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.

Friday 30 October 2009

Andrew, Anna, Carl, John, Anne and I were unpacking Age of Steam when Nigel arrived. So we split into two groups. Anna, Andrew, Carl and I decided to play Tichu again. John, Anne and Nigel played Brass again.

Anna and I rushed to 200 points and then back down to 45, continuing to oscillate between there and 215 finally settling on 100 while Carl and Andrew made their way to 505 by the sixth hand before rushing up to 1000 over the last 2 hands. Tichu was called by someone almost every hand. Andrew had a spectacular hand with a double bomb.

I+A C+A
125   75
200  100
120   80 
 45  255
215  285
195  505
195  805
100 1000

Brass was still going so we taught Anna and Andrew Tinner's Trail. A game about tin and copper mining in Cornwall. There was a lot of water in the initial mines and I foolishly only bought one mine in the first turn. I compounded this foolishness by taking the adit, so by my next turn all the other developments were gone. Because of the abundance of water (the drier mines had already been worked out) people were spending good money on building mines in unknown territory without waiting for the prospecting. This turned out to be a dubious strategy. Those people who bought lots of mines early had time spare to acquire useful developments to improve their mines.

Tinner's Trail has cute bits and some interesting mechanics. For instance the cost of mining is proportional to the amount of water in your mine, but extra water flows into your mine proportional to the time spent mining rather than amount of ore extracted (which gives a payback to extraction improvements). None of us like the money track (we would prefer coins or even paper money), and the buying of Victory Points seemed clumsy.

Carl      113
Anna      108
Andrew     80
Ian        58

Only a week after opining that Brass was 'too complex' Nigel and Anne pandered to John's urge to play again. During the canal phase Nigel built coal mines for both Lancashire AND Africa, John burnt tiles with the enthusiasm of a dedicated arsonist, and Anne's just-one-more-mill greediness meant that she was left with 2 unfipped mills at the end of the round. The rail phase had John building high value cotton mills and attempting to dominate all the railway exits from Manchester, Nigel attempting to build the rest of the rail network, Anne abandoning cotton for shipbuilding and everyone forgot to take a final loan which meant they couldn't capitalize on some of the available points opportunities at the end. Nonetheless John and Nigel both scored 180 points which (we think) is a record for local Brass, with Nigel winning with the greater income. Anne trailed in their wake with 122.

Twilight Struggle (26 October 2009)

Anne and played again yesterday. This time the game ended at the beginning of turn 4. I was aiming for control of Europe as a way to a quick victory, which I didn't achieve. The Europe score card came up twice (in Anne's hand) which annoyed her as it was a nett 5 VP to me each time. Anne was doing well in Asia and while we were evens points-wise in the ME, she probably had the better long term position. I was getting a lot of her events so I rushed up the Space race for another 7 VP (man in Earth Orbit) and as turn 3 came to an end I speculatively grabbed a bunch of weak African countries.

At the start of turn 4 I was on 16 VP and was dealt the Africa scoring card. Anne felt a bit jipped at how quickly it ended. Nett 7 VP for me.

Obviously quite a bit of luck was involved!

Friday 23 October 2009

For several years Carl and I have been keen on playing Mü again and Andrew and Anna own this but have never played it. Moira was interested in seeing what the fuss was about.

For those that don't know Mü is a trick taking game primarily for 5 players where you bid for the right to name trumps by revealing cards. The highest bidder names the top half of the trump suit and the 2nd highest bidder names the bottom half - e.g. trumps can be the Green suit followed by the Blue suit or all the 6s followed by all the Greens. The highest bidder chooses a partner from one of the other three players while the second highest bidder and the other two players form the opposition.


Carl explained the rules. I was the first and only unsuccessful Chief (6s/Green), which pushed me down to -1. Anna was the next Chief (Black/Blue), Carl was the third Chief (Green/Yellow) finally Anna again (7s/Blue). The two part trump suits were difficult to get used to, especially when one half was a number, and I think we all reneged at least once!


