles this week so you can all look forward to hearing about how I lost at that particular game next week. ;D

Except I was late and they drafted into Michael instead so no sorry tales of losses on the teacloth for me this week.

It worked out quite well actually 'cos I didn't want to be late on Wednesday 22nd September and so a game of Dominion: Seaside was very welcome.

Frog's copy played with Carole, Frog and myself.

I hadn't played it before and I don't think Carole had either so there were a couple of new concepts to consider, the most significant being that some cards now hang around for two turns and the ability to "bank" cards for your next hand.

I've only myself to blame as I started Pirating which is satisfying in a Militia kind of way but with the cards we had in front of us no way of defending ourselves. Consequently Carole soon started Pirating too. Frog and Carole made good use of the card (?) which allows you to pick up for free whatever the last player bought.

Frog won by a nautical mile with, I think 36 to Carole's 16-ish to my 10.

It seems to make the game longer (we must have played for over an hour) which is half the charm of Dominion gone but makes for a much more considered and controllable game as you start planning for the turn ahead with at least some idea of what it's going to look like.

And with that and at a disgustingly early time of ten O'clock we sailed our separate ways into the night. At least we'll be fresh for Raiders.

6th Oct 2010

Tonight I played Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=3688) with Philsy, I really liked this game the components are very nice and the the game is easy to pick up and play (although we only played the basic game). I played the Zombies and Philsy and Pete played the heroes, after the heroes making a bit of a dent in my zombie collection I managed to take down the 2 heroes I needed to win the game.

To end the evening we had a game of Battlelore (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=3159) which is a very good 2-player wargame in boardgame form. I like this game it is fairly easy to pick up and once you've played a turn it flows quite nicely. In the end Philsy one by 1 flag but after what started out looking like a whitewash for me, after getting a bad hand of cards, things turned round in the last part of the game and it was a close call. This makes for a great game the fact that it is all well balanced.

3rd November 2010
Tonight we played a game of Constantinopolis (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5234) this was our first play of this with Philsy and myself figuring out the rules.

The game is very well made, the artwork and pieces superb. Players take the role of merchants shipping goods and passengers for profit, whilst selling goods at home, donating to the city, funding public buildings all to gain fame points to become the most renowned merchant in Constantinopolis.

The mechanics of this game are well done and add to the theme and enjoyment of the game, it starts with players vying for various roles in public office, each of which award the player with an extra ability or reward that turn. The players bid for these roles and the money is from all of this is placed back to the bank. The roles picked also determine player order for the rest of the round.

Given that both Philsy and myself had only partially read the rules this was relatively easy to pick up and play. I really enjoyed this and there is a lot of scope for different winning strategies. As always, as I own this game, I lost but the final scores were pretty close seeing as we all were learning and adopting different approaches. Philsy 45, Carole 35 and Me 30.

Oh Lordy it's been a while, September by my reckoning.

So by way of a catch up some vague impressions/hazy memories of recent gaming sessions:

October 20th

Imperial 2030 was of course played with a rule missing for the first two hours (this being our first stab at it and all) and proved to be much more fun when we discovered it was a take-that kind of game. Being able to steal countries from underneath their current owners noise obviously means that you're not too attached to them and encouraged lots of topic slashing burning; take the points and run.

Dog which is a kind of team Ludo with Cartegena mechanics. Luke and myself won that one.

November 11th

Navegador is a pick up and delivery game which Peter won but Julian did very well at. The market mechanic was particularly neat and is a kind of financial tug of war, except sometimes it's a good idea to let go.

November 17th

Olympus is Stone Age meets Dominion with a slice of Through the Ages thrown in for good measure. Players compete to win the favour of the Greek gods who turn out to be less impressive than Ray Harryhausen would have us believe since they just turn out to be resource mines. Each player also has a (I think unique?) deck of cards with lots of goodies he can build and there is another deck laid out in the middle of the board which anyone can build from.

Each player has the option of grabbing on to the toga-tails of the active player by choosing a 'beta' version of their power, usually less powerful than the 'alpha' version but can mean you can set up efficient combos in a single turn.

The quantity of cards can be a little overwhealming at first but then I suppose the same could be said of Dominion.

Lastly we played Dixit which is I can only describe as; whimsical rabbit, stones between my ears and Alice and Crow.

Wednesday 15th December

First up tonight was Great Fire of London 1666 kind of reverse area control game where the point is not so much to put the fire out in a namby-pamby cooperative way but rather to make sure it burns through someone else's property.

VPs are scored by protecting your own houses spread randomly around the board and by protecting 17th Century London landmarks. There's an element of bluffing here since your landmark cards are hidden information and the nearer Pudding Lane they are the more VPs they're worth.

The least effective way of scoring points seem to be actually putting out the fire which needs both your own pawn and one of the common fireteams around the board.

In our game the fire never really got going until the end of the game and was confined for much of it to the south east corner of the map. The reason for this was partly a mistake in setup (it's a new game) and partly because I think we weren't being aggressive enough.

Andy won although his convincing lead was only increased by a final round choice between blowing one of his own scoring buildings and one of mine. Must have been difficult.

