Friday 18 December 2010

Frank's Zoo
As has become traditional we started a game of Frank's Zoo while we waited for Nigel.

We deliberately split Anna and Andrew and made them sit opposite each other. Anne was on form, jumping out to a lead of 8 by the second round. A lead which she never looked like loosing. While Nigel, as he often does when he arrives late and joins in, did very well scoring 8 a couple of times to come second. Playing to Anne's left didn't do me much good.

Andrew P 2  6 11 13 18 18
Anna     4  6  8 14 13 14
Anne     6 14 18 23 25 28
Ian     -1  0  3  6  9 13
Andrew H 5  4  3  8 17 22
Nigel    -  4 12 13 15 23

Balderdash
Anne convinced everyone else to learn and play Balderdash. Anna was initially keen to play, but on the first turn she discovered just how tricky it is to come up with a convincing definition and changed her mind! Andrew H was always first to finish his definition while Andrew P had a fixation for Morocco. For some reason Anna liked my definitions better than the correct ones. Nigel was the only person to write down the correct definition for a work. Anne led and I chased, but I burst passed her on the last turn.

This was the first time we played a party game on a Friday night. Experience counted as far as scoring was concerned.

Ian      30
Anne     27
Andrew H 15
Nigel    12
Anna      9
Andrew P  5

Ra
Anne had forgotten much of this game. But with plenty of advice from me and Andrew, she thrashed us. The tiles may not have been mixed well. The first epoch went on and on, while the third finished very quickly with a bunch of Sun tiles coming out together.

The uncertainty of tile drawing, the fixed bids and the penalties built into the scoring system and the disaster tiles make Ra one of the tensest auction games.

Anne     68
Ian      41
Andrew P 21

Master's Gallery
Andrew is quite keen on this auctionless version of Modern Art. It turned out to be quite a close game compared with previous ones.

Anne     16 34 73 139
Andrew P 18 39 80 133
Ian      14 31 73 130

Glory to Rome
At the other end of the table Nigel, Andrew H and Anna played Glory to Rome. I was too busy with Ra and Master's Gallery to take notice of what was happening, though I think I heard that Nigel didn't embezzle enough building materials. I suspect Andrew won.

This was the last Friday night games for 2010.

Friday 3 December (House of Cards)

Frank's Zoo
While we waited for Nigel we started a game of Frank's Zoo. Anna sat on Andrew's left rather than on his right - a fact which the rest of us claimed contributed to her unusually poor score (and to Andrew's). Nigel arrived and joined in the the second hand. Everyone except Anna made 7 or 8 at some point in the game. But Nigel and I were the most consistent.

Andrew H  2  3  4 12 11 14
Anna      1  0  5  3  8  9
Andrew P  0  7 10 14 17 16
Ian       8 12 15 17 22 27
Nigel     -  3  7  9 12 20

Masters' Gallery
In my hasty recap of the rules (mostly for Nigel's benefit) I forgot the rule about adding cards from your hand during the scoring phase. Andrew P remembered the missing rule just after the first scoring, but this wasn't much of an issue as there is little benefit in taking advantage of that rule early in the game. On average we scored 6 in the first round, 21 in the second, 22 in the third and 18 in the final round.

Andrew H  5 30 50 63
Anna      7 34 56 66
Andrew P  3 20 42 59
Ian       7 19 53 74
Nigel     9 32 45 75

Coloretto
Next we played a blast from the past, where Nigel's greedy strategy paid off. While my "strategy" of collecting 6 or 7 colours and at least two in most of them did not.

Andrew H  19 42 69 91
Anna      28 46 67 85
Andrew P  23 47 70 93
Ian       23 48 57 81
Nigel     25 54 77 97

Hornochsen!
Anne came home so we looked for a six player game. This was Andrew Par's first game and I gave him the briefest of rules explanations, so don't take his score too seriously.

Andrew H    3
Anna       28
Anne       36
Andrew P  -16
Ian        44
Nigel       5

We played again and there was more red on the table this time.

Andrew H   64
Anna       -6
Anne        6
Andrew P    0
Ian        -8
Nigel      10

Overall it was a good evening for Nigel with two wins and two seconds. It was entirely accidental that we only played card games.

Giganten revisited

(Played: 20 November at home)
Gigenten is a game with nice bits and a reputation (in Peter's group) of being too long. I suspect that the cuprit for this reputation is that most times we've played it we have misunderstood one of the rules. I was keen to play it with the correct rules and knowing that this was highly unlikely to happen at Peter's place due to its reputation I borrowed it from Peter.

The game is about drilling for oil in Texas and more importantly selling the oil for a decent profit. Most of the board is the oil field, a grid of mostly dull brown squares, with the occasional green hill or grey mountain. Scattered around the desert are some face down tiles with 1, 2 or 3 drilling rigs on the back. Along one side of the board are some parallel train tracks (one per player and one for the "black train"). At one end of the board there are oil tanks for three oil companies each with their own price chart. The oil prices vary randomly and by player actions.

Drilling for oil is a simple process of driving a cute little truck around the board and turning over tile, paying for a drilling rig and finding out from the number on the hidden side of the tile how much oil you will be getting. Transporting the oil to the tanks is also trivial, whereas selling the oil depends on winning auctions. Each turn only one player will get to sell oil to each oil company. The players bid against each other using oil certificates, the highest bidder gets to sell oil at that companies current oil price and if anyone else has more than a couple of barrels of oil they must sell the excess at the rock bottom price of $1000 per barrel.

There are elements of managing both your money and your oil production (there is no point in paying to drill for oil, possibly paying to transport it if you are then forced to sell it at below cost price).

Each turn there are a number of cards to choose from which determine your actions for the turn (except selling which is determined by the aforementioned auctions). There is one red card plus a number of brown cards equal to the number of players. The rule we have gotten wrong in the past is that the red card determines how far the black train moves regardless of whether someone chooses the red card or not. Previously we have only moved the black train if some chose the red card. Given that the game ends when the black train reaches the end of the track, not moving it on some turns stretches the game beyond its design length.

Perhaps with three players we were playing too conservatively but there was no competition for drill sites, no trouble shipping oil back on ones own train and little competition to sell oil (at least in the first half of the game). This made things seem too easy. Perhaps we were playing too nicely and were not ruthless enough to choose the action to send other peoples trains backwards as often as we should have. Compared with previous plays (which were with four players) the game was too tame with three players.

There are plenty of games around building efficient production mechanisms, but very few around the competition to sell things (Automobile and Planet Steam are the other games that springs to mind on this subject - and Gigenten is short and simpler than either).

First Impressions of Gravediggers, Jaipur, Age of Steam Expansion: Beer & Pretzels and Endeavor (European Powers)

Some thoughts and opinions about some more games I played for the first time in November.

Gravediggers
(Played: 14 & 17 November at home and at Peter's place)
When Anne bought this game I had never heard of it and so I surprised when I looked it up on BGG to see it on my wishlist! It turns out to be a renaming and re-theming of Banküberfall from bank fraud to grave robbing. I had read about the earlier version a few years ago and thought that sounds like fun.

This is a very simple game of memory, bidding, guessing, bluff and greed. Even simpler than High Society. There is a deck of cards, which is mostly money but also characters and multipliers. Everyone starts with a hand of 5 cards and there are 5 graveyards to rob, each starts with a face down card. People add cards to the graveyards during the game and at various points in the game the graveyards are robbed.

Robbing a graveyard consists of everyone secretly bidding an amout of money. The cards are turned up and if any of the cards are people, they take effect in a predetermined order. This sometimes means the grave robbers go home empty handed. But if they are lucky there is some money. Then starting with the players who bid the least, the players are payed out on an all or nothing basis. Be too greedy and you might end up with nothing.

It takes about 2 minutes to learn and about 20 minutes to play. This is fortunate because your action each turn is dictated by turning over the top tile of a small stack of tiles, which removes a lot of decision making. And sometimes when you do have a decision it is not a particularly meaningful one. It pays to regard this as a filler. And maybe replace the Graverdigger card with a pawn or meeple.

Jaipur
(Played: 20 November at home)
Jaipur was my impulse buy, designed by Sébastien Pauchon (who also designed Metropolys, Yspahan and Jamaica). It is a two player card game.

Jaipur, like Yspahan, uses camels as a form of currency. It is a competition between two traders to be the best. The players don't trade directly with each other, but with the same market, which provides most of the tension in the game. Each turn a player either sells cards for points or buys cards. Players "buy" cards in one of three ways. Either they take all the camel cards that are face up in the market and add them to their pile of camel cards (the empty spaces in the market are refilled from the draw deck). Or they take one goods card into their hand from the market and it is replaced from the draw deck. Or they swap 2 or more cards with the market (the cards they take must be goods cards, they cards they put back can be a mixture of goods cards and camel cards). Because both players are buying from the same market any buy action provides opportunities for the opponent. Selling provides tension between speed and quantity. The victory point tokens for sales descend in value so early sales give you more points, but there are also bonus points for selling 3, 4 or 5 goods of a type at once encouraging players to put off selling.