My score suggests that not only was I no good at picking trumps, I was also no good at winning tricks either (though Andrew accidentally trumped me illegally at one point).

Anna 210
Moira 112
Carl 93
Andrew 92
Ian 3

Anna and Andrew then taught Carl and I Tichu. Tichu is a climbing game played in partnerships, with lots of bells and whistles. You play higher ranking card(s) than the previous person or pass, once three players pass the last person to play wins those cards and leads. The aim is to run out of cards first, though some of the scoring comes from the cards you win. Carl and I were keener on calling Tichu than our teachers, though I failed to make it once.

Ian and Anna 790
Carl and Andrew 410

We terminated the game early so Anna and Andrew could make a run for the bus.



At the other table Anne and John Rees taught John Bingham Brass. This was Travis's second game. Anne said afterwards that she thought there were more empty building spaces at the end of the game than she had seen in recent 4 player games. The second half of the game was characterized by a lack iron and coal. Travis built 62 points worth of railways (compared to Anne and John R who built 20 each). John B built two ship building yards. Travis was the victim of over building by Anne and John B (though he said we would have preferred to have built over John R), while Anne took two of the building sites he was counting on in the last turn. He was "royally screwed".

Anne 133
John R 128
John B 118
Travis 109

Dawn of Nations (20 October 2009)

Andrew Rea invited me to a lunch time play test of a prototype print and play dice game designed by a couple of his friends. It turned out to be a simple yet interesting dice game called "Dawn of Nations".

There were six of us and enough dice for each of us to have our own set of dice - each a different colour, which is a nice touch.

To play, choose one of 5 areas initially (2 others have pre-req's) and roll 3 dice, do re-rolls. Areas include War (roll off against another player), Trade (offer a player one of your dice), Favour of the Gods (try to beat the highest favour so far), Developments (gain an advantage).

It plays quick and contains a mix of strategic and tactical decisions. We gave the designers some feedback. Particularly on Favour of the Gods.

Then we broke into two groups of 3 and played again. Trade became a lot more tactical with 3 players with no-one keen on giving someone else the third Trade value.

This works as a print-and-play game in that it uses normal dice (a minimum of 3), some printed off bits of paper and pen or pencil. It made me think of Roll Through the Ages, while the theme is similar, the use of dice is different and there is more player interaction.

Twilight Struggle (18-20 October 2009)

We started playing Twilight Struggle on Sunday night and played 2 moves on Monday night and finished on Tuesday.

The game went the whole 10 turns, and I (the USA) won with 9 points.

The final regional scores were:

Asia 7-6 to USA
Middle East 3-10 to USSR
Africa 3-3
Europe 8-3 to USA
Central America 5-2 to USA
South America 4-3 to USA
(The US finished with the China card and had 5 VP before the final scoring)

Anne thought it was easier to understand than 1960 and she is keen to play again now that she understands it.

At the end of the 9th turn I had control of Europe (but no Europe Scoring Card) but even though NATO was in play the USSR clawed back to the point where neither of us had domination. Nobody had domination in Africa or South America either.

Apart from one or perhaps two scoring cards very early on in the game Anne had all the scoring cards, some of which she used quite well but in other cases I could deduce she had them and concentrate my efforts to minimize the effects. She found the scoring cards limiting as it was an action she couldn't use for gain position.

She dominated the Space Race almost getting to the end while I only got half way. I think she only failed one roll whereas I failed at least 66% of my Space Race rolls.

Through the mid-game we were playing the Influence rules wrong in that we didn't use 2 Ops points to add influence in countries controlled by our opponents. From turn 6 we realised our mistake and reverted to the real rules.

I found the Realignment rolls the most random feature of the game, whereas I liked the Coup mechanic (the idea that it is easy to do a coup in a country with a stability of 1 or 2 but very difficult in a country with a stability of 3 or 4 makes thematic sense).

