Spirit Games Wednesday Night - 2009

[Oskar]

26th Aug 2009

Chloe and Jordan couldn't wait to get to Spirit Games on Wednesday night for some games, even though we had played games all week, [We had bought Jordan Destination Hogwarts for his birthday recently and he loves it, we enjoyed it too]
We started at the shop with It's Alive [already mentioned by Zarni] We then played Bonanza [the bean game] we had played this at home but it is better the more who play and there was plenty of bartering going on.
We then played Buckets which we can only play at the shop, this was one the kids had played last time and were eager for more, we had a couple of games,  I can't remember who won anything but that doesn't really matter, good time was had by all.
the kids eagerly look forward to their next visit.

[carldjcross]

A long time ago in a brewing town just up the A38...

This is a seriously belated (a month!) catch up on my session reports so I'm relying heavily on whatever I noted on BGG at the time and my rapidly failing memory. Any mistakes that creep in are entirely to be expected. When in doubt Sally won. Even if she wasn't playing.

12th August.

Peter, Sally and myself started with Roll Through the Ages which turned out to be an interesting and unusual game and not just because I won. I managed to win by ignoring the monuments and going for an economic victory. Using masonry to grab extra resources and caravans to allow me to keep them I finished the game by buying the two big multipliers to finish the game. Finding new routes to victory in a game that we have played as much as Roll can only be a good thing.

Next we moved on to RttA: The Late Bronze Age the free print and play expansion. It seemed to seriously unbalance the game with Sally steaming ahead with shipping (ho ho) and Peter wasn't convinced that everything was as it should be. And he was quite right, we completely cocked it up and abandoned it there and then for a game of Marakesh.

This was my first game of this carpet fitting sim and what a lot of fun it is. Sally won convincingly though but I had fun trying to get Ahmed or whatever he's called to trample all over everyone else's axminster.

Next up was Beowulf: The Movie, a reimplementation of Kingdoms . It's really easy to explain and teach. You score points by playing scoring tiles in line with your pawns and try to force your opponents to take penalties using the same method. There are a few other tweaks like turning positive scoring carousing tokens into negative drunkenness but in essence that's it.

Peter won this one and apart from learning that we shouldn't keep all our available one-use only pawns until the last of the three boards (you play on a slightly different board for each one of the three rounds) I really enjoyed it. It's a quick and light game, I think we finished it in about 50 minutes.

Which left us plenty of time for two forays into Incan Gold territory: both being won by Peter which is pretty unusual for that game as he usually can't resist pushing his luck.

2nd September.

Just one game for me tonight and as previously mentioned by Oskar and Zarniwoop it was Mwhahaha! Aside from the dodgy rules which seem to be written on a pinhead by a twelth century court poet (there must be a reason they are so obfuscatingly unclear) it was a fun game and by no means as long as I had been led to believe.

I was foiled at last minute and could never quite get the last few required resources to complete my machine (curses!). Never mind at least Frog was in the same boat with his Super Secret Terrible Machine of Terrible Doom.

[RichardD]

Is nobody going to tell the world what happened on the 9th?  Momentous if for no other reason than my return?

Can't remember what we played.  King of the Elves and Ra the Dice Game I think.  If there was anything else I've forgotten it.

In deference to the feelings of the designer and the chief playtesters (all of who I count as friends), I'll avoid giving my opinion of Ra the Dice Game.  Clearly what the world really needed was yet another bleeding Yahtzee clone.  I long for the arrival of a dice game that has new and innovative mechanics, even stuffing them up my nose; because frankly I'd have more fun if I *did* stuff them up my nose than the standard, "roll three times, setting aside dice after each roll" mechanic that isn't so much tired now as lying comatose on the floor.

   

[EvilGinger]

I enjoy Ra the dice game when not playing it with some one who moans about its unoriginalality valuably throughout the game and be moans their appalling luck with the dice, whilst demonstratably doing better than me. I lost convincingly I will point out. It is not original on two counts on the Yahtzee mechanic and two its based on another better game with the same theme, the original RA.

It is a pity that the dice mechanic did not mimic the random draw of tiles from the bag, and we had lost the bidding process with the sure and certain element of exchanging your nice 14 or if 15 Suns for the 3 or 4 Suns along with the other stuff you wanted, and devoutly hoping it was worth it. The dice mechanic does speed the game along which is not a bad thing.

I have put some thought into how to use dice to mimic the draw of tiles but have not come up with a mechanic which I feel would work to the point of being worth trying out. Crack that I feel and we can put the bidding process back and we have a faster but just as good RA.

 

[RichardD]

I don't believe that I once moaned about my luck with the dice.  I won the game largely because I had the fewest "wasted" Ra rolls, so there was no cause to complain.  But it's not a remotely exciting or interesting game.  Risk Express and Roll Through The Ages both manage a reasonable facsimile of both, despite their roots in the Yahtzee mechanic.

I wasn't a fan when I saw it before publication, and I'm not a fan now.  And I can't think of a situation in which I'll agree to play another game of it. 