The game is played for the best of three hands (an idea that could be used in Lost Cities as well). Anne won the first game two-nil, winning 78-72 and 65-50. By the time she won the first hand of our second game 78-69, I was considering how much I could make by selling this stupid game on TradeMe. But then I won the next hand 84-74 and it was all on for the final hand.

From a strategy point of view one has to decide which types of goods to concentrate on, whether to go for quick points or to save up and collect sets of 3 or more. These decisions will probably be influenced by what you see your opponents doing. Tactically it is important to watch the hand limit - six is so much more flexible than seven.

Age of Steam: Beer and Pretzels
(Play tested: 21 November at home)
When I read about Ted Alspach's "Beer and Pretzels" variant for Age of Steam I was intrigued. Most game variants change or add rules to games. This one mostly takes rules away. By taking away the share track, income track, expenses and income reduction and by giving money directly for moving goods do you still have a viable game?

Anne and I ran 4 player play-test playing 2 players each, rather than use Ted's official board we used the standard "Rust Belt" Age of Steam board.

On the "Rust Belt" board it becomes too easy to make money and there is not enough money in Age of Steam to pay everyone. Ted's official Beer & Pretzels board includes several mountain ranges and a number of rivers. Many of the cities are quite a long way apart. Overall it looks like a more expensive map to build on than "Rust Belt". Anne also mentioned that perhaps we didn't compete enough with each other in the auctions.

My conclusion is: yes this is a viable (and simpler) game. Though you need a more expensive board to consume excess cash. Playing this on the “Rust Belt” board at $5 per cube per link is too easy. It may be worth considering shortening the game by a turn or two.

Endeavor (European Powers)
(Play tested: 24 November at Peter's)
Jarratt brought along an Endeavor play test board which I have called "European Powers" for want of a better name.

It is a substantial redesign of the board plus some extra rules, but the cards, tokens, buildings and other pieces are the same as the original game.

Europe is represented by five main colonizing powers (Portugal, Spain, France, England and the Netherlands). Each Power has a couple of city spaces. Before the game starts each player places a piece in one of these Power cities that no-one else has chosen. Each Power has special advantages. France has defensive advantages (attacking French tokens in Europe costs an extra piece). The Netherlands gets access to special shipping spots that function more like cities. There are no normal shipping routes for the Americas. Each of the 3 America card decks are open to specific European Powers.

The shipping routes to Africa, India etc cross region boundaries with pieces counting for influence depending on which side of the boundary they are (which makes the building that allows a joint shipping and colonizing action to be more useful). Some places have multiple routes and some routes only become available once other regions have opened up. The Slave deck has been moved to Africa.

The changes add a bit more complexity to Endeavor, and make it seem less abstract and more historic.

I tried to get as many cities as possible. Though Jarratt managed to almost eliminate me from Europe. I enjoyed it more than previous plays of the standard game.

First Impressions of Wizard's Quest, Glory to Rome and The Speicherstadt (November 2010)

This is something slightly different to my normal session reports. It is more of summary of thoughts and opinions about some of the games I've played for the first time in November.

Wizard's Quest
(Played: Wednesday 3 November at Peter's place)
Wizard's Quest is a 1979 Avalon Hill game that has been sitting on Peter's shelf for years. He has mentioned it once or twice as a simple dice-battler, but hasn't made any serious effort to get it played. Lately I have been thinking about "dice-battlers" and I found a re-write of the Avalon Hill rules into plain English. So I got it on the table and got Peter and Nigel to play it with me.

Wizard's Quest turns out to be a step sideways from the usual Risk inspired conquer-the-world dice battler games. Firstly each player is aiming to be the first to recover their three treasures which the opposing players have put in awkward places on the board. Secondly there are orcs and a dragon which are hostile to everyone (and orcs seem to breed faster than humans!). Thirdly even though armies vary in size and battles can last several rounds of dice throwing, in each round each player only throws one die. Each time they throw the die they calculate what "die-range" to use. If you throw a number in the range (1..N) you kill that many enemy units. Throw a number that is too big and you kill no-one - unless both players throw too high and then they both loose one unit (this final part was a rule we overlooked). Basically N is the number of soldiers or orcs in the army if there less than 4 otherwise N is 4 (though there are modifiers for terrain etc). What may not be immediately obvious is that an army of 2 is about three times as powerful as an army of 1, and an army of 3 is about six times as powerful as an army of 1.

Each round of the game starts with the non-player forces (the orcs, the dragon and the wizard). These act randomly. This is assisted by having the board divided into 6 numbered regions and each region divided into 6 numbered spaces. So two die rolls will identify any space on the board (well not quite as there are 8 castles in addition to the 36 numbered spaces). Orcs fill up empty spaces and castles and breed and then go on the rampage once they reach their maximum army size of 4. The dragon flies around the board eating orcs and humans though once he has eaten humans he stops. The wizard causes peace (which is a mixed blessing) in the region he visits and has a deck of card which are mostly helpful.

The orcs tended to frenzy in my direction, while Peter and Nigel got their first two treasures quite easily (Peter carved his way through my main force to get to one of them). Somehow I managed to get to my second treasure before Nigel got to his third to win the game in about 90 minutes if I remember right. As I eluded to earlier we overlooked one rule.

There are huge amounts of luck due to the non-player forces and the cards. The orcs and dragon can set you back so much that it can take 2 or 3 turns to recover. Hence the game could drag on for a long time if everyone suffered this fate. The quantity of luck can reduce the feeling of skill and reduce the opportunity for long term strategic planning. On the plus side despite the long sequence of actions in a round, the game flows quite smoothly and each battle is quick and simple.

Overall I'd class this as a refreshing, though more random and slightly silly alternative to Nexus Ops as a quick "dice-battler" when you don't have hours to spare on one of the longer games of this type.

Glory to Rome
(Played: Friday 5 November at home)
Anna and Andrew brought back a new card game from Brisbane, which Anna tried to entice me to play by telling me that I "might not like it"! After a couple of weeks of this I called her bluff and we played it with Nigel one Friday night (while Sharon, Anne and John B played On the Underground at the other end of the table).

The theme of the game is that the players are dodgy property developers rebuilding Rome after the fire in 64AD. Points are gained by completing buildings and by hording building materials.

Like Race for the Galaxy and Puerto Rico where someone chooses an action and everyone gets to do it, the current start player decides the action that everyone will do. Unlike Race and Puerto Rico this is not done by choosing from a special set of cards or tiles but by playing a card from one's hand. The cards are multi purposed (they are building materials, buildings made of those materials and specific actions). The other players can either play a card with same action (colour) or pick up. Those that play can also do the action. This can be mitigated by getting clientele cards in your display. These can get you actions when they match the card the start player played regardless of whether you played a card or picked up. Completed buildings also give you extra powers.

Why play Glory to Rome when you can play Race for the Galaxy? Because it is more interactive than Race for the Galaxy, which has a multi-player solitaire feel to it. Not only can the start player (or "Leader" in Glory to Rome terminology) can choose actions that are more beneficial to themselves than their opponents. Some action affect other people directly and some actions affect the pool of cards to draw from. So if you like that style of game where you choose action for yourself and other players but you want more interaction than you get with Race for the Galaxy then try Glory to Rome.

The Speicherstadt
(Played: Wednesday 10 November at Peter's place)
In The Speicherstadt by Stefan Feld, you are an importer in the Speicherstadt (warehouse district) in Hamburg, buying ship-lots of goods to try and fulfill specific contracts for victory points. You can also sell, trade, save goods and also firemen to protect your warehouses. Most of this is done by acquiring cards. Each round a number of cards are available and the players bid for the cards. Nothing unusual as Euro games go.

But the point of difference with The Speicherstadt (apart from its name) is the bidding mechanism. This is an interesting (and often frustrating) hybrid of "worker placement" and auction. Each player has 3 meeples and over 3 rounds place these above the cards they wish to bid on. The first meeple placed above a card gives its owner first "dibs" on the card, the second and subsequent meeples give their owners second and third "dibs" etc. After all the meeples are placed then the cards are evaluated left to right. The player owning the first meeple above a card decides whether to buy the card at a price equal to the total number of meeples above it or remove his/her meeple (hence dropping the price) and letting the owner of the next meeple decide whether to buy or not.