The USSR scored well early and then the US made a comeback. Neither of us got close to 20 VP but that might have been due to the mid game where we were playing a rule wrong. It is also possible that we played a scoring rule wrong occasionally. For some reason at one point we both thought that Domination meant that you had to have at more Battle ground states and more non-Battle ground states. On the whole I don't think it made much difference.

I think it is harder to pick who is doing well compared with 1960, but Anne thinks the reverse, she finds it hard to pick who is winning in 1960.

Friday 16 October 2009

There were eight of us.

Carl had brought St Petersburg and its expansions. Anna and Andrew expressed enthusiasm and I was interested in seeing what the expansions added.

At the other end of the table Anne, Andrew Rea and Nigel taught Mark Louis XIV. I hear that Nigel stuck close to Louis at all times, Andrew won with an excellent looking score and Mark survived the experience.

Andrew 51

Nigel 48

Anne 47

Mark 40

At our end of the table, we decided to play with both of the expansions, which adds a bunch of cards, some to replace existing cards but mostly additional ones. I concentrated on buildings (which is regarded as a sub-optimal strategy in the basic game, but the Debtor's Prison was very tempting (even though it was several turns before I used it to dig into the discard pile). The Warehouse also tempted me, which in turn allowed me to snag a bunch of good building expansions which I got around to building later on. Inexplicably we allowed Carl to buy 5 Markets! And also the Teashop (which gives a VP per noble) and encouraged him into a noble heavy strategy (but his building were comparable to mine in income and VP). Anna also went into nobles while Andrew as initially more balanced but eventually joined the nobel race.

Carl 146

Andrew 120 (+8 roubles) = 120.8

Anna 120 (+2 roubles) = 120.2

Ian 106

Both games finished at the same time (which shows how much time the expansions add to St Petersburg -- that said I enjoyed St P with expansions and would be happy to do it again).

Mark and Andrew left and we debated what six player game to finish with. We ended up teaching Nigel, Anna and Andrew Mogul, which none of us had played for awhile. Andrew and I sold our brown shares and jumped to an early lead which left us poor and share-less. Nigel also went broke and learnt the hard way how difficult it is to pull back from poverty. Carl amassed a share portfolio which gradually payed off and he pulled away from the rest of us. I finally managed to get some shares but too late. Nigel recovered from his early troubles to come second.

Carl 28

Nigel 21

Anne 16

Andrew 15

Anna 12

Ian 11

...and so to bed

Friday 9 October 2009

Despite (or perhaps in Brandon's case, because of) the weather there were six of us.

We started by Brandon teaching Alhambra to Anna, Andrew and Melissa. There is always a danger in teaching Anna new games and this was no exception. I lead off with a pair of walled gardens in the first scoring round while Brandon spurned the idea of scoring. By the second scoring round Anna's Manors, Mezzanines and Chambers put her into a lead which she extended in the final scoring. The rest of us jostled for the other places.

Alhambra

Anna 95

Andrew 76

Ian 67

Melissa 63

Brandon 62

Anne 35

Melissa was attracted by the prettiness of Elfenland, while Brandon bemoaned my lack of the Elfengold expansion. Anne started anticlockwise while the rest of us went clockwise. Brandon and Melissa picking up 7 tokens each in the first round, while due to Brandon's obstacle, I only picked up 3. Brandon and Melissa started the last round with 17 tokens while Melissa's final 3 were scattered around the board, Brandon's were grouped close to his boot - marking him as the target for a couple of obstacles. I improved from round to round picking up 4, then 5 and then 6 accompanied by Brandon chanting "Beware the yellow boot".

Elfenland

Melissa 18

Ian 18

Brandon 17

Anna 17

Andrew 15

Anne 15

Friday 2 October 2009

We taught Anna and Andrew Tigris and Euphrates, where Anna demonstrated her ability at winning new games again. Andrew and I caused some ill-advised conflicts. (I think there was a glass of water mishap in this game -- luckily the rulebook is almost water proof!)

