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).