People use the cards they buy to fullfill contracts etc. If someone ends up not buying a card they get a consolation coin. There isn't much money in the game. Knowledge of the distribution of cards is very important. There are only limited numbers of each type of card and the deck is built up of 4 sub-decks (called seasons) each with their own characteristic (e.g. ships are rare at the beginning of the game and common at the end)

There are elements here of "worker placement" as players claim dibs on cards, bidding the price up as players stack their meeples above a popular card and dutch auction as players remove their meeples dropping the price for remaining players. This bidding mechanic is both clever and frustrating. Being first player gives you full choice of "first dibs" spots but little control over prices. Being last give you the opposite situation.

This game seems to be a straight forward and slightly boring do stuff to get points game driven by a very clever bidding mechanic. I would like to see this bidding mechanism used in an otherwise more interesting game. If you like trading games there are the nastier games like Before The Wind and Die Händler, or more negotiation oriented games like Settlers of Catan and Bohnanza.

Labour Weekend Gaming

Friday Night - Around the World
Anne challenged me to a game of Expedition which I won 25-16. She then demanded a rematch which was a closer event. This time I finished all my cards scoring 22, but I had started the game so Anne got the final turn, finishing her last card and an extra card to beat me 23-22. In our final game I got my lowest score of the evening -- winning 19-15.

Saturday - Indian Summer
Jarratt and Lance organised a game of 1853 at Lance's house. It was the first time for all of us, so none of us were familiar with the map, companies and the opening bidding procedure. 1853 is an older design than 1830 and owes its design more to railway pioneering 1829 than the Robber Baron 1830. The stock market works in a simple way and is not susceptible to manipulation. In other 18XX games there are private companies which need to be bought before the players can buy shares in the main companies. These private companies are usually on sold to the majors mid-game for a profit. This serves a dual purpose, reducing the players' initial capital by varying amounts and providing a reward for company directors. In 1853 there are no private companies, instead the players' initial capital is reduced by a simultaneous bid which determines the initial seating order and first player. The bid amount is held in escrow until the towns you nominate in second part of the process are linked up. The amount you bid limits which towns you undertake to link up. These towns limit which shares you can initially buy. As in the other 18XX games, the amount you have left over determines which of the major companies you can capitalize in the first turn. Once the towns you nominated are linked to each other by railway then you get your escrowed money back.

At beginning at least three of us had the same idea about with towns to nominate and which initial shares to buy. We also all bid pretty low (Anne bid £85, I bid £82 and Lance and Jarratt bid £80). None us took into account that bidding less than £90 means you can't nominate a £50 city. Anne took a share of the North Western Railway and it was clear that she had the same idea that Jarratt and I had, so we had to rethink our ideas. I took Bombay, Baroda and Central India (BBCI) share and Jarratt took an East Coast Railway (ECR) share. Lance hadn't formulated a plan when bidding and after a bit of thinking bought a Bengal Nagpur Railway share.

Another point of difference with 1853 is that there are two types of track (and engines): broad gauge and narrow gauge. This adds an extra level of decision making. Jarratt built his ECR as a narrow gauge railway, which is cheaper to build but the trains have a shorter "reach". Anne's initial planning and highest bid paid off as she got an early lead in making income. I found myself stymied initially by the tile options. There are no yellow city tiles with a straight piece of track (cities are all on curves) and later on by the territorial limitations. Each company has a territory and it can't upgrade track outside its area, hence I couldn't link up to the BNR network and join Delhi to Calcutta.

Like the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad which failed to build to Santa Fe, the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway never built to Bombay, preferring to stay near Delhi. There was a bit of selling off of stock (especially in Anne's NWR) as players started second rail companies (but unlike 1830 and 1856 selling stock doesn't necessarily lead to a share price drop). Near the end of the game I switched three shares to a better performing stock but otherwise people kept the shares they bought.

Lance's shareholdings in the best performing companies and Jarratt's southern narrow gauge loop propelled them past Anne. In the end we called the game early and faked two operating rounds to give the final result.

Lance    £8424
Jarratt  £7744
Anne     £7004
Ian      £6785

1853 is a game which had a large number of suggested rule changes over the years to fix its original faults. Lance owns the latest version which has quite a number of changes to the original rules, map etc.

Saturday night - Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
After a quick stop in J'ville to pick up some KFC and in Thorndon to drop of Anne, I was off to Nigel's place to play Mare Nostrum.

I was keen to try Greece, so while John was getting his fish and chips, Travis chose Rome, Andrew took Babylon and Nigel grabbed Egypt, leaving John with Carthage. I made more mistakes than last week. Initially by letting Rome convert one of my provinces. Later when I was military leader I intended to move last so I could leave my North African safely empty while I raided some Carthaginian caravans. But I forgot to give Egypt his turn and he took back the province.

Egypt got the first hero, then Rome and Carthage got a couple of heroes/wonders each threatening to win, prompting Babylon and Greece into a military strategy which merely prolonged the game. Greece in particular was too busy attacking to build up its own resources. Babylon played a more balanced strategy of attacking sometimes and developing other times.

Egypt finally got a third and fourth hero/wonder to win.

We made one mistake with the rules. When someone conquers a province they can only sack one caravan, city, temple or market.

I would be interested to see how the game would play with the "Advanced Setup" where players get to choose what they start with. They get 36 "build points" to spend on initial stuff. Three points for each: influence marker, city, caravan or military unit and 6 points for each temple or market. Buying a country's own hero is optional and costs 9 points. It is unclear from the rules whether players choose their setup in some turn order or if it is simultaneous.

Reading the expansion rules and the various variants it seems that Mare Nostrum is a flexible game that handles modifications well. Most of the modifications involve strengthening Greece. For instance the expansion gives Greece a temple, a trireme and an extra caravan (but also gives other countries extra stuff). A few strengthen Carthage and weaken Rome (my suggestion for that is to swap their heroes). The expansion gives reduces Julius Caesar to cheap legions only. Some people play without Helen.

Mare Nostrum (16 October 2010)

With Anne away and wanting to play something a bit longer than is usually practical on Wednesday or Friday nights I organised a group of fellow travelers to start early on Saturday evening. By the time we sat down (just after 6pm) we hadn't made our mind up about what to play. Princes of the Renaissance was the top of my list (we had a good game of this four months ago). Travis brought Warrior Knights and Fury of Dracula while John brought A Game of Thrones and Mare Nostrum. It almost came down to a coin toss between Princes of the Renaissance and Mare Nostrum, but the argument in favour of Mare Nostrum swung the decision.

Mare Nostrum is Serge Laget's attempt to design a lighter version of Francis Tresham's Civilization.

It had been so long since any of us had played the game that we had to learn it again. John taught. Nigel was Rome, John was Greece, Travis was Babylon, Andrew was Egypt and I was Carthage. Initial everyone grabbed cities and resources within reach. Because Rome and Greece's special powers are that they get to build unit for two cards rather than three, whenever they had a couple of spare resources they build legions and triremes. Once the city and caravan tokens were used up, the first phase of the game was over and we were faced with the strategic decision of what next?

Rome took two legions along the Balkan coast towards Greece. Greece responded by building legions to protect his north western border. Meanwhile I took a risk and ignored the military build up in the north of the Mediterranean and build the first hero (Helen - whose defensive abilities somewhat made up for my lack of military units). After a stand-off Rome withdrew and Greece took his now unemployed legions to Asia Minor to tax the Babylonian province there - much to Travis's annoyance. Worried that my non-military strategy and two heroes would make me a target I built fortresses rather than get another hero/wonder. The Commerce Leadership swapped back and forth between Carthage and Rome.

By this time Egypt's tax revenue was beginning to kick in and Andrew build two wonders/heroes in a row. He also moved two legions towards my undefended eastern province and I responded by building four legions and invaded. Worried that Egypt was close to winning, Greece followed with a seaborne invasion of Egypt's heartland, leaving Egypt very weak and making Greece the Political Leader and Rome the Military Leader. By forcing Greece to trade 6 cards he had to offer 3 of his 12 Tax. The rest of us cooperated to ensure he didn't get enough Tax or Resources to build the Pyramids.

I got another hero (Ulysses) while Babylon took the Commerce Leadership from Carthage. On the final turn Babylon had a big hand of cards. Carthage only had 6 different goods and if he had chosen to trade 0-2 Carthage couldn't have gotten their fourth hero. But he chose to trade 4 cards, while I kept all my Gold cards in hand (I thought I had the monopoly on Gold and Fruit) to prevent anyone getting enough resource for the Pyramids. I managed to get Olive Oil, Livestock and Wine to build the fourth hero for Carthage.

