Friday 27 November 2009

Brandon was torn between playing games and sailing. It was a windy evening so we weren't expecting him to turn up to games. In fact we weren't expecting many to turn up and we were pleasantly surprised when there turned out to be eight of us.

Brandon, Anna and Andrew were keen on Tichu and John B joined them as a fourth (I would have if he hadn't). From the other end of the table it sounded like Brandon was teaching the others Auckland Tichu playing habits. Anna and John lead from start to finish with twice as many successful Tichus and Brandon finished with the flourish of an unsuccessful Grand Tichu. From the score sheet it seems like the final score was too embarrassing to record ("995 + lots" to "405 - 200 and who cares").

At the other end of the table John R said he would be interested in learning Vegas Showdown (a game he has previously spurned for thematic reasons). I (accidentally) chose a green strategy by building lounges and night clubs. This meant that my income was low (by half way through the game I was on 7 while the others were into double digits) and I was taking Publicity quite often. John bought lots of red cornered buildings which he rearranged twice (and which scored him 10 points twice). Lance was the restaurant king, while Anne despite her income lagged a long way back on the Fame track. It ended up with a very close race between Lance and John.

Lance  74 + $4
John R 74 + $1
Ian    52
Anne   34

Both games finished at the same time and we swapped around to play a couple of Reiner Knizia games: Taj Mahal and Samurai. I think only John B had a good grip on the strategy of Samurai and Andrew took quite awhile to win any conflicts. I felt I was bumbling along and I let Lance win a pair when I could have easily taken one for myself (though in the final scoring it would have made no difference). In the end only John had a majority. In Taj Mahal Brandon took an early lead but the others closed the gap and John charged passed at the end scoring 11 with his final cards (compared with 3 each by the others).

John R  47
Brandon 38
Anna    35
Anne    31

Brandon, Andrew and Anna went home leaving the rest of us to play test "Dawn of Nations" a prototype print-and-play dice game I offered to play test on behalf of the designer. John R made a break for an early finish by finishing Exploring and Trading quickly and moving onto try and build a Wonder of the World. He proved useless at throwing ones. While the rest of us went on to go to War with each other and eventually most people were trying to build Wonders too (with much better scores in other stuff). I was left out of the Wonder race because I had no-one to Trade with. So I tried for Decline and Fall instead. I could see John B was getting ahead of me while I was still trying to throw a 4. Anne ended the game by finishing her Wonder. We spent a time afterwards discussing the game's weaknesses to provide feedback.

John B 131
Lance  120
Ian    117
Anne   113
John R  89

It was a good evening if your name is John.

Friday 20 November 2009

Lance turned up to Friday games for the first time, which was lucky as otherwise we'd be down to three. After John and I had piled the table high with games, we kicked off with Beowulf. This time John B threw himself into the game with complete disregard for his body taking 5 wounds during the course of the game (and healing one). The rest of us were more cautious and Anne even finished wound free. By the half way point John had massive hand of cards and, unlike Jarratt and I, he managed to significantly offset his wounds with enough fame for an moderate score. There were a couple of encounters which lasted many rounds including one in which Anne and I seemed to use up half the deck in taking risks before I came unstuck. Lance brutally put us all down in the anti-penultimate major encounter with the 4 axe card, the 3 axe card and the 3 helmet card.

Lance  25
Anne   24
Ian    21
John B 17

After the blood and gore of Viking life we move the peaceful world of the Mongolian Oasis. Lance started off with a little meadow which grew and grew. I started with some camels and later branched into a little meadow and some grey stuff. Anne had a bit of meadow, some steppe and a few camels. While John collected multipliers. About the halfway point he had more multipliers than the rest of us put together though they were multiplying roughly nothing. Lance and John joined Anne in hemming in my camel herd, but I started to collect ovoos (stone multipliers) and by the time I collected 6 I was less concerned about the lack of room for my camels. John started his meadow, steppes and stone regions and given his stack of multipliers he was eager for most things. Ultimately Lance's lack of multipliers let him down. In the first half of the game Lance was often alternately first and fourth, while John's stack of multipliers shows that there were plenty available. So why did John end up with so many multipliers? Luck or choice? On the other hand I ran my self out of cards at one point, which I usually consider the kiss of death but this time I came back without too much trouble.

John B 128
Ian    117
Anne    81
Lance   66

Our final game of the evening was Attika. John got off to an early lead in a slightly off central position and at one point both he and Lance were threatening shrine-to-shrine victories at the same time, but Anne and I threw ourselves in the way and the game continued. John finally built all his buildings, and we continued playing for the minor places. Anne finishing second then Lance third.

John B win
Anne   2nd
Lance  3rd
Ian    last

Anne had to catch a 7am flight so we didn't play until 3am as someone suggested we should.

At Peter's (Wednesday 18 November)

While we waited to see if Nigel would turn up we played the "On the Brink" expansion to Pandemic. This was the first game of Pandemic for John B. We started with a lot of red infections and some of us hurried off to Asia to deal with that. Things started to mutate soon after that and then red went virulent. We got cures for 3 diseases but couldn't get on top of things before the deck ran out, hence we lost. The final infection phase looked like the beginning of the end with out breaks spreading in a chain reaction from city to city across the world.

Our second game of the evening was Beowulf. Peter had amazing luck, taking risk after risk and he spent almost the whole game scratch and wound free. For some reason I found money hard to come by in this game. I found myself inadvertently playing a "Jarratt strategy" as gradually my scratches and wounds started to add up and a general lack of cards at some critical points meant that I was forced to take a couple of "-2"s plus wounds, including the infamous double wound. I managed to get rid of one wound at the cost of 2 points but was left with 4 at the end.

