Friday 26 February 2010

With 20-20 Cricket on Friday night and Super 14 Rugby on Saturday night I thought that drivers would be put off regardless of which night we chose to have games so I didn't expect much of a turn out. But it my predictions are often wrong. Margot and Jim (who were introduced by Luke) have been thinking of coming for awhile finally showed up this Friday. Andrew and Anna brought their friends from Brisbane (Kevin and Ann).

We split up to play a couple of Reiner Knizia games: Rheinländer and Traumfabrik. Kevin put his teaching skill to good use bringing Nigel up to speed with Rheinländer, which is a game of conquest where aggression is not always the best policy. Anna grabbed lots of quick castle based dukedoms while Anne went for cities and suffered when other people merged her dukedoms. Andrew complained at the end that everyone was picking on him!

Anna   38
Kevin  33
Anne M 32
Nigel  28
Andrew 21

On the other table I taught Ann, Margot and Jim how to make films in this German view of Hollywood. Ann and Margot quietly made a lot of films while John and I tried for quality over quantity and Jim had trouble hiring film stars (which meant he was shunned at the Hollywood parties) and he made some trashy movies. The scores were unusually close with the awards being spread quite evenly.

Ann    66
Ian    64
Margot 62
Jim    55
John B 53

Ann and Kevin wanted an early night so Andrew and Anna took them home. Leaving 6 of us. We made what was probably a bad decision and decided to play a six player game, as there are not many good six player games. After a lot of discussion we settled on Elfenland, a game of planning and frustration. The first round went well with most people getting to six of their cities. In fact things were pretty close at the end of the third round but in the fourth round the blockers came out and Anne suffered the worst ending up four cities from home with only 14 cities visited. It was a three way tie for first with Nigel, John and Margot all home with 18 cities visited.

Margot 18
Nigel  18
John B 18
Ian    17
Jim    16
Anne   10

Margot suggested that a timer might be a useful addition, Anne suggested playing without blocking tiles and John suggested that instead of giving everyone a blocking tile, that the blocking tiles should be shuffled into the pile of tiles.

May be we should have played TransAmerica or King Me.