Friday 10 September 2010

Traders of Genoa
Andrew and Anna mentioned on Wednesday that Andrew's father has bought Genoa on an impulse and wants them to teach it. Problem is that neither Andrew nor Anna have played it before. So to give them an idea of the game I offered to teach them, and borrowed Peter's copy. From what Anna said about Settlers of Catan, I had an idea she would like (and be good at) trading games.

I've never taught the game or read the rules, so I wasn't entirely sure how to begin. The rules start with the movement rules, move onto the trading, then the buildings, cards and special actions, finishing with ownership markers. I think it is important to tie the rules explanation to the aim, in this case to make the most money. So I felt it was important early on to show how money enters the game (orders, messages and other people's use of buildings you own) and how it moves between players (negotiating for actions). From there I had to jump around to explain everything else: movement, buildings, ownership, cards etc. John added a useful set of hints on approximate values, given that the values of things are not obvious the first time you play Traders.

From early on it was clear that John and Andrew were after Privileges. Anna was after Large Orders while I concentrated on Small Orders. John and Anna got ownership markers down very early and I felt duty bound to restore the natural order of things by getting the Cathedral back into male ownership. I traded away my Privilege early on.

At one point John and I were involved in a deal, which on reflection was probably illegal. I had negotiated a string of deals, but half way through executing them I realised that I had planned on using a goods cube the action before I got from John. John gave it to me, one building/action before he should have.

About three rounds from the end I thought I was doing quite well though Anna was also in a good position. But I was about to run out of both goods and orders and the last two rounds didn't give me as much income as Anna was getting. I did much better (in absolute terms) than I usually do but still a long way from winning. John got a significant portion of his final score from his hand of Privilege cards to come second. Anna won and declared that she really enjoyed the game.

Anna   1035
John B  950
Andrew  830
Ian     820
Anne    595

Hornochsen!
After finishing Traders we wanted a light filler. John turned his nose up at No Thanks! So we played Hornochsen! I played my cards out too early and was forced to take a bad pile with a x2. Andrew kept his cards and ended up making the best of the ending.

Hornochsen tends to favor either the first players to finish or the last -- this time it was the last players.

Andrew 16
John B 14
Anne    6
Anna    2
Ian   -10

Tichu (4 September 2010)

Another evening of Tichu with Andrew and Anna. Game one got off to a quiet start until I started to call Tichu. By the sixth hand Anna and Andrew were on 10 points, but then they pulled finger and made 995 while we lost 195.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    55    45
2.   100   100 (a quiet start)
3.   275   125 Ian's Tichu
4.   425   175 Ian's Tichu
5.   495   105 Anna failed Tichu
6.   690    10 Ian's Tichu while Andrew failed
7.   590   310 Andrew's Tichu and 1-2 while Ian failed Tichu
8.   510   490 Andrew's Tichu, while Anne failed
9.   495   705 Anna's Tichu
10.  495  1005 Anna's Tichu and 1-2

Game two got off to a faster start, by hand 4 we were even but after that Anna and Andrew accelerated away from us.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    20   180 Anna's Tichu
2.   320   180 Ian's Tichu and 1-2
3.   335   165 Anna failed Tichu
4.   250   250 Anne failed Tichu
5.   250   550 Andrew's Tichu and 1-2
6.   305   695 Anna's Tichu
7.   455   745 Ian's Tichu 
8.   480   920 Andrew's Tichu 
9.   535  1065 Anna's Tichu

Friday 3 September

Anna and Andrew showed up first and we started with

Frank's Zoo
Nigel showed up in time for the second hand and John in time to join in the third. Previously we played until two players reached 18 but this time we played by the rules which are that the game ends when two players reach 19. Only Nigel avoided going backwards at least once.

Anna   3 7 10 19 18 20
Andrew 3 5  7 11 15 12
Anne  -1 3  1  5 10 15
Ian    4 3 12 14 15 19
Nigel  - 6 10 12 21 26
John B - -  2  1  3  7

Attika
Anne says she romped away to beat Nigel and Anna. She says it was because she got half a dozen carrots.

Great Wall of China
I haven't played for years and I taught from memory, as I have mis-placed my English translation. My memory was vague on the end game rules. John and I wasted about 30% of our cards on one battle! No wonder Andrew won.