Then we tried a game of Mad Zeppelin a Citadelesque role selection game. Our problem was that several of us were quite tired by this stage (me included) which only increased the time it took to choose roles in what was to most of us an unfamiliar game. I was winning when we stopped but only because of a few lucky card draws and being able to pick favourable roles which in a longer game would have balanced out.

An interesting game though and one to try again when we're a bit more awake.

17th Nov 2010
Tonight Philsy broke out his new shiny copy of Civilisation: The Board Game (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5357) I have not played the computer game but was vaguley aware of it :).

There are a lot of compnents to this game and all of them are of great quality with superrb artwork. There is a lot going on in this game but once you get a round or two under your belt you know what you need to do (more or less). There are multiple routes to victory and each nation has different strengths, our first game was quite peacful with no-one really being too aggressive, we never quite finished the full game as setting up time and rules explanation took its toll.

However, this was very enjoyable and Look forward to playing a full game of this. It will also be fun to try this with a full compliment of players to see how the dynamice changes.

Thouroughly recommend this as a game.

24th Nov 2010
Tonight we had a game of an older favourite: Missions Red Planet (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=2977) another game that I always like playing. I really love the Steampunk setting and feel to it, there is always a lot to think about on this one.

Scores for this were: Paul:32, Sal:36, Andy:32 and Caz:27

We then played a game of Alhambra (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1691) which is essentially a tile laying game where you choose to buy a tile to place or take money to buy a tile on a subsequent turn. The twist is that each tile has to be bought with specific coloured money for the exact or higher money (no Change) if you buy it with the right money you get a second go. The tiles have to be placed in a certain way and you can hold pieces on your playing board but these will not then count during the scoring rounds only those played in your garden. A really fun game that will be worth repeat plays to try and improve.

Scores were: Paul:87, Sal:130, Andy:105 and Caz:65

8th Dec 2010
Tonight we broke out my shiny new copy of "The Great Fire of London 1666" (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5300) The artwork on the board and cards is very good, the Hero of London card looks a little odd though. My board has warped slightly but this does not adversly affect playing the game.

The components are well thought out and suit the theme of the game, the rules are a little complicated but once you start playing they make a bit more sense. The game plays for a set number of turns as you build a deck of fire move cards based on the number of players with fire intensity cards dispersed in the deck. The idea is to protect your houses, whilst helping to put out fires across London. Each player also gets 3 secret missions to protect specific districts of London, if these areas still have house on at the end of the game the players scores the value of that card.

Unusually each player starts with some Victory points, this total is slowly eroded as play progresses as each of their houses that burns down reduces their score by 2. This game was immense fun and the gameplay fits the theme really well, we managed to get a few of the rules wrong (there are a lot of things to remember).

On a Players turn they move the Fire, then they can take 4 actions either moving a Trained Band or their Landowner pawn or both (1 space per action), or put out fires in contained areas and Finally they take a new Fire Movement Card to take their hand back to 5 cards. This is the main part of the game and as this progresses the fire spreads through London damaging areas as it goes.

At the end of the game players total up what points they have left on the score track, plus any fires they have put out and any poinmts from the areas on their mission cards.

Final scores were: Paul:50, Simon:35, Philsy:50 and Sal:48.

I really like this game, but I think it will take a few more plays before we get all the rules down, a player aid would have been a useful addition to the game to remind players of the options and fire movement rules.

15th December 2010
As Carl has already mentioned we played "The Great Fire of London 1666" (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=5300) again this week. Having realised the rules we got wrong last time I felt ready to have another go, we had some new players this time round and we also had a full game. I have to say that it took approx the same amount of time with 6 as with 4 which is a good thing. It felt as good as the first game, but yet again we managed to miss a few rules, one during setup which made the fire spread a lot less and also during the game where we were putting out a lot more fires then we should have been.

That said I thouroughly enjoyed it again and there was a lot more interaction in this one as every house belonged to someone :)

I still feel people were being a little too polite to each other but I feel the 3rd game will be the charm, I have found a good little player aid (http://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/61760/printable-player-aid) on boardgamegeek (http://boardgamegeek.com) which should help players remember their options.

22nd Dec 2010

Started off tonight with a popular game with the wed night crowd: Endeavor (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=4646), this game is always consistently enjoyable and the final scoring relatively close.
Luke:38, Caz:40; Paul:43, Frog: 44 and the winner Sal:50.

We then had a quick game of buckets before frog has to scarper, this is another favourite and provides a good quick filler game. I managed to win this (not sure how).

Finally we had a crack at Metro (http://spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1383) a wonderful little game where you are laying tracks to score points. This is done by laying track tiles to lengthen your tracks and/or shorten your opponents, if you manage to complete your track to a station in the middle the score is doubled. Once all the track is laid and the final scores calculated the winner is the one with the most points. A lot can happen in the final rounds so this makes for quite a cutthroat tense game and it is great fun to play.

Phil:27, Caz:39, Luke:51, Sal:52 and I managed another win with 62

Big Bang Burger Bar

Gaming Groups => Spirit Games - Gaming Groups => Topic started by: Zarniwoop on 04 January 2010, 21:40:24