Friday 15 April 2011

After a couple of weeks of low numbers (just Andrew and I on 1 April and 3 of us on 8 April) it was nice to fill the dinning room table with 8 people on a Friday night.

Coloretto
I picked a simple game to teach Natalia for whom English is a second language. It was new to Ceedee too. Coloretto has simple rules but you have to always keep an eye on the effect of your decisions on other people and there are long term strategies to learn.

Ian     28 + 35 + 35 = 98
Anna    27 + 39 + 25 = 91
Ceedee  24 + 30 + 23 = 77
Natalia 18 + 29 + 22 = 69

Frank's Zoo
Anna decided that Frank's Zoo was just as easy to teach. The rules are much longer than Coloretto but the basic ideas are pretty easy. It seems that Anna taught Ceedee and Natalia too well!

Ceedee  7 14 22 25
Natalia 2  6  9 11
Anna    1  2  4 10
Ian     2  2  1  1

Louis XIV
At the other end of the table the old hands got on with sucking up to the luminaries in the court of the Sun King. It was a rich game with plenty of cash to spend. In the first round Andrew screwed up and though he won two rewards he could not complete any of his mission cards and so had to discard a hard earned reward. In round two Travis failed to complete any missions and everyone except Anne earned 5 on #7. Andrew started his come back. By round three Sharon had the power to place 4 influence tokens with one card. Anne didn't have cards for #1..4 in rounds 2 or 4. In the final round Anne went after shields but she could not catch Andrew.

Andrew H 47
Anne     45
Sharon   44
Travis   40

No Thanks!
Andrew easily won this game of avoiding taking cards

Andrew H -16
Travis   -38
Anne     -39
Sharon   -41

Expedition
We swapped around with an accidental gender split. Anne taught Expedition and Natalia taught how to pronounce Russian place names. In the first game 13 was a popular score. In the second game the scores were spread wider.

Anne    13   16
Natalia 13   14
Anna    13   13
Sharon  13   13?
Ceedee  10    7

Metropolys
We taught Travis rather badly - he didn't understand what bridges were until the game was half over. Andrew continued his love of the ladies taking at least 5.

Andrew H 36
Ian      34
Travis   16

Battle Line
While the second Expedition was finishing at the other end and after Travis had gone home I challenged Andrew to a game of Battle Line. It was a close game but finally I won 5-4 once we had emptied the draw deck. It was a game without Tactics cards. Ending Andrew's winning streak.