Peter  32
John B 28
John R 23
Lance  21
Ian     1

We finished with a couple of rounds of Coloretto. I played a greedy strategy while John R tried very hard to avoid collecting more than three suits. Despite the consensus of the table that I was doing it all wrong, I won.

Ian John R Lance Peter
30   33     31    27
35   26     28    33
======================
65   59     59    60

Friday 13 November - House of Pain

Anne was out for the evening and we were six, so I rashly suggested Pizarro & Co. a game where the players take the role of kings and queens who bid to hire the services of the best and most daring explorers. As the game progresses, competition for the explorers' services increases as each explorer has fewer and fewer expeditions available for investment. In the end, only one ship for each explorer will make the final trip. Perhaps Carl and I should have warned the newbies more diligently about the harshness of this auction game, where early decisions can have dramatic effects later on and certain combinations of explorers are powerful and others are weak. For instance once Carl had bought the first two Captain Cook ships it was worth it to him to spend all the rest of his money on getting the third Cook ship, because once a player has all three ships of an explorer then they have no competition in the next 3 auctions and three Cook ships were worth 35 points plus what ever points they have left on cards. It probably wasn't worthwhile for anyone else to bankrupt themselves to buy the 3rd Cook ship and stop him.

Everyone starts the game with 9 cards worth 45 gold which are also worth 18 points (if you managed to keep all your cards until the end of the game). In phase I 18 ships are up for auction (3 for each explorer). In phase II there are 12 ships up for auction (2 per explorer) and only those people who bought ships in phase I can participate. In phase III there is only one ship per explorer. At the end of the game you score depending on which ships you end up with (some are worth no points) and cards left in your hand.

Carl    46
Ian     36
Anna    35
John B  34
Nigel   29
Andrew  22

After the game there was some talk of playing again now that everyone understood the game better, but Nigel was visibly relieved when we decided to move onto a new game and said he understood why Anne hates Pizarro and Co. so much (I expect Andrew was equally unkeen on another play).

As an aside I think Pizarro & Co. is badly themed. I think a better theme would be film making (like Hollywood Blockbuster / Traumfabrik) with the players taking the role of film makers hiring film stars. The 3 phases of the game corresponding to the phases of the filmstars' careers. Early in their careers they act in a lot of films (well 3) and a later they get more choosy and act in fewer films per year.

In keeping with the masochistic theme of the evening I convinced the others to play Sticheln (aka Pain) a simple trick taking card game where each player chooses which suit they want to avoid taking cards in. Unlike other trick taking games you don't have to follow suit but any cards that are not in the suit led are effectively trumps.

We played three rounds, and could consider it a learning game, tending to play to maximise our own scores rather than dump too much on other people. While Andrew and Nigel showed a preference for negative numbers, I think most of us improved over the course of the game.

Carl Andrew Anna Ian John Nigel
  2    -26    5   7   14   -21
  8    -20   21   9   10   -43
 26    -16   31  18   10   -42

Anne got home at this point and Carl left. After touching the frying pan of pain we jumped into the fire of Mamma Mia! Armed with a handful of pizza orders and ingredients everyone is slamming stuff into the oven and hoping it will turn out all right when the oven is opened. Many of our customers went hungry as the pizza chefs stuffed up order after order. Consequently the final scores were fairly low.

Ian     4
Anna    4
Andrew  4
John B  3
Nigel   2
Anne    2

Licking our wounds we called it a night.

Tichu (11 November 2009)

This was the first game of Tichu for either John and game #3 for Carl and I. John R and I played against John B and Carl. John B and Carl started strong, while John R and I experimented with going backwards. Around hand 8 John and I got the hand of things. It felt like an epic game and included a bunch of interesting scenarios such as making enough points to offset a Tichu penalty, and 4 bombs played consecutively - but no-one brave enough to bid Grand Tichu.

(Scores below are given John R and I first, followed by John B and Carl)

Hand 1: -70, 70 (John R declared Tichu unsuccessfully)
Hand 2: -110, 10 (both John R and Carl unsuccessfully declared Tichu -- I can't remember how that happened!)
Hand 3: -65, 165 (Carl successfully declared Tichu)
Hand 4: -120, 210 (I unsuccessfully declared Tichu)
Hand 5: 80, 210 (John R and I do a 1-2)
Hand 6: 80, 510 (not be outdone John B declares a Tichu and he and Carl pull off a 1-2)
Hand 7: 80, 810 (Carl declares Tichu and he and John pull off 1-2 again)
Hand 8: 380, 710 (John R declares Tichu and we make a come back with a 1-2)
Hand 9: 370, 820 (John B and I declared Tichu, he succeeds while I don't, on the other hand John and I make 90 points to offset the failure)
Hand 10: 475, 815 (no Tichus, but John and I make 105)
Hand 11: 585, 805 (no Tichu, even more points)
Hand 12: 785, 705 (Carl's unsuccessful Tichu and 1-2 to John and I)
Hand 13: 985, 705 (1-2 again)
Hand 14: 1085, 705 (John R and Carl both declared Tichu, John R succeeded but we made no points! Whereas Carl and John got 100 points to offset the 100 point penalty!)

Tichu declarations:

Ian: 2 failures
John R: 2 successes out of 4 declarations
Carl: 2 successes out of 6 declarations
John B: 2 successes out of 2 declarations

1-2s:

John and I made 4,
John and Carl made 2

Friday 6 November 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

John B 52
Andrew 46
Anna   42
Anne   42

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

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

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

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

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

John B  13
Ian      9
Anne     4
Melissa  3

John B  16
Ian     14
Anne    12
Melissa  9

Twilight Struggle (1 November 2009)

Anne is happy because she won game 3. For the third time she got the scoring cards but this time she managed to mostly make them useful to her. She got to 18VP in turn 4 before I pulled back 4VP from her. But in turn 5 she got to 20.