Andrew 40
Ian    26
John B 20

We played a second time. This time I tried to grab things cheaply and became the target of both John and Andrew's attempts to block me.

Ian    36
John B 31
Andrew 25

Tigris and Euphrates
Anna and Nigel had both played once before but needed a rules refresher. Nigel was working up to building a blue momument when Anne started a conflict with him which saw his blue tiles evaporate. Anna created a big civilisation in the centre of the board and Nigel tried to encroach on it. Anne created a black temple while Anna created more temples elsewhere. Anna did the final civilization join that ended the game.

Everyone agreed that they needed to play again soon while the rules were fresh in their minds.

Anna  9
Anne  8
Nigel 3

Beowulf: The Legend
While mesopotamian civilizations were battling it out at the other end of the table, John suggested playing Beowulf. Gvien how popular Beowulf is around here, strangely Andrew hasn't played before, on the other hand it was my third game this week. I did my normal cowardly strategy, but I also ran pretty short of cards and victory points. Andrew and I didn't do well. John says he like this game because it prompts more talking between players than most other games.

John B 43
Ian    17
Andrew 16

Friday 20 August 2010

There were six of us, and faced with the awkward choice between splitting into two groups of three or playing a six player game we opted for six player games.

Havoc: The Hundred Years War
We taught this poker derivative to Andrew P. John B and Andrew P stayed out of the first 6 battles! Which was scary as they built up huge hands of cards. Whereas I was down to about 7 and Anne even fewer. I scored 17 in the first 5 battles but nothing after that. The last two battles went John's way.

John B   29
Andrew H 23
Andrew P 22
Ian      17
Anna     15
Anne     12

Atlantic Star
We retaught Andrew and Anna this game. No-one put anything in the 5 star column and blue ended up in the 1 star column. Anna was extremely stingy until near the end when she took a big loan that didn't cost her any points.

Anna     43
John B   41
Anne     39
Andrew H 35
Ian      34
Andrew P 28

Wellycon 2010 (14 & 15 August)

As a Wellycon organiser I expected to play very few games at Wellycon 2010. But looking in my trusty notebook I was surprised to see that I played ten games over the weekend. Though people who know me might be surprised it wasn’t double that!

On Friday night Peter, Andrew and I went to St Pats to start setting things up. The Call to Arms guys had kindly put out 15 tables for us, but there was still plenty to do.

Saturday
I spent most of the morning on the registration desk and regretfully turning down requests to come and play various games.

Endeavor
Gynn was due to play in Jarratt's Endeavor tournament but was stuck deep in Small World when the other players were ready to start, so I took his place. I have never devoted enough time to get my head around all the buildings, cards and various strategies and tactics of Endeavor. I tend to play instinctively (though it is probably more accurate to say "randomly"). I was the only player to not start with a Workshop and concentrated on action tokens instead of resource tokens. I also stayed non-military which meant I was at a severe disadvantage against Antony and Henry who had two military buildings each and ended up dominating the cities. While at the end I concentrated on mining for good cards.

Antony 59
Henry  53
Ian    50
Silja  30

Beowulf
Is my favourite push-your-luck game. A game which also includes a good dose of resource management. I taught it to Alan, Rodney and Rhiana. Rhiana had terrible luck with her risks.

Rodney 30
John B 30
Ian    28
Alan   24
Rhianna 7

Nexus Ops
After dinner Minty, his son Sam, John and I played Minty's copy with my reference cards. John had no mines on his side of the board, while Minty had heaps of mines. Conversely this meant John started with a lot of Rock Striders. Minty missed out on the win by a bad dice roll, leaving it to John to finish the game.

John B 13
Minty   9
Sam     8
Ian     7

Extravagances
We ended the evening with Extravagances, Brian's free trading filler. This is a prototype of a Pit-like trading game. Themed around decadent Roman power brokers vying with each other to put on the most extravagant spectacles. There is a small deck of goal cards and a larger deck of resource cards. Everyone has a private goal and there are a couple of public goals. When you fulfil a goal you add it to your face down score pill and turn up or pickup another. Trading is free form and occurs in one minute blocks. Starting with very few cards and getting two more between each trading block. There is a penalty to being caught with too many cards.

There were 6-8 players, I don't remember who else played but I won by one point with 5 completed missions and 19 points.