Thanks to Carl for lending us his game.

Now we need to organise a rematch (and another game of Princes of the Renaissance).

Friday 8 October

Drakon
While we waited to see if anyone else would show up John pulled out Drakon as a filler. This is a game we went mad on in March 2008 (11 plays in one month). There were two good areas but Anne made the best of it and I ended up trapped in an empty maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Anne  10
John B 6
Ian    2

On the Underground
We were all pretty close for most of the game with Anne jumping ahead a couple of times (including with her 6 point loop). Then I pulled ahead when I managed to get my grey line to join two pairs of symbols and then started to score a bunch of red end points.

Ian    59
John B 49
Anne   47

Patrician
We play this simple game so infrequently that I had to teach it again. This is a short Michael Schacht board game about building the majority of floors in towers. You start with a pile of stackable tower pieces and a hand of three cards. Each turn you play a card, place a tower piece (or two) and pick up a card. The card indicates which city you are to build in, whether you are building one tower piece or two, a special action or a portrait. Each city has two building spaces and two victory point tokens and a face up card which will be the one you refill your hand with. Once a the number of tower pieces in a city equals the number on the larger victory point token that city scores and the tokens are given to the players with the majority control of each tower. The game ends when the last city is scored (which is also when the cards run out). There are also 6 VP for each set of 3 matching portraits on the cards you've played.

Ian    62
John B 48
Anne   31

Thinking about the game afterwards I was struck by some similarities and contrasts with China (or Web of Power / Kardinal und König). Both games are primarily about scoring majorities. Patrician is a bit shorter. In both games you have a hand of three cards. Each turn you play a card (or cards), put one or two pieces on the board in a place indicated by the card(s) and then pickup card(s). When an area is filled it is scored. There is also end game scoring in both games. In China everyone in a region scores. In Patrician only the person with the majority control of a tower scores - which probably leads to bigger swings in the scores. In China there are two types of pieces (houses and emissaries) and three types of scoring and all the cards of a particular colour are the same which means the cards are means to an end. Whereas in Patrician the cards tell you how many pieces you play, may give you a special action or a portrait to score with, so the cards are more important. Also each card you play in Patrician determines which card you pick up, so you are often thinking through a chain of possible moves. In China the first player to play in a region can only play one house, which often discourages players from starting new regions. Whereas in Patrician ties are broken by player nearest the top of the tower so player often want to hold back so that they can play the final pieces in a city.

Hornochsen!
With three players only 45 out of 98 cards are in play which makes for big surprises. Unusually this is a game where more players makes the game less random. The first game was low scoring.

Ian   6
Anne  2
John -8

In game two there were plenty of nice piles and a few stinkers. I ended up with fewer cards than the others which is usually bad news as it gives you fewer choices, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

John 26
Anne 14
Ian  10

Change of Location (6 October 2010)

Peter and family were spending the week in Auckland so I hosted his Wednesday games. Anne was out at a dinner/seminar, while Andrew and Anna wanted one last games fix with us before heading off to Brisbane.

Tichu
John agreed to play a couple of hands as a filler while we waited for others to show up. As seems usual nobody called Tichu on the first hand (I had passed Anna the Dragon while she passed me an Ace, Andrew and John swapped Kings). But it seems that Anna and I had better hands than our opponents and she went out first and I followed for a 1-2. In the second hand Anna called Tichu but the our opponents managed to prevent me going out second. So the final score was 360 to 40.

Metropolys
With a big pile of games on the table it took the six of us a while to make up our minds. Andrew, John and Nigel decided on Metropolys while the rest of us were still dithering.

Andrew played very well, at one point I looked over and he had 5 Ladies (15 points) and was winning in two regions.

Andrew H 39
Nigel    27
John B   21

Nexus Ops
I wasn't sure that Nexus Ops was Anna's cup of tea but she was enthusiastic to learn. Jarratt found lots of Rock Strider including two adjacent to the Monolith so he jumped up and started collecting Energize cards. I got a 3 point Special Mission to win a battle on the Monolith with a Dragon and then an Energize card to jump a Dragon to anywhere. So I bought a Dragon and jumped up with some Rock Strider support but threw badly and ended up leaving my Dragon to be finished off by Jarratt on his turn.

Anna's verdict was that Nexus Ops is a crazy game.

Jarratt 12
Anna     6
Ian      4

No Thanks!
While they waited us to finish off Nexus Ops the others played No Thanks!. Andrew won again, while Nigel made a record bad score.

Andrew H 35
John B   77
Nigel   129

Vegas Showdown
Jarratt went mad on Slots and probably bought at least half of them. Nigel had the early lead on the score track, but he and I were stuck on incomes of 6 and 5 for a long time. I was tempted first by the Night Club and then by the Theater before I had a Fancy Lounge or Lounge (so I had them sitting off board for a long time). If I had managed to get everything down I would have been very competitive score wise. It ended badly as Jarratt made sure I didn't get a Fancy Lounge.

John B  52
Jarratt 51
Ian     39
Nigel   25

Friday 24 September 2010

TransAmerica
The way to make people show up is to start a game. With this aim in mind I put TransAmerica on the table, and before I could start explaining the rules John and Nigel arrived. TransAmerica is a quick, light game with a good dose of luck, but also a game of judgement where you want to cooperate with others in ways that benefit you slightly more than them.

The game ended when I made a very bad choice of start position assuming wrongly that other people would be as interested in the north east as I was and ignoring the cardinal rule of starting near the centre of the board. The newbies came first and second.

Jim   10
Margo  9
Nigel  7
Anne   4
John B 4
Ian    0

Power Grid
After TransAmerica we were looking for a 6 player game that would take no more than two and half hours. For some reason we not only thought that 6-player Power Grid would be quicker than Age of Steam, but we also thought it would take two and half hours! (Our last game of Power Grid took 3 hours with 5 players)

We played the German board, but we forgot to use only 5 regions, so there was plenty of room especially for Margo and myself. She had the cheap north while I had the more expensive south. Jim, Nigel and John shared the centre with Nigel in the cheapest area (which acted like a magnet for the others).

I got a lucky break and got the #35 power station (1 oil powers 5 cities) as my second station, which allowed me to ignore the power station market for the next few turns. Nigel kept the pressure on the price of coal by stock piling it every turn. Jim started off green but didn't keep up his green credentials. Anne started in the east and John did the big leap over Nigel to get to the North.

In the final turn we were all trying to calculate if we could get to 16 cities and power them, but only Margo had the necessary funds.

Margo 16
John  15 + $158
Nigel 15 + $145
Ian   15 + $145
Jim   14 + $167
Anne  14 + $151

Tichu (18 September 2010)

More Tichu with Anna and Andrew. Anna was disappointed with her Tichu calling on Friday night and was eager to redeem herself. After a promising start, we failed twice in a row, while Anna and Andrew surged ahead. When I called Grand Tichu I felt confident with the Dragon and four Aces, but not so confident by the time the third bomb was played against me! Anna and Andrew cruised to victory only going backwards once, and making three 1-2s.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.   160    40  Ian's Tichu
2.   200   200  Andrew's Tichu
3.   270   130  Anna fails Tichu
4.   170   330  Ian fails, Anna and Andrew 1-2
5.   120   380  Ian fails
6.   120   580  Anna and Andrew make 1-2 again
7.   385   615  Ian makes Grand Tichu against 3 bombs
8.   385   915  Andrew makes Tichu and 1-2
9.   545   955  Anne makes Tichu
10.  520  1080  our only points were the Pheonix!

In game 2 we were almost even after the fourth hand, but we stagnated soon after that and were well beaten. I think Andrew and Anna are well practiced for their Brisbane trip.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    30   170  Anna's Tichu
2.   130   170  Anne fails Tichu but we made 1-2
3.   325   175  Ian's Tichu and lots of points
4.   245   255  Anne fails Tichu
5.   245   455  Andrew and Anna 1-2
6.   315   385  Anna fails Tichu
7.   410   490  Anna's Tichu but not many points
8.   445   555
9.   445   855  Anna's Tichu and 1-2
10.  415   985  Ian fails Tichu, Andrew makes Tichu
11.  415  1285  Andrew's Tichu and 1-2

Anne and I had discussed passing strategies earlier but such things are tricky to put into practice. We probably didn't swap Aces as often as Carl and I had the night before but apart from that I don't think the agreement helped us very much.

Friday 17 September 2010

Carl showed up first, followed by Anna and Andrew. We had decided to play Frank's Zoo when Jarratt rang the door bell, so we dealt him in while he came upstairs. We gave him the fastest rules explanation we could and got underway. But we only managed one round before John and Nigel showed up.

