Friday 12 March 2010 (King Cotton rules)

Brass

Nigel and Anne suggested playing Brass which was one of the games I had already put on the table. Anne declared she wanted to get away with building no level 1 buildings, while I wondered if I could get a chance of improving on my Cotton King strategy.

Nigel started with development for £2. I followed with development (burning two level 1 cotton mills) for £4. Anne decided that £6 was too expensive and took a £30 loan instead, which put her first for the next turn. But iron was still £3 so she built a coal mine in Wigan and a canal for £8. Nigel did the same in Manchester. Ideally I would have liked to take advantage of Nigel's coal mine by playing a Manchester card or an Iron card to build an iron works in Manchester and then burn another couple of cotton mills, but I didn't have the right card. So I did the next best thing I used two cards as the card I didn't have to build an Iron Works for £5, putting me in first place for the third turn and giving me access to the cheap Iron for more development (burning two more cotton mills).

I then switched to building mills and shipping cotton. I used the external market to ship from my first three mills and luckily for me there were 3 un-flipped ports for me to ship to from my fourth and fifth mills. So I used one of Nigel's and one of Anne's. Nigel finished the canal phase with an un-flipped level 2 mill which was still un-flipped at the end of the game.

Going into the rail phase I still had my level one coal mine. The rail phase didn't go so smoothly as there was a shortage of building spaces and resources were expensive but eventually I managed to get down two more mills. Towards the end of the game I wondered if it would be better to switch tack and build a ship building yard in Liverpool rather than build my last cotton mill, but the cost in iron was too much. So I built my final mill and a port and shipped cotton and used my last two cards and £35 to build three bits of track. Nigel used his last two cards the same way.

Nigel's track was worth more than mine but my eight cotton mills and other odds and ends were worth 93 points.

Ian   190
Nigel 167
Anne  161

Nigel complained that it was a hard game, but then Brass always is hard. Anne said that starting third ruined her game. I think it would be possible to score 200 in a three player game -- though you might need a bit of luck and non-obstructive opponents.

Friday 5 March 2010

Andrew Rae had asked me to play test Dawn of Nations v0.2 so while we were waiting for the last people to turn up I put Dawn of Nations sheets on the table. I didn't teach the game, just let people read the rules themselves (the consequent quiet period felt strange). There were six of us to start with and John arrived and joined in during the second round -- which didn't put him at a significant disadvantage. Most people picked up on the rules without trouble. One had trouble with remembering to declare a goal before throwing. And there were a couple of questions that were answered by other players using info on the play sheet.

Having tried the War Divine-Favour Decline-and-Fall strategy last time I wanted to try the Exploration Trade Wonder-of-the-World strategy. I assumed that Trade would work better with more players. As it turns out my dice throwing was sub-par.

It seemed to scale up to seven as well as could be expected. Because Trade and War are popular and are interactive the down time is less significant than other seven player games.

Nasia was the only person to try for Divine Favour (unsuccessfully) and Anne was the only person to try to finish the game by finishing the Wonder of the World over 3 turns.

People were reluctant to talk about it afterwards except to say that it was a good filler.

Nigel  82 (mostly War with some Trade and Technology)
Anne   78 (mostly Exploration with Trade and the Wonder)
John B 78 (mostly War, Exploration and Trade)
Andrew 76 (mostly War with some Exploration)
Nasia  66 (mostly War with some Exploration)
Anna   66 (mostly War and Exploration)
Ian    52 (mostly Trade with some Exploration and Technology)

Then we split into two groups. Nasia taught her new game of Dungeon Lords to Nigel and John. This looked cute but bitsy. John won. I can't say much about it as I was busy playing Tichu at the other end of the table.

This time it was Anna and I against Anne and Andrew. They called and failed Tichu twice while we called and made Tichu seven times. Nobody called Grand Tichu and nobody made a 1-2. There were three bombs, including 2 six card straights, in one hand (#4 I think)!

Ian & Anna  Anne & Andrew
1)   205 T         -5
2) T 320           80
3) T 410          190
4)   550 T        150 T(failed)
5)   690 T        210
6)   705          295
7) T 870          330
8)   940          260 T(failed)
9)  1095 T        305

The other game was still going, so we played Frank's Zoo.

Andrew Anna Anne Ian
1)  1    5   -1   7
2)  6    6    2   9
3) 13   10    5   8
4) 18   14    4  11

We terminated Frank's Zoo slightly early because Dungeon Lords finally finished. We then decided on our last two games of the evening. At one end of the table John, Andrew and I played Metropolys. I mis-read what both of the others were going for while they picked my statue fetish up early on. The initiative swapped back and forth between us but John finished the game.

John B 36
Ian    35
Andrew 15

At the other end of the table they played Buccaneer and Anne tells me Nigel hogged big stacks which proved expensive and Anna got the best of the tokens.

Anna  99
Anne  87
Nasia 81
Nigel 78