Sunday

Zombie Dice
Wellycon tradition dictates that there is a fire alarm on the Sunday. Tradition also dictates that gaming continue outside. So half a dozen of us played the push-your-luck game of Zombie Dice in the drizzle while the alarm blared in the background. The aim of this dice game is to collect more brains than other players and stop before you get hit by three shotgun blasts. There are three colours of dice red, yellow and green, which have different ratios of brains, shotgun blasts and foot prints.

Given that it was a learning game, a push-your-luck game _and_ a zombie game we weren't taking it too seriously and I lost badly. The "all clear" came before we could start a second game.

Age of Steam
Once the early rush was over, Peter was keen on learning Age of Steam so we set up a game behind the registration table, so we could be handy to stop playing and sign people in. Andrew appointed John as his proxy from turn 2 but in the second half of the game Jarratt took over. I started with linking up and delivering a cube for 2, on the second turn I got Loco, linked up and delivered a cube for 4. After than I got to 5 and 6 fairly quickly and was delivering 5s and 6s for the rest of the game. Taking production to feed my habit as Peter was taking cubes from one end of my network and Jarratt the other. Jarratt made a big come back for the tie. Peter got to see what is possible with track building as we fought over the centre and south west. (Jarratt's game report.)

Andrew Rae, John B, Jarratt 130
Ian                         130
Peter Freer                 100

Metropolys
We pulled Skyler away from his War Game Supply table for a game. He was keen on learning Metropolys. I beat three newbies but only just.

Ian    34
Skyler 33
Art    31
Peter  21

No Thanks!
Towards the end of Wellycon we played fillers to finish off the day.

Peter  21
Ian    36
Rachel 39
Don    54

No Thanks!
John took Peter's seat, and I did badly.

John B 24
Don    26
Rachel 38
Ian    43

En Garde
After Wellycon was officially over I reminded Eric that he had promised (in a rash moment) to teach me this game. It turns out Rachel is a fencer (as is Skyler) but my card counting (pretty easy in a 25 card deck) helped me out.

Ian    5
Rachel 3

Age of Steam India (7 August 2010)

Jarratt organized games are our place on Saturday.

Masters Gallery
Jarratt was expecting Nigel to show up, so we played this while we waited. The second and third rounds finished very quick, hence low score, Jarratt and Travis were going neck and neck. But Travis made out like a bandit in the last round.

Travis   7 18 39 84
Jarratt 12 19 40 70
Anne     7 18 32 68
John B  15 20 34 65
Ian      6 14 33 60

Age of Steam Expansion: India
The points of difference for this expansion include a single black city, once you deliver black cubes you keep them. You can either expend two black cubes for an income point or keep to the end for 3 VP each. There are no new cities and $15 sea links that are one link but two income points for cubes delivered over them. This was the second time that Jarratt, Anne and I had played this board, while the first time for John and Travis.

I started in the north west between Srinagar and Delhi via Amritsar and delivered two cubes for four income, but things went down hill after that. Jarratt started between Jodhpur and Porbandar, next door to me. While John built between Bhopal and Varanasi, hemming me in to the south. Anne started in the north eastern corner of the board and Travis had the south to himself.

John got himself into trouble and I bailed him out because if I let him go under Jarratt would have benefited too much. That put Jarratt into the lead. I later made a deal with John that I regretted as he did better out of out of it than I did. I split my network and missed a good black cube move. On the other side of the board Anne's plan to deliver yellow cubes for six was falling apart as we were blocking her out of all the yellow cities. Travis lagging behind in income but also in shares.

In the north west we were running out of cubes. Travis built one of the $15 sea links and was delivering black cubes over one of Anne's links, he over took John and Jarratt (once you took his lack of shares into consideration). They had used all their shares by the end of the game.

Travis  81
Jarratt 75
John B  74
Ian     71
Anne    55

It took a long time, but I enjoyed it more than the first time I played. I now have to learn to resist temptation and start in the south.

Overall it was Travis's evening.

Friday 6 August 2010

It was good to see Jim and Margot again after such a long time.

On the Underground
Anne taught this game to Margot. I hear that there was a tendency to build lines parallel to each other, and also a reluctance to join across the centre of the board. In the end it was a draw between Margot and Andrew.

Margot   45
Andrew P 45
Anne     43
Nigel    24

In the Year of the Dragon
It's been awhile since we played this game and we had to refer to the rules while explaining them to Jim. The events were in 2 groups of 5, with pairs of events well spaced.

