Friday 6 November 2009

We kicked off proceedings with Anna and Andrew teaching John B Dschunke (Junk in English) at one end of the table while Anne taught Pompeii at the other.

Dschunke is a game with 4 commodities: rice, fish, spice and veg (egg plants). Each turn the commodities can be sold for a profit worth between 1-4 Yuan or occasionally a special card - this reward only goes to the player who offered the most of that commodity (other player's offerings are discarded unrewarded). The special cards give you various advantages while there are other actions to give you instant money or more presence on the junks (which give you more of the the various stuff and money at the end of the game).
John quickly cornered the market in goods cards and he also dominated the special cards (he and Anna both had 4 income cards, but he had other cards as well). Andrew and I were left out of the cards (often having no cards) so we concentrated on taking the money action. Andrew was better at this and by the half way point had a substantial lead, with John trailing a long way back. But in the second half John and Anna's income started to show and they both made a come back.

Anna   52 Yuan + 1 goods card (winner)
Andrew 52 Yuan
Ian    46 Yuan
John B 44 Yuan

At the other end Melissa drew Omen after Omen and tossed other player's people into the volcano, but was no match for Anne's experience when it came to running away from the lava. And since the omen cards meant she got to place fewer of her people, there weren't as many of them running anyway.

Anne    saved 8 people
Moira   saved 7 people
Nigel   saved 7 people
Melissa saved 6 people

Anna was keen on Louis XIV, Anne was also keen so she and I swapped seats. This was another high scoring game of Louis XIV that I wasn't involved in. Anna and Andrew stuck close to Louis at all times, Anne blames her score on bad cards rather than lack of skill (it's called denial) and John just did it all better than everyone else.

John B 52
Andrew 46
Anna   42
Anne   42

At our end Moira was keen on a short game so we played R-Eco, where Melissa showed that she was the recycling queen.

Melissa 14
Nigel    8
Moira    1 (3 point bonus for not dumping offsetting the -2 points in tokens)
Ian     -1

Luke arrived to pick up Moira as we were playing R-Eco and after they left we taught Melissa the deceptively simple game of Coloretto

Ian     41 + 42 + 49 = 132
Melissa 36 + 27 + 48 = 111
Nigel   35 + 52 + 16 = 103

Nigel, Anna and Andrew went home leaving John, Melissa, Anne and I to play Expedition (twice). The second game being higher scoring.

John B  13
Ian      9
Anne     4
Melissa  3

John B  16
Ian     14
Anne    12
Melissa  9