Friday 19 February 2010

At lunch time Andrew Rae invited me to a lunch time play testing session in Frank Kitts Park. There were 7 of us so we broke into a 3 and a 4 to play v2 of Dawn of Nations. Jeff and I drew against Andrew with a War/Divine Favour/Decline and Fall strategy while Andrew tried a doomed Trade strategy. The new version of Dawn of Nations doesn't have the central sheet and the Wonder of the World scores negative if you fail to complete it (which put people off trying for it). Then we tried their new game, which is a real-time free form trading game against a timer. Where you are trying to collect the correct cards to match both public/shared goals and private goals. The designers watched 5 newbies play. We were too excited to put our cards down at the correct times. I won with a run of goals towards the end.

In the evening Anna, Andrew and Nigel all showed up together and I started putting 5 player games on the table. People were discussing what they wanted to play when John showed up, invalidating many of the 5 player games. Anne suggested we start with a six player game (as she thought it would be more social). John suggested Atlantic Star which John, Anne and I have played a lot (though not much in recent years). It was Andrew and Anna's first time and possibly Nigel's second.

John made the best decisions about what colours to go for (a quick yellow for a loan, and finishing as the only player going for blue, with minimal competition in between). I made some silly decisions like blowing 6,000 out of my last 7,000 on uselessly clearing the deck and going for green at the same time as two other people (who played before me). Experience counts in Atlantic Star and the scores bear this out.

Ian    47
Anne   46
John B 41
Anna   38
Nigel  26
Andrew 23

We then split into two threes. Anne and Nigel taught Anna Brass at one end of the table while John and I taught Andrew Metropolys at the other end. In the first game I felt I didn't have much control, though I did manage to get some of my pieces on the right colours and even some linked together. Andrew on the other hand seemed to do nothing wrong.

Andrew 36
John B 28
Ian    23

In game two John ran away with the game. I only got my 4 largest pieces on the board and Andrew only got 5 or 6 pieces. It was the most one sided result I've seen so far.

John B 34
Ian    11
Andrew  8

John went home and as Brass was a long way from finishing Andrew and I played Battle Line twice and still had time to watch the last 2 or 3 rounds of Brass. I won the first game with a break through against the run of play and won the second by winning the last flag with the last card in the draw deck. Nigel who, complained about how badly he was doing won Brass with a colossal score.

Nigel 174
Anne  167 (income 64)
Anna  167 (income 53)

Nigel had a tried to build his high tech cotton mills in the canal phase but failed to flip them, so he was lagging on the score track at half time. I think Anna built both her level 2 Ship Building Yards.