We all took turns in leading on the people track. John, then Jim then me. John on the other hand led on the VP track from the beginning due to his strategy of starting at the front of the people track and buying a double favour on the first turn (hence temporarily bankrupting himself) and taking money on the second turn.

John B 101
Jim     90
Ian     85

R-Eco
On the Underground finished well before In the Year of the Dragon and Nigel suggested playing R-Eco, and he ran away with the first game. Despite being simple, it is quite difficult to teach as it is not like other card games. The theme is recycling and waste management. You are trying to win tokens by supplying the recycling centres with the right goods, and avoid illegal dumping (i.e. keeping your hand to 5 cards or fewer). You can only play cards of one suit and every time you play cards you are forced to pick up cards.

Nigel  10
Andrew  3
Anne    2
Margot  0

In the second game Anne and Andrew did much better.

Anne   10
Andrew  8
Nigel   6
Margot  2

Masters Gallery
I gave Jim a quick introduction to Masters Gallery, which was probably too quick for him to pick up all the details. Probably the most important thing I failed to get across is the inflation in value of paintings throughout the game. Painting in the first round tend to be worth zero to three points each whereas by the last round they can easily be worth seven or eight points each.

John B 14 34 67 106
Ian     6 35 68  98
Jim    19 45 74  89

Traders of Carthage
I hadn't noticed Susumu Kawasaki's name before, except to notice a Japanese name on two of my card games. But he designed both R-Eco and Traders of Carthage.

In this game the cards in your hand are either money to buy stuff or to protect your goods from pirates. The goods you buy are cards in the market, which you put in front of you. The cards in front of you are grouped by suit (each suit represents one of the four ships on the board). As you buy goods the ships move forward and when they reach Carthage there is a pay day (and pirates strike at any ships on the two spaces before Carthage). Again it is harder to explain than to play. Though it is even harder to get the strategy right.

At the end I only had red goods and the market never had red goods for me to buy, so I kept refusing to buy because the game would end without me scoring any points. But resistance is futile, as Andrew and Anne kept filling their ships in the mean time and once they arrived in Carthage it was all over and I was thrashed.

Andrew P 22
Anne     15
Ian      11

Friday 9 July 2010

Trans America
We started this as an opening filler while we waited to see if anyone else would show up. I am not sure what the scores were but Travis (the only American at the table) won. Moira and Anne went off the end and Andrew, Andrew, Anna and Nasia were in between.

(John and I played one hand of Lost Cities. John played a yellow 5 and as I had the 6, 7 and 10 (from memory) I assumed he had the 8 and 9 so I played the 10 only to pickup the 9! I greedily started the white before I got all my green down as I could see John had been picking up white and thought there was plenty of time to get them down. He decided to not start white and leave me in the lurch.)

El Capitán
As we taught Travis he said it reminded him of a different game (I expect he was thinking of the previous incarnation of this game - Tycoon).

Andrew started by going to the bank and getting two loans (I need to check on BGG to see if this is kosher). The rest of us went to bank later and took one loan. But Andrew went into the second round with a distinct cash advantage. Most cities only had one player's warehouses.

In the second round I stayed too long in Tunis and missed my opportunity to hurt Andrew in Marseille (and also missed out on 2nd place in Athina). At the end of the second round nobody had gotten to 9 cities but Travis was closest. In the third round we were trying to optimize our earnings and hurt each other.

Unfortunately it is a very thinky game, which leads to a lot of down time. I can see it playing better online. While we were playing this there were three games played at the other end of the table!

Andrew 248
John B 190
Travis 170
Ian    141

I re-read the rules looking for something about what players could and couldn't do on the first turn, and it is contradictory.

In one place it says:
"The youngest player is the starting player of the first phase, i.e. at the beginning of the game. She is given the starting player token "El Capitan" and places it in front of herself. In her turn a player may sail first and then must perform one of the three following actions:" and lists 1. Build a warehouse, 2. Build a fortress, 3. Take a loan.

A bit later under Sailing:
"At the beginning of the game all players must buy at least one destination card and sail to a destination city with their ship."

I couldn't find anything in rules forum on Boardgamegeek.

Though in the rules for Tycoon (the original game that El Capitan is based on) it says:
"Before you fly out at the start of the game or if you have no more money, or if you do not want to build on your turn you can fly back to your bank and take out a loan. You do not need a plane ticket for this."