Frank's Zoo
Nigel joined Anna, Anne and Jarratt to restart Frank's Zoo. Jarratt wanted to stop playing after the first round, and perhaps he should have. Nasia joined in at the third hand and challenged Jarratt for third place. No surprises about who won.

Anna    2 8 15 24
Anne    4 7  8 11
Jarratt 7 7  9  8
Nasia   - -  5  7
Nigel   0 2  1  3

Clans
I've been keen to play this game again since I noticed the similarity between this and Metropolys. Both being essentially abstract games with secret missions. It's been a couple of years since I last played this, and longer since Carl, John or I last played it regularly. It was Andrew's first time. Unfortunately for Andrew and I, in the last third of the game we got into the rhythm of he and I being forced to set up situations where John and Carl could make villages (which they did). This was partially due to the seating order, which was: John, me, Carl, Andrew.

The early part of both games is the least important and the initial moves are not obvious. The mid-game starts as board position becomes interesting, and the end game is where choices become more limited and more critical. The obvious difference between the two is that in Metropolys the end game is about keeping the initiative whereas in Clans it is about giving away as few opportunities to your opponents (in particular the player following you) as possible.

John B   49
Carl     47
Andrew H 43
Ian      43

Andrew Rae arrived in time for the next set of game choosing. We had ten people and lots of indecision. We probably should have split into two five player groups as there are plenty of good five player games available. But we didn't.

Tichu
Carl hasn't played for awhile and was initially worried that we weren't strong enough for Anna and Andrew and the first two hands suggested he was right. But then Carl and Anna went head to head for the first of three times. The seventh hand turned up an interesting situation I called Tichu but Carl also had a good hand and ended up in a position to go out before me, controversially he choose to go out, leaving me to finish second for 200 minus 100 points. If he had not gone out, his final card would have been something like a 3 ruling out a 1-2. A Tichu would have given us more points but also have given Anna and Andrew points.

Grand Tichu calls are rare in our games, but on turn 9 Andrew called Grand Tichu and made it! But while Anna and Andrew were making a come back it was too late.

Hnd IA+Ql AJ+AH
1.    25    75
2.    85   215 Andrew's Tichu
3.   280   120 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails
4.   345    55 Andrew fails
5.   450   150 Carl makes Tichu
6.   600   100 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails
7.   700   100 I fail, but Carl and I make a 1-2
8.   875    25 I make Tichu, Anna fails
9.   800   300 I fail, while Andrew makes a Grand Tichu
10.  810   390
11.  830   570 Andrew makes Tichu
12. 1030   470 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails

Nuns on the Run
Engrossed in Tichu I didn't pay much attention to what was happening at the other end of the room.

Nasia taught this deduction game that she had brought with her. It is like Scotland Yard in reverse, instead of one player being hunted by everyone else, one player hunts everyone else. She said it went OK, but none of the novices managed to get their secret wish and return to their cells. So Abbess Nasia won.

Pompeii
Rumors from Pompeii talk of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Amid destruction and disaster Nasia had fun, Andrew went crazy and found time went quickly.

Andrew only had cards for unplayed areas and John just kept on playing the same card after him for more relatives. John had 22 on the board to Andrew's 14. Driving Andrew crazy. Still it was to his advantage because he didn't have to worry about so many guys and got them all but three out. Andrew won, Nasia lost, with John in the middle.

Nexus Ops
Jarratt loves Nexus Ops but Nigel hasn't had enjoyed his previous experiences, while Anne hasn't played often. Jarratt did the rules refresher but forgot the easily forgotten rule that you can sell unwanted cards. Jarratt followed the standard strategy getting early control of the Monolith and fighting many battles. Nexus Ops is a game of winning battles but not wasting too many troops defending territory.

The experience didn't improve Nigel's attitude towards the game, but Anne wants to play again.

Jarratt 15
Anne     8
Nigel    6

California
John suggested we try this two player but neither of us checked the rules differences for two players until I had filled my house. Then Jarratt read that we should have finished much earlier, so we stopped at that point when I was one point ahead. If we had played by the real two player rules we wouldn't have scored as many present points (which would have hurt me more than John) and the game would have ended earlier with John probably winning.

Ian    36
John B 35

Friday 10 September 2010

Traders of Genoa
Andrew and Anna mentioned on Wednesday that Andrew's father has bought Genoa on an impulse and wants them to teach it. Problem is that neither Andrew nor Anna have played it before. So to give them an idea of the game I offered to teach them, and borrowed Peter's copy. From what Anna said about Settlers of Catan, I had an idea she would like (and be good at) trading games.

I've never taught the game or read the rules, so I wasn't entirely sure how to begin. The rules start with the movement rules, move onto the trading, then the buildings, cards and special actions, finishing with ownership markers. I think it is important to tie the rules explanation to the aim, in this case to make the most money. So I felt it was important early on to show how money enters the game (orders, messages and other people's use of buildings you own) and how it moves between players (negotiating for actions). From there I had to jump around to explain everything else: movement, buildings, ownership, cards etc. John added a useful set of hints on approximate values, given that the values of things are not obvious the first time you play Traders.

From early on it was clear that John and Andrew were after Privileges. Anna was after Large Orders while I concentrated on Small Orders. John and Anna got ownership markers down very early and I felt duty bound to restore the natural order of things by getting the Cathedral back into male ownership. I traded away my Privilege early on.

At one point John and I were involved in a deal, which on reflection was probably illegal. I had negotiated a string of deals, but half way through executing them I realised that I had planned on using a goods cube the action before I got from John. John gave it to me, one building/action before he should have.

About three rounds from the end I thought I was doing quite well though Anna was also in a good position. But I was about to run out of both goods and orders and the last two rounds didn't give me as much income as Anna was getting. I did much better (in absolute terms) than I usually do but still a long way from winning. John got a significant portion of his final score from his hand of Privilege cards to come second. Anna won and declared that she really enjoyed the game.

Anna   1035
John B  950
Andrew  830
Ian     820
Anne    595

Hornochsen!
After finishing Traders we wanted a light filler. John turned his nose up at No Thanks! So we played Hornochsen! I played my cards out too early and was forced to take a bad pile with a x2. Andrew kept his cards and ended up making the best of the ending.

Hornochsen tends to favor either the first players to finish or the last -- this time it was the last players.

Andrew 16
John B 14
Anne    6
Anna    2
Ian   -10

Tichu (4 September 2010)

Another evening of Tichu with Andrew and Anna. Game one got off to a quiet start until I started to call Tichu. By the sixth hand Anna and Andrew were on 10 points, but then they pulled finger and made 995 while we lost 195.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    55    45
2.   100   100 (a quiet start)
3.   275   125 Ian's Tichu
4.   425   175 Ian's Tichu
5.   495   105 Anna failed Tichu
6.   690    10 Ian's Tichu while Andrew failed
7.   590   310 Andrew's Tichu and 1-2 while Ian failed Tichu
8.   510   490 Andrew's Tichu, while Anne failed
9.   495   705 Anna's Tichu
10.  495  1005 Anna's Tichu and 1-2

Game two got off to a faster start, by hand 4 we were even but after that Anna and Andrew accelerated away from us.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    20   180 Anna's Tichu
2.   320   180 Ian's Tichu and 1-2
3.   335   165 Anna failed Tichu
4.   250   250 Anne failed Tichu
5.   250   550 Andrew's Tichu and 1-2
6.   305   695 Anna's Tichu
7.   455   745 Ian's Tichu 
8.   480   920 Andrew's Tichu 
9.   535  1065 Anna's Tichu

Friday 3 September

Anna and Andrew showed up first and we started with

Frank's Zoo
Nigel showed up in time for the second hand and John in time to join in the third. Previously we played until two players reached 18 but this time we played by the rules which are that the game ends when two players reach 19. Only Nigel avoided going backwards at least once.

Anna   3 7 10 19 18 20
Andrew 3 5  7 11 15 12
Anne  -1 3  1  5 10 15
Ian    4 3 12 14 15 19
Nigel  - 6 10 12 21 26
John B - -  2  1  3  7

Attika
Anne says she romped away to beat Nigel and Anna. She says it was because she got half a dozen carrots.

Great Wall of China
I haven't played for years and I taught from memory, as I have mis-placed my English translation. My memory was vague on the end game rules. John and I wasted about 30% of our cards on one battle! No wonder Andrew won.

Andrew 40
Ian    26
John B 20

We played a second time. This time I tried to grab things cheaply and became the target of both John and Andrew's attempts to block me.

