Spirit Games Wednesday Night - 2010

[carldjcross]

Wednesday 23rd June

A quick game of Forbidden Island started off tonight's proceedings.

We started off with some useful roles meaning we could zip around the map and merrily shore up sinking territory without too much bother.

Although we won we were only one "Water's Rise!" card away from certain doom. And then we realised we'd made things much too easy for ourselves by keeping the sunken tiles card's still in play which gave us a welcome rest from the sinking island.

A children's game certainly (and one I've played successfully if a little randomly with my son of 3 1/2) but no pushover.

We then went on to play a game featuring a major European Capital which I'm not allowed to talk about.  Good though. 

[Zarniwoop]

Wednesday 7th July 2010
Neil managed another visit this week which was great and he offered to teach me to play Dungeon Lords which I have owned since Essen '09 (Speil) 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.

[Oskar]

Wednesday 7th July

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

Then had a game of Kingsburg with Phil, Frog, Peter and Andy. I always enjoy this game and this was no exception, the dice were kind to me on the night and I had bought enough buildings to give me a few advantages.  The baddies were pussycats really and did not pose too much of a threat at the end of each year.
After many ups and downs on the VP track the final scores were Andy 24 -  Phil 26  - Peter 28 - Me 39 [yes] and Frog abandoned after 4 years hard graft [couldn't take the stress] 

Oskar

[carldjcross]

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.  

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.

[Oskar]

Wednesday 14th July 2010

Tonight started with a game of Mad Zepplin, 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, 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.  

[Zarniwoop]

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 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 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.

[Oskar]

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  

All in all Brilliant !

Oskar

[carldjcross]

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.

 

[carldjcross]

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

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.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Wed 18th Aug
Started the evening with a game of Infinite City which is always a firm favourite for a quick, easy to play game. Carole won with a score of 32, Phil came a respectable 2nd with 27 and I lost with a mere score of 17.

Our next game was Fresco I love this game its fresh and original. Its easy to teach and plays for a consistent time. After our little painting session (using the basic game) the scores were: Carole: 100 (!!), Me: 89 and Frog: 76. This has to go on record as our highest scoring game of this yet, and my personal best score 

[carldjcross]

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. 

[carldjcross]

(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. 

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.

[Zarniwoop]

8 Sept 2010

Tonight we played a game of Smallworld using the Tales and Legends expansion cards. These cards provide an event that has some in game effect for good/bad each turn, they do not kick in until the second turn. I liked these, the cards are themed to match the game very well and the text is amusing. The effects make a nice change to the game turns meaning you can not always rely on all your abilities or racial benefits. Scores were: Michael 93, Carole 87, Neil 78, Frog and me  58.

We ended the evening with San Juan I always enjoy playing this one, even if I do not always do that well . Scores were: Sally 30, Neil 30 and me 27.

[Zarniwoop]

15th Sept 2010

Tonight we played Ad-Astra which is always a firm favourite there is plenty to think about in this game and always lots of planning to do. Scores: Frog 69, Sally 54, Carole 53, Andy 48 and me 40.

Followed by a game of Cthulhu dice which Carole won whilst me, Sally and Andy went mad

Zombie Dice a really nice filler game that is quick and easy to play. Sally won this one.

Finally the classic favourite Buckets was played to finish the evening off. Carole managed to win twice.

[Zarniwoop]

22 Sept 2010

Tonight we broke out Castle Ravensloft which is brilliant little game, with some really nice components and artwork. The game is well balanced, easy to pick up and play and with plenty of variety. This is a good cross over game appealling to both boardgamers and roleplayers alike, this does not pretend to be more than it is. It is a easy to play dungeon crawl but with lots of interesting adventures and challenges.