Rheinländer
Most of the game was mostly "civilized", until near the end when Andrew came under attack. Though he took advantage of Anne's merging of one of his dukedoms with one of Anna's. It was Nasia's first game.

Andrew 40
Anna   40
Nasia  38
Anne   34
Moira  23

Frank's Zoo
Anna taught Moira and Nasia one of our staple games. Anne used her "I have another pair of killer whales" strategy. While Nasia and Andrew had bad games. Moira did quite well but Anne and Anna bounced the lead back and forth between them, and Anna had it when the music stopped.

Anna   4  9 12 18 25
Moira  5  8  8 13 17
Anne   5  9 16 15 18
Nasia  0  1  3  5  4
Andrew 3  0  4  6  8

Attika
Moira went home and Attika hit the table again. This time Anne won with a shrine to shrine victory.

Finca
Most people left and Nasia went down stairs to fetch her copy of Finca. John spent the first half of the game picking and delivering lemons. I tried not to use my special tokens and tried to deliver fruit as soon as I had picked enough for a delivery and ended up doing a lot better than in my last game.

Ian    48
John B 44
Anna   35
Nasia  32

Chicago Express in Woodridge

David recently bought Chicago Express and invited me, Matt and Roland around for a game or two.

David had found a couple of places in the rule book where it reads like the dividend payout occurs between the player choosing their action and executing their action. I hadn't come across this issue before and even though I was sure it was the wrong interpretation I could find nothing to back my interpretation (except that it seems simpler and more sensible, which isn't always a good guide in game rules). It was David's game and house, so we played it his way. Later on BGG I found that other players had come to the same conclusion that David had but luckily there were confirmations from people owning Wabash Cannonball (and from Harry Wu via John Bohrer) that dividends are paid out between players turns.

We played with poker chips and open cash. Apart from some confusion about which chips were $1 and which were $5, this was very good. In my previous games we have played with paper money and Power-grid style (stack your money on the table, but you don't need to reveal exactly how much cash you have) -- which works fine too.

This was the first game for Matt and Roland and I was very rusty and over bid for my first shares. Red was divided three ways which put an end to it. Several railways reached Chicago.

Roland 141
Matt    90 odd
Ian     86
David   53

The pace of the second game was quicker. Unfortunately David and I let Matt get 2 red shares and Roland get 1. And they made us suffer!

Roland 67
Matt   67
Ian    54
David  55

Wednesday 7 July 2010 at Peter's

Master's Gallery
While we were waiting for others to turn up, Andrew and I kicked off a game of Master's Gallery. Anne and both Johns joined in. It was John R's first game. I should have played my last green card in the third round when it would have been worth plenty of points. Andrew seems to be good at this game.

John B  9 26 56 73
Ian    14 40 74 87
Anne   12 32 50 65
John R 12 38 58 72
Andrew 12 42 72 90

Age of Industry
This time we played the German side and ended up with 2 "no demand" tiles. It was the first game for Anne. I started in the French corner while the others started near Berlin. This was a mistake as it pays to have at least one other person in your area. We were very short of resouces through out the game. If anyone built a coal mine or iron works, it was emptied by the next two players. I still haven't "got" this game and ended up over building quite a lot of my stuff, while Anne used my ports leaving me with unflipped cotton mills. Unlike Brass, unflipped tiles still score points they just don't give you money.

It was Anne's first game. And she rightly complained about a lot of down time. It doesn't seem as easy to plan ahead as it does in Brass. Or may be we are just not used to it.

John B 29
Anne   27
Lance  25
Ian    24

China Moon
We taught Lance this nasty little, no luck, race game and we probably shouldn't have as he gave us a right royal thrashing!

Lance 29
Ian    6
Anne   2

Friday 2 July 2010

Andrew Parr joined the regulars for some of the popular games of the moment.
Masters Gallery
While we waited for John and Nigel I taught Anne, Andrew H and Andrew P. Unfortunately superior experience didn't pay off for Anna and I.

Anna     14 30 46  72
Ian      15 33 43  65
Andrew P 14 36 55 101
Andrew H  7 29 59  85
Anne     20 30 54  78

Frank's Zoo
This was Nigel's revenge. He roared into the lead and no-one else seemed particularly keen on coming second!