Ian    36
John B 31
Andrew 25

Tigris and Euphrates
Anna and Nigel had both played once before but needed a rules refresher. Nigel was working up to building a blue momument when Anne started a conflict with him which saw his blue tiles evaporate. Anna created a big civilisation in the centre of the board and Nigel tried to encroach on it. Anne created a black temple while Anna created more temples elsewhere. Anna did the final civilization join that ended the game.

Everyone agreed that they needed to play again soon while the rules were fresh in their minds.

Anna  9
Anne  8
Nigel 3

Beowulf: The Legend
While mesopotamian civilizations were battling it out at the other end of the table, John suggested playing Beowulf. Gvien how popular Beowulf is around here, strangely Andrew hasn't played before, on the other hand it was my third game this week. I did my normal cowardly strategy, but I also ran pretty short of cards and victory points. Andrew and I didn't do well. John says he like this game because it prompts more talking between players than most other games.

John B 43
Ian    17
Andrew 16

Friday 20 August 2010

There were six of us, and faced with the awkward choice between splitting into two groups of three or playing a six player game we opted for six player games.

Havoc: The Hundred Years War
We taught this poker derivative to Andrew P. John B and Andrew P stayed out of the first 6 battles! Which was scary as they built up huge hands of cards. Whereas I was down to about 7 and Anne even fewer. I scored 17 in the first 5 battles but nothing after that. The last two battles went John's way.

John B   29
Andrew H 23
Andrew P 22
Ian      17
Anna     15
Anne     12

Atlantic Star
We retaught Andrew and Anna this game. No-one put anything in the 5 star column and blue ended up in the 1 star column. Anna was extremely stingy until near the end when she took a big loan that didn't cost her any points.

Anna     43
John B   41
Anne     39
Andrew H 35
Ian      34
Andrew P 28

Wellycon 2010 (14 & 15 August)

As a Wellycon organiser I expected to play very few games at Wellycon 2010. But looking in my trusty notebook I was surprised to see that I played ten games over the weekend. Though people who know me might be surprised it wasn’t double that!

On Friday night Peter, Andrew and I went to St Pats to start setting things up. The Call to Arms guys had kindly put out 15 tables for us, but there was still plenty to do.

Saturday
I spent most of the morning on the registration desk and regretfully turning down requests to come and play various games.

Endeavor
Gynn was due to play in Jarratt's Endeavor tournament but was stuck deep in Small World when the other players were ready to start, so I took his place. I have never devoted enough time to get my head around all the buildings, cards and various strategies and tactics of Endeavor. I tend to play instinctively (though it is probably more accurate to say "randomly"). I was the only player to not start with a Workshop and concentrated on action tokens instead of resource tokens. I also stayed non-military which meant I was at a severe disadvantage against Antony and Henry who had two military buildings each and ended up dominating the cities. While at the end I concentrated on mining for good cards.

Antony 59
Henry  53
Ian    50
Silja  30

Beowulf
Is my favourite push-your-luck game. A game which also includes a good dose of resource management. I taught it to Alan, Rodney and Rhiana. Rhiana had terrible luck with her risks.

Rodney 30
John B 30
Ian    28
Alan   24
Rhianna 7

Nexus Ops
After dinner Minty, his son Sam, John and I played Minty's copy with my reference cards. John had no mines on his side of the board, while Minty had heaps of mines. Conversely this meant John started with a lot of Rock Striders. Minty missed out on the win by a bad dice roll, leaving it to John to finish the game.

John B 13
Minty   9
Sam     8
Ian     7

Extravagances
We ended the evening with Extravagances, Brian's free trading filler. This is a prototype of a Pit-like trading game. Themed around decadent Roman power brokers vying with each other to put on the most extravagant spectacles. There is a small deck of goal cards and a larger deck of resource cards. Everyone has a private goal and there are a couple of public goals. When you fulfil a goal you add it to your face down score pill and turn up or pickup another. Trading is free form and occurs in one minute blocks. Starting with very few cards and getting two more between each trading block. There is a penalty to being caught with too many cards.

There were 6-8 players, I don't remember who else played but I won by one point with 5 completed missions and 19 points.

Sunday

Zombie Dice
Wellycon tradition dictates that there is a fire alarm on the Sunday. Tradition also dictates that gaming continue outside. So half a dozen of us played the push-your-luck game of Zombie Dice in the drizzle while the alarm blared in the background. The aim of this dice game is to collect more brains than other players and stop before you get hit by three shotgun blasts. There are three colours of dice red, yellow and green, which have different ratios of brains, shotgun blasts and foot prints.

Given that it was a learning game, a push-your-luck game _and_ a zombie game we weren't taking it too seriously and I lost badly. The "all clear" came before we could start a second game.

Age of Steam
Once the early rush was over, Peter was keen on learning Age of Steam so we set up a game behind the registration table, so we could be handy to stop playing and sign people in. Andrew appointed John as his proxy from turn 2 but in the second half of the game Jarratt took over. I started with linking up and delivering a cube for 2, on the second turn I got Loco, linked up and delivered a cube for 4. After than I got to 5 and 6 fairly quickly and was delivering 5s and 6s for the rest of the game. Taking production to feed my habit as Peter was taking cubes from one end of my network and Jarratt the other. Jarratt made a big come back for the tie. Peter got to see what is possible with track building as we fought over the centre and south west. (Jarratt's game report.)

Andrew Rae, John B, Jarratt 130
Ian                         130
Peter Freer                 100

Metropolys
We pulled Skyler away from his War Game Supply table for a game. He was keen on learning Metropolys. I beat three newbies but only just.

Ian    34
Skyler 33
Art    31
Peter  21

No Thanks!
Towards the end of Wellycon we played fillers to finish off the day.

Peter  21
Ian    36
Rachel 39
Don    54

No Thanks!
John took Peter's seat, and I did badly.

John B 24
Don    26
Rachel 38
Ian    43

En Garde
After Wellycon was officially over I reminded Eric that he had promised (in a rash moment) to teach me this game. It turns out Rachel is a fencer (as is Skyler) but my card counting (pretty easy in a 25 card deck) helped me out.

Ian    5
Rachel 3

Age of Steam India (7 August 2010)

Jarratt organized games are our place on Saturday.

Masters Gallery
Jarratt was expecting Nigel to show up, so we played this while we waited. The second and third rounds finished very quick, hence low score, Jarratt and Travis were going neck and neck. But Travis made out like a bandit in the last round.

Travis   7 18 39 84
Jarratt 12 19 40 70
Anne     7 18 32 68
John B  15 20 34 65
Ian      6 14 33 60

Age of Steam Expansion: India
The points of difference for this expansion include a single black city, once you deliver black cubes you keep them. You can either expend two black cubes for an income point or keep to the end for 3 VP each. There are no new cities and $15 sea links that are one link but two income points for cubes delivered over them. This was the second time that Jarratt, Anne and I had played this board, while the first time for John and Travis.

I started in the north west between Srinagar and Delhi via Amritsar and delivered two cubes for four income, but things went down hill after that. Jarratt started between Jodhpur and Porbandar, next door to me. While John built between Bhopal and Varanasi, hemming me in to the south. Anne started in the north eastern corner of the board and Travis had the south to himself.

John got himself into trouble and I bailed him out because if I let him go under Jarratt would have benefited too much. That put Jarratt into the lead. I later made a deal with John that I regretted as he did better out of out of it than I did. I split my network and missed a good black cube move. On the other side of the board Anne's plan to deliver yellow cubes for six was falling apart as we were blocking her out of all the yellow cities. Travis lagging behind in income but also in shares.

In the north west we were running out of cubes. Travis built one of the $15 sea links and was delivering black cubes over one of Anne's links, he over took John and Jarratt (once you took his lack of shares into consideration). They had used all their shares by the end of the game.

Travis  81
Jarratt 75
John B  74
Ian     71
Anne    55

It took a long time, but I enjoyed it more than the first time I played. I now have to learn to resist temptation and start in the south.

Overall it was Travis's evening.

Friday 6 August 2010

It was good to see Jim and Margot again after such a long time.

On the Underground
Anne taught this game to Margot. I hear that there was a tendency to build lines parallel to each other, and also a reluctance to join across the centre of the board. In the end it was a draw between Margot and Andrew.

Margot   45
Andrew P 45
Anne     43
Nigel    24

In the Year of the Dragon
It's been awhile since we played this game and we had to refer to the rules while explaining them to Jim. The events were in 2 groups of 5, with pairs of events well spaced.

We all took turns in leading on the people track. John, then Jim then me. John on the other hand led on the VP track from the beginning due to his strategy of starting at the front of the people track and buying a double favour on the first turn (hence temporarily bankrupting himself) and taking money on the second turn.

