Gaming at John's place - 3 January

When Anne and I arrived at John's house, Jarratt, Lance and John were finishing a game of Louis XIV. Jarratt won, what is one of his favourite games of 2005.

Jarratt 61, winning with excess shields, but notably, he finished first in virtually every round - and finishing later is generally helpful.
Lance 58, won Louis in every round and managed to stack up an incredible 10 (possibly 11) missions.
John 47

That done we started a game of Railroad Tycoon. Jarratt and Lance had both brought their copies and Jarratt was quicker off the draw so we used his game. This was John and Anne's first game of Railroad Tycoon and my second. I ended up with the tycoon card that gives you points for links build from Chicago, which dictated were I started. I went south to pick up goods but let Jarratt and Lance both build to Chicago in a competition to build between Chicago and New York in the process doing me out of 4 points. Most of the others concentrated on the east coast where the cities are close together. There certainly seems to be room for several players up and down the coast but probably only one or two north of New York.

This is fun game, not as serious as Age of Steam but with its own challenges as points can be achieved in various ways and players have control of the length of the game. We were too quick putting the game away to record the scores but the results were in this order:
Jarratt
John
Ian
Lance
Anne

Aqua Romana - we are not certain whether we had the rules correct - we only had the german rules available when we played it. Quite an interesting little game, which plays as Metro, in terms of placing tiles to help oneself while shafting opponents, but with substantiative control over the tiles played (of which there are only 4 types) - and good scope for planning turns in advance. Has a bit of puzzle aspect while still being directly competitive.
John 26
Lance 24
Anne 18
Ian 14
Lance's list of the things we played wrong in Aqua Romana:

• The master builders only go around the board clockwise.
• If you can't play a tile due to there being no master builder in line of sight then you just move any master builder 1 space.
• When a master builder goes around the corner (over a fountain) you get to play another tile of the same kind anywhere (except to directly increase one of the aqueducts)
• When one of your aqueducts get closed off you get to place one of the reserve master builders.
• If a master builder's tiles have run out then you can place any tile (that master builder essentially becomes a joker)

Way out West - one of Martin Wallace's earlier games, and although at one point we had 4 Martin Wallace games on the table, this was the only one to get an airing. This was our first four player game and the second game for me and John and first for Anne and Lance. Three of us played conventionally and placed cowboys, cows and buildings, but John tried a more extreme strategy of concentrating on cowboys and building and gunfights. But the gods of dice favoured Anne and she quickly became the most wanted player mostly from successful defending her patch. John concentrated a worrying number of cowboys in particular towns in an attempt to take control of them, but the dice and lack of cows were against him. But in the end my control of buildings and towns won me the game.

Ian 34
Lance 29
Anne 19
John 18

Oasis, "That stupid game" according to Lance, who nevertheless was encouraged to play. John started camel herding early on, I was into steppe (yellow grass) with a side line in stones, Lance was into meadow and steppe with a sideline in camels and Anne was into meadow with a sideline in stones. I think everyone got a fair shot at the trading and apart from John the scores were fairly close at the end.
Lance 124
Ian 115
Anne 110
John 80

Thanks to John for hosting and recording the results for these games (some of his comments have been incorporated in this report)