[EvilGinger]

My recall is slightly different but its not worth arguing about really. I find Ra the dice game one I can have fun playing and which I wouldn't mind playing again, its not one I would rush out to buy. Unlike say Power boats where I would chew my own leg off to avoid doing so as it was much less fun than a school spelling test IMO.

I could say similar of Archam but I suspect that it was the conditions of my only game of that which was the problem in the shop window of 115 in a heat wave is not the best way to start. I just cant motivate myself to try it again.

 Ginger 

[Zarniwoop]

September 9th 2009
Started off the evening with a Dominion & Dominion Intrigue Blend for 5 players (myself, Carole, Frog, Philsy and Carl) Played really quite well with 5 players the flow of the turns did not seem to be adversely affected. The random choice of cards produced a fairly difficult set of cards, which I failed to make a decent combo with. The others faired better in this leading to another fairly close game.

Having finished with time to spare we went on to play Magalon (Myself, Carole, Philsy,  and Sally) which is a really nice game which is a race game with a twist or two. You have to collect one each of three different items whilst avoiding obstacles, the Imps and the Giant. You also have to watch your magic strength as you need 16 or more in order to win. You have a hand of cards, each with a value on and additional action, each player places one down but can not use the same one as another player that round. Everyone gets to move, take their action from the card, pay/collect magic energy and move their blocking piece (in any order or combination). The mechanics are good and the game plays extremely well and is always good fun. It is never easy to predict the winner and very often the person looking most likely to win, rarely does. In this case I looked unlikely to win then managed to pip everyone else to the post at the last minute.

[carldjcross]

September 9th – Richard's Prodigal Return Special.

And we played one of his favourites, Cutthroat Caverns which everyone seems to have diplomatically blocked from their memories.

Now to be honest I'm not entirely sure what to think of this game: it was certainly one I liked the sound of, co-operate until a point and then attempt to screw each other over sounded like it should be fun but it just seemed to fall a bit flat.

Could it be us a group? Where we being too nice to each other this time (unlike last game which was so competitive from the off that two of us died about half way in)? Maybe. I would have thought that if the game was going to work with any of us it would have worked with the people around the table that night; roleplayers and adventure/dungeon crawl fans all. Oh well.

Philesy won that one convincingly with everyone else at least getting off the starting blocks except me. I have clearly inherited the 'you will not win your own game' curse from Paul.

I did better on the Dominion game which you can read about above, winning what was a very close game by deviously ending the game by buying a card I didn't want or need to stop Frog and his army of witches. Only just though it was very close.

[Zarniwoop]

See this is why I keep trying to deligate the writeups to you  , my memory is obviously failing. How could I forget a whole game, I did enjoy the cutthroat Caverns and if I played again I would alter my tactics slightly. There is a good game lurking in there but it does rely on everyone adopting a certain style of play so I can see that this would be very reliant on getting the right sort of people round the table.

I would play this again..

[RichardD]

I can't remember what we were playing.  Roll Through The Ages, I think, and Pompeii.   

[carldjcross]

I can't remember what we were playing.  Roll Through The Ages, I think, and Pompeii.   

And people mocked me for writing down the scores! At least I can remember what I've played.

[RichardD]

I remember that I won both - that's all that matters

last night, the 23rd, was Dominion:Intrigue (lost), Roll through the Ages (lost), and Steam (which I tried my hardest to lose).

[carldjcross]

I remember that I won both - that's all that matters

...strange that I don't remember a thing about last night. Where was I, what was I doing?

[...gazes deeply into the middle distance....]

[Snap]

Oh yes, Galaxy Trucker, the game that allows me to live out all those Ace Garp fantasies at last*.

This one was stripped back to the basic set, in the first round a little too stripped back actually, eh Paul?     After our two round game at Raiders I had a pretty good idea what was going on and fared a little better building my ships. As Frog kept on saying, damning with faint praise, “It'll lift off”.

And lift off they did although I often fell foul of pirates or meteor shower for want of batteries, shields or whatever else I'd missed off that build. Frog proved himself the master builder with his last ship the snappily titled “SS Cheese Munching Surrender Monkey”.

I can't pretend this was close, there was a massive 90 points between the winner (Frog) and the last place (me). I'll know to grab more aliens next time. And batteries. Oh, and the odd few double lasers wouldn't hurt.

We finished off with a pure game of Dominion: Intrigue. There were quite a few cards I've not come across before including the very nasty Saboteur which seemed to be the theme of the game. I admit I started it but with two of us playing them Paul quietly stripped his deck of action cards and replaced them with victory points late in the game to beat Frog to the punch by just one point. Hoist on me own Saboteur I was!

*and if you get that one award yourself the “geekier than thou” and “older than you look” achievements.

[RichardD]

*and if you get that one award yourself the “geekier than thou” and “older than you look” achievements.

That'll be a 10-4 good buddy.

Bellardinelli's artwork was fabarosi.

You're a week behind again, BTW.  This week was Le Havre, with Peter moaning that he was way behind whilst actually only trailing by a handful of points (mostly as a result of two wasted actions at the end of the game).

[RichardD]

What happened this week, then?  I was stuck in Leeds, adding to my record for absenteeism.