John B 101
Jim     90
Ian     85

R-Eco
On the Underground finished well before In the Year of the Dragon and Nigel suggested playing R-Eco, and he ran away with the first game. Despite being simple, it is quite difficult to teach as it is not like other card games. The theme is recycling and waste management. You are trying to win tokens by supplying the recycling centres with the right goods, and avoid illegal dumping (i.e. keeping your hand to 5 cards or fewer). You can only play cards of one suit and every time you play cards you are forced to pick up cards.

Nigel  10
Andrew  3
Anne    2
Margot  0

In the second game Anne and Andrew did much better.

Anne   10
Andrew  8
Nigel   6
Margot  2

Masters Gallery
I gave Jim a quick introduction to Masters Gallery, which was probably too quick for him to pick up all the details. Probably the most important thing I failed to get across is the inflation in value of paintings throughout the game. Painting in the first round tend to be worth zero to three points each whereas by the last round they can easily be worth seven or eight points each.

John B 14 34 67 106
Ian     6 35 68  98
Jim    19 45 74  89

Traders of Carthage
I hadn't noticed Susumu Kawasaki's name before, except to notice a Japanese name on two of my card games. But he designed both R-Eco and Traders of Carthage.

In this game the cards in your hand are either money to buy stuff or to protect your goods from pirates. The goods you buy are cards in the market, which you put in front of you. The cards in front of you are grouped by suit (each suit represents one of the four ships on the board). As you buy goods the ships move forward and when they reach Carthage there is a pay day (and pirates strike at any ships on the two spaces before Carthage). Again it is harder to explain than to play. Though it is even harder to get the strategy right.

At the end I only had red goods and the market never had red goods for me to buy, so I kept refusing to buy because the game would end without me scoring any points. But resistance is futile, as Andrew and Anne kept filling their ships in the mean time and once they arrived in Carthage it was all over and I was thrashed.

Andrew P 22
Anne     15
Ian      11

Friday 9 July 2010

Trans America
We started this as an opening filler while we waited to see if anyone else would show up. I am not sure what the scores were but Travis (the only American at the table) won. Moira and Anne went off the end and Andrew, Andrew, Anna and Nasia were in between.

(John and I played one hand of Lost Cities. John played a yellow 5 and as I had the 6, 7 and 10 (from memory) I assumed he had the 8 and 9 so I played the 10 only to pickup the 9! I greedily started the white before I got all my green down as I could see John had been picking up white and thought there was plenty of time to get them down. He decided to not start white and leave me in the lurch.)

El Capitán
As we taught Travis he said it reminded him of a different game (I expect he was thinking of the previous incarnation of this game - Tycoon).

Andrew started by going to the bank and getting two loans (I need to check on BGG to see if this is kosher). The rest of us went to bank later and took one loan. But Andrew went into the second round with a distinct cash advantage. Most cities only had one player's warehouses.

In the second round I stayed too long in Tunis and missed my opportunity to hurt Andrew in Marseille (and also missed out on 2nd place in Athina). At the end of the second round nobody had gotten to 9 cities but Travis was closest. In the third round we were trying to optimize our earnings and hurt each other.

Unfortunately it is a very thinky game, which leads to a lot of down time. I can see it playing better online. While we were playing this there were three games played at the other end of the table!

Andrew 248
John B 190
Travis 170
Ian    141

I re-read the rules looking for something about what players could and couldn't do on the first turn, and it is contradictory.

In one place it says:
"The youngest player is the starting player of the first phase, i.e. at the beginning of the game. She is given the starting player token "El Capitan" and places it in front of herself. In her turn a player may sail first and then must perform one of the three following actions:" and lists 1. Build a warehouse, 2. Build a fortress, 3. Take a loan.

A bit later under Sailing:
"At the beginning of the game all players must buy at least one destination card and sail to a destination city with their ship."

I couldn't find anything in rules forum on Boardgamegeek.

Though in the rules for Tycoon (the original game that El Capitan is based on) it says:
"Before you fly out at the start of the game or if you have no more money, or if you do not want to build on your turn you can fly back to your bank and take out a loan. You do not need a plane ticket for this."

Rheinländer
Most of the game was mostly "civilized", until near the end when Andrew came under attack. Though he took advantage of Anne's merging of one of his dukedoms with one of Anna's. It was Nasia's first game.

Andrew 40
Anna   40
Nasia  38
Anne   34
Moira  23

Frank's Zoo
Anna taught Moira and Nasia one of our staple games. Anne used her "I have another pair of killer whales" strategy. While Nasia and Andrew had bad games. Moira did quite well but Anne and Anna bounced the lead back and forth between them, and Anna had it when the music stopped.

Anna   4  9 12 18 25
Moira  5  8  8 13 17
Anne   5  9 16 15 18
Nasia  0  1  3  5  4
Andrew 3  0  4  6  8

Attika
Moira went home and Attika hit the table again. This time Anne won with a shrine to shrine victory.

Finca
Most people left and Nasia went down stairs to fetch her copy of Finca. John spent the first half of the game picking and delivering lemons. I tried not to use my special tokens and tried to deliver fruit as soon as I had picked enough for a delivery and ended up doing a lot better than in my last game.

Ian    48
John B 44
Anna   35
Nasia  32

Chicago Express in Woodridge

David recently bought Chicago Express and invited me, Matt and Roland around for a game or two.

David had found a couple of places in the rule book where it reads like the dividend payout occurs between the player choosing their action and executing their action. I hadn't come across this issue before and even though I was sure it was the wrong interpretation I could find nothing to back my interpretation (except that it seems simpler and more sensible, which isn't always a good guide in game rules). It was David's game and house, so we played it his way. Later on BGG I found that other players had come to the same conclusion that David had but luckily there were confirmations from people owning Wabash Cannonball (and from Harry Wu via John Bohrer) that dividends are paid out between players turns.

We played with poker chips and open cash. Apart from some confusion about which chips were $1 and which were $5, this was very good. In my previous games we have played with paper money and Power-grid style (stack your money on the table, but you don't need to reveal exactly how much cash you have) -- which works fine too.

This was the first game for Matt and Roland and I was very rusty and over bid for my first shares. Red was divided three ways which put an end to it. Several railways reached Chicago.

Roland 141
Matt    90 odd
Ian     86
David   53

The pace of the second game was quicker. Unfortunately David and I let Matt get 2 red shares and Roland get 1. And they made us suffer!

Roland 67
Matt   67
Ian    54
David  55

Wednesday 7 July 2010 at Peter's

Master's Gallery
While we were waiting for others to turn up, Andrew and I kicked off a game of Master's Gallery. Anne and both Johns joined in. It was John R's first game. I should have played my last green card in the third round when it would have been worth plenty of points. Andrew seems to be good at this game.

John B  9 26 56 73
Ian    14 40 74 87
Anne   12 32 50 65
John R 12 38 58 72
Andrew 12 42 72 90

Age of Industry
This time we played the German side and ended up with 2 "no demand" tiles. It was the first game for Anne. I started in the French corner while the others started near Berlin. This was a mistake as it pays to have at least one other person in your area. We were very short of resouces through out the game. If anyone built a coal mine or iron works, it was emptied by the next two players. I still haven't "got" this game and ended up over building quite a lot of my stuff, while Anne used my ports leaving me with unflipped cotton mills. Unlike Brass, unflipped tiles still score points they just don't give you money.

It was Anne's first game. And she rightly complained about a lot of down time. It doesn't seem as easy to plan ahead as it does in Brass. Or may be we are just not used to it.

John B 29
Anne   27
Lance  25
Ian    24

China Moon
We taught Lance this nasty little, no luck, race game and we probably shouldn't have as he gave us a right royal thrashing!

Lance 29
Ian    6
Anne   2

Friday 2 July 2010

Andrew Parr joined the regulars for some of the popular games of the moment.
Masters Gallery
While we waited for John and Nigel I taught Anne, Andrew H and Andrew P. Unfortunately superior experience didn't pay off for Anna and I.

Anna     14 30 46  72
Ian      15 33 43  65
Andrew P 14 36 55 101
Andrew H  7 29 59  85
Anne     20 30 54  78

Frank's Zoo
This was Nigel's revenge. He roared into the lead and no-one else seemed particularly keen on coming second!

Anna     4  7  6  8 10  9 15
Anne     5  4  7 11 11 14 18 (second on tie break)
Nigel    2  9 15 19 24 26 26
Andrew H 2  4  8  7 11 17 18

El Capitán
While Nigel was re-naming Frank's Zoo to Nigel's Zoo, we pulled out this game that hasn't been played for awhile. Andrew Parr always had a hand of cards while John and I played with very few cards. We thought after the second payday that John was running away with the game but Andrew made a good come back.