Anna 11

Ian 10

Anne 9

Andrew 6

Andrew got his revenge in Attika, which he won by getting everything built first.

Lance's Birthday Games - Saturday 26 September 2009

Lance carried on his tradition of birthday games with more food than ever before. No-one got around to eating his ice cream cake! Jessi also had her own party while the cats hid.

There was a trend in the games played for 6 player games. First up was Steam. We played the basic rule set to Steam with the Southern England board from Age of Steam with 3 initial cubes per city. Leonie complained that she didn't know what she was doing, while I should have known what I was doing, but ran severely short of cubes. There was a general consensus that the game was one turn too long (we had severe rust belt issues).

Leonie 41
Travis 37
Peter  34
Craig  32
Lance  32
Ian    23

Next up was Expedition, which was new to Terri and Paulette. Leonie helped me to the win.

Ian      15
Lance    11
Paulette  5
Craig     5
Leonie    3
Terri     2

After the pizza we played Wildlife where Terri showed us how it should be done with super intelligent Mountain Crocs.

Terri  - Croc    88
Ian    - Eagle   78
Travis - Bear    57
Lance  - Human   56
Carl   - Snake   50
Nigel  - Mammoth 45

After sensible people went to bed, we finished the evening with Age of Empires III. Carl built lots of buildings and discovered plenty of new lands, Lance played a balanced game, Nigel ended up obscenely rich, I was very poor, colonized as much as possible and went to war (Lance deterred me with soldiers, Carl deterred me with his super-missionary and so I attacked Nigel).

Carl  103
Lance  99
Ian    80
Nigel  69

The tradition of the birthday person not winning a game on their birthday continues.

1960: The Making of the President (30-31 August & 6 September 2009)

I have quite a number of 2 player games that Anne and I play (plus a few multi-player games we play 2 player) but I realised recently that most of them are 15-45 minutes in length. So I started looking around for meatier 2 player games that might appeal to both Anne and I.

Research on Boardgamegeek led me to 1960: The Making of the President and Twilight Struggle. 1960: The Making of the President is a game about the US presidential election between Nixon and Kennedy while Twilight Struggle is about the Cold War 1945-89. Both of these games are based on the "card driven" idea I first came across in We the People (one of the few war games I enjoy). Basically there is a deck of cards (most of which have a number and an event), and the game is played as a series of hands. During each hand the players alternately play a card and either use it's event to do the corresponding special action or use the number on the card in some way, typically to gain influence somewhere on the board or reduce the opponent's influence. Each game has a randomising mechanism: in 1960 it is red and blue cubes drawn out of a bag, in Twilight Struggle it is dice. We found the games 3-4 hours long but Twilight Struggle has instant win conditions that can shorten the game considerably.


As both of these games are expensive I wanted to try them before making a buying decision. I noticed that Andrew Hubbard owns one and Andrew Rea owns both. Luckily, due to the generosity of both Andrews we got to borrow and try out both games.

We started this game on Sunday with the idea of this being a learning game of the first 2 or 3 turns, but then we carried on the next evening. This had the disadvantage as we hadn't read the rules to the debates carefully before we arrived at the debates. The debates were a bit of a fiasco as we had kept cards with our opponent's symbol on them! We made sure that didn't happen with election day. We also made a mistake of forgetting that media control trumps carrying a state. Which probably cost Anne a couple of cubes in NY (probably reducing me from 4 to 1 rather than 4 to 3). Anne won every initiative draw except for the one on election day.

Nixon (Ian) 307
Kennedy (Anne) 230

In our second game, Anne was Kennedy again. Early on she concentrated on the East and South and later the Mid-West by the mid game she had had a lock on those three regions. I/Nixon moved through to the East and took over NY and then started to attack PA.

Nixon (Ian) 283
Kennedy (Anne) 246