We missed the double fortress payout rule, where in the city with the most warehouses the fortress payout is doubled.

John B   183
Andrew P 161
Ian      135

Attika
Anna and Anne were keen on playing this again and as El Capitán was far from finished there was plenty of time to play this through to the very end. Andrew winning, followed by Anna, Nigel and Anne.

Masters Gallery
Attika hadn't quite finished so Andrew suggested that John and I play this simplified version of Modern Art.

John B   10 39 68 92
Andrew P  6 29 58 84
Ian      14 43 65 83

Beowulf
After the others left we finished the evening battling along side Beowulf. Andrew was doing really well for most of the game. But John and I made a come back towards the end.

Ian      30
John B   30
Andrew P 23
Anne     20

Friday 25 June 2010

There is no satisfying some people. We get a new $5000 door bell, which actually works, and our visitors don't like it! They seem nostalgic for the old, dodgy one.

TransEuropa
Nasia had told me she would be late so we played this quick filler while we waited. She showed up and joined up in round two. Meanwhile Anna finished round one. On round two Nigel finished so quickly that he caught Anne so far from her destinations she ran off the end of the score track.

Ian    8
Andrew 7
Anna   6
Nasia  6
Nigel  5
John B 5
Anne   0

Beowulf
John and I taught Nasia this push your luck game. I pushed my luck to run out of cards on the Dragon Battle but with John trying to conserve his cards for the final encounter I won to get 7VP. If he had played from his hand rather than risking he would probably have ended up on 28. Nasia played a steady game, though with plenty of risk taking, to win.

Nasia  30
Ian    24
John B 23

Frank's Zoo
No evening is complete without Frank's Zoo. The consensus of opinion about Anne's game was that she was using a 6 player strategy.

Anne   4  3  7  6  8  7
Nigel  2  8  8 11 17 21
Anna   5  7 11 17 16 21
Andrew 2  5 10 13 18 22

Pompeii
This race game to save your people from the lava hasn't been played for awhile and Anne taught Andrew and Nasia. Nigel complained that his fellow players weren't screaming appropriately as their people went into the volcano.

Andrew 10
Nigel   7 (but lost fewer to the volcano than Nasia)
Nasia   7
Anne    6

Masters Gallery
I bought this game recently and have been keen to get it to the table. It turns out to be a quick filler and we learnt and played it twice while Pompeii was being covered in lava. This game is all about pumping up the value of particular artist's paintings by making them popular. Unlike Modern Art, there are no auctions. You play cards in front of you, some cards cause extra actions and people who diversify their portfolio get to add extra cards after the values of artists are known.

In the first game we used a lot of cards and had few left for the last round

John B 9  25  73 114
Anna  18  41  74  94
Ian   14  38  70  98

In the second game we conserved our cards until the last round

John B 7  14  50  90
Anna   5  27  68 136
Ian    8  23  58 132

Finca
After the Brooklyn Express left, Nasia taught us this cute and very colourful little game of picking fruit, finding donkeys and filling orders for fruit on Mallorca (aka Majorca). Like Pompeii how far you move your farmers depends on how many farmers are together on the same space. Also the quantity of fruit you pick depends on the number of farmers are on the space you arrive at. This simple arithmetic was often beyond our capabilities even though it wasn't yet midnight!

John B 50
Nasia  40
Ian    37
Anne   26

Friday 18 June 2010

TransEuropa
While we waited to see if anyone else was showing up Anne suggested TransEuropa. John joined in round 2 and started on 11 as a penalty (the other scores were 13,12,9 & 8 at that stage). Nasia had a passion for Scandinavia, while I got Florence three times in a row. Most people helped me at some point or other.

Ian    12
John B  8
Andrew  3
Nasia   1
Anne    0

Havoc: The Hundred Years War
Our second game, we taught Nigel and Nasia. We were all too busy recruiting to go to the first battle, and it was discarded (and everyone except Peacekeeper John had to discard a card). After Nasia won her first battle she immediately caught us on the hop by starting another. She built up a sizeable lead by the halfway point and John had avoided all the fighting so far. But once John (who had been collecting low value cards) joined in the war, he dominated the battlefields.

John B 27
Nasia  24
Nigel  21
Anne   14
Andrew 13
Ian    11

Wildlife
Nasia popped down to her flat to fetch this game specifically designed for six players. It tracks the evolution of six species over millions of years. Early on Crocs became the most intelligent species, while Humans eagerly paid plenty of food for opportunities to expand. Several species ignored their normal habitats. In particular Snakes stayed clear of the water, Mammoths largely ignored the plains, preferring the mountains and water. Mammoths were consistently the most evolved species, appearing everywhere except the desert. While Snakes and Crocs had the most abilities (Snakes favouring Food and Crocs Intelligence). Bears and Eagles had the biggest herd instinct.

Most cards were auctioned for over ten food and it was only in the last couple of rounds that the price dropped. Abilities didn't change hands much. I enjoy Wildlife, though in keeping with its theme it does seem to take a long time.

Crocs  (John B) 89
Eagles (Andrew) 79
Snakes  (Nigel) 63
Humans  (Nasia) 57
Mammoths  (Ian) 51
Bears    (Anne) 36

Change of Location (16 June 2010)

Peter was at a meeting so Wednesday games were at our house. Though with the games played and the people attending it felt more like Friday night games.

Frank's Zoo
Starting the evening with Frank's Zoo has almost become a habit. A six player game certainly means big swings in the scores. But Anna was in the lead until the last hand when John (and I) jumped ahead.

Anna   6 11 15 16 18
Andrew 3  7 12 15 16
Ian    5  6 12 14 21
John B 3  9 11 16 23
Anne  -1  3  2  9 13
John R 5  3  8 12 11

Havoc: The Hundred Year War
I bought this card game in a bunch of six games via TradeMe a few months ago. It turns out to be game of building up your hand of cards, choosing your battles (showdowns) and bluff. (Here and here is the story of the games design) We got two rules wrong: there should have been an extra recruiting round before the first battle and you can use any dogs from the battle (not just those outside the battle). It turned out to be a hit.

Anna   26 (winner on the second tie break)
John B 26
Andrew 19
Anne   18
Ian    16
John R 13

Friday 11 June 2010

Frank's Zoo
We started this game while we waited for Nigel to arrive. He arrived half way through the first hand and took over Anne's hand while she talked on the phone.

There is no stopping Andrew at the Zoo.

Anna   2  5 10 15 19
Andrew 4 11 17 24 27
Ian   -1  5  5  9 15
Anne   4  5  9 10 12
John B 4  7 10  9 10
Nigel  -  0  1  3  6

Attika
Anne got boxed in, in her original location and started another location. She and Nigel both tried for shrine to shrine victories but were stopped. Anna got all her buildings built to beat Nigel and Anne (who was one building behind).

Clippers
It's been a long time between plays. This game were players have incentives to take the routes to visit particular destinations is superficially similar to Expedition. But it involves much more thinking and taking into account the other player's potential actions, as the various shipping lines are much limited and number of points for a destination can vary between zero and 72 or more.

The red shipping line got sidelined to Hawaii, while the black line zig-zagged until it ran out mid-ocean and green got all the way across the Pacific. Attention then turned to white and purple. Finally red branched and restarted and blue took off for a run to NZ and Australia.

Following John's example we got all our ports down and Andrew and John even paid to move some ports to more valuable spots.

Andrew was initially confused by the choices but soon got into the evil shafting that makes up this game. The results were pretty close.

John   216
Ian    210
Andrew 208

10 Day in Europe
While the final clipper lines were snaking across the Pacific Anne and Anna each won a game, while Nigel whined and complained a lot!

Beowulf
Anna, Andrew and Nigel were all tired and left three of us. John wanted a revenge for his disastrous showing on Wednesday.

I started with an amazing streak of luck with my risks. But by the time we got to the swap 5 cards for 5VP I only had 7 cards (+2 specials) left. I rashly traded in 5 cards for 5VP and then 2 drinking horns for a scroll. I used my 5 card risk special card to put pressure on the others in Dragon's Rampage (both had large hands of cards). Anne got the Iron Shield. In Dragon Battle Anne and John still had a number of cards. I started with the Hides of Land (3 wild) but risked and lost to collect the double wound and two cards. Anne and John ran each other down to one card as they fought over the 7VP and to avoid the scratch. I had the most money for 7VP and my two cards beat the others so I could heal my third wound and avoid loosing 15 VP.

John managed to collect far more scrolls than Anne and I put together and we were close at the finish.

Ian  27
John 26
Anne 11

The three player game tends to make the competition sharper as there tends to be one very good reward, one very bad "reward" and a mediocre one in each major event.