Anna     4  7  6  8 10  9 15
Anne     5  4  7 11 11 14 18 (second on tie break)
Nigel    2  9 15 19 24 26 26
Andrew H 2  4  8  7 11 17 18

El Capitán
While Nigel was re-naming Frank's Zoo to Nigel's Zoo, we pulled out this game that hasn't been played for awhile. Andrew Parr always had a hand of cards while John and I played with very few cards. We thought after the second payday that John was running away with the game but Andrew made a good come back.

We missed the double fortress payout rule, where in the city with the most warehouses the fortress payout is doubled.

John B   183
Andrew P 161
Ian      135

Attika
Anna and Anne were keen on playing this again and as El Capitán was far from finished there was plenty of time to play this through to the very end. Andrew winning, followed by Anna, Nigel and Anne.

Masters Gallery
Attika hadn't quite finished so Andrew suggested that John and I play this simplified version of Modern Art.

John B   10 39 68 92
Andrew P  6 29 58 84
Ian      14 43 65 83

Beowulf
After the others left we finished the evening battling along side Beowulf. Andrew was doing really well for most of the game. But John and I made a come back towards the end.

Ian      30
John B   30
Andrew P 23
Anne     20

Friday 25 June 2010

There is no satisfying some people. We get a new $5000 door bell, which actually works, and our visitors don't like it! They seem nostalgic for the old, dodgy one.

TransEuropa
Nasia had told me she would be late so we played this quick filler while we waited. She showed up and joined up in round two. Meanwhile Anna finished round one. On round two Nigel finished so quickly that he caught Anne so far from her destinations she ran off the end of the score track.

Ian    8
Andrew 7
Anna   6
Nasia  6
Nigel  5
John B 5
Anne   0

Beowulf
John and I taught Nasia this push your luck game. I pushed my luck to run out of cards on the Dragon Battle but with John trying to conserve his cards for the final encounter I won to get 7VP. If he had played from his hand rather than risking he would probably have ended up on 28. Nasia played a steady game, though with plenty of risk taking, to win.

Nasia  30
Ian    24
John B 23

Frank's Zoo
No evening is complete without Frank's Zoo. The consensus of opinion about Anne's game was that she was using a 6 player strategy.

Anne   4  3  7  6  8  7
Nigel  2  8  8 11 17 21
Anna   5  7 11 17 16 21
Andrew 2  5 10 13 18 22

Pompeii
This race game to save your people from the lava hasn't been played for awhile and Anne taught Andrew and Nasia. Nigel complained that his fellow players weren't screaming appropriately as their people went into the volcano.

Andrew 10
Nigel   7 (but lost fewer to the volcano than Nasia)
Nasia   7
Anne    6

Masters Gallery
I bought this game recently and have been keen to get it to the table. It turns out to be a quick filler and we learnt and played it twice while Pompeii was being covered in lava. This game is all about pumping up the value of particular artist's paintings by making them popular. Unlike Modern Art, there are no auctions. You play cards in front of you, some cards cause extra actions and people who diversify their portfolio get to add extra cards after the values of artists are known.

In the first game we used a lot of cards and had few left for the last round

John B 9  25  73 114
Anna  18  41  74  94
Ian   14  38  70  98

In the second game we conserved our cards until the last round

John B 7  14  50  90
Anna   5  27  68 136
Ian    8  23  58 132

Finca
After the Brooklyn Express left, Nasia taught us this cute and very colourful little game of picking fruit, finding donkeys and filling orders for fruit on Mallorca (aka Majorca). Like Pompeii how far you move your farmers depends on how many farmers are together on the same space. Also the quantity of fruit you pick depends on the number of farmers are on the space you arrive at. This simple arithmetic was often beyond our capabilities even though it wasn't yet midnight!

John B 50
Nasia  40
Ian    37
Anne   26

Friday 18 June 2010

TransEuropa
While we waited to see if anyone else was showing up Anne suggested TransEuropa. John joined in round 2 and started on 11 as a penalty (the other scores were 13,12,9 & 8 at that stage). Nasia had a passion for Scandinavia, while I got Florence three times in a row. Most people helped me at some point or other.

Ian    12
John B  8
Andrew  3
Nasia   1
Anne    0

Havoc: The Hundred Years War
Our second game, we taught Nigel and Nasia. We were all too busy recruiting to go to the first battle, and it was discarded (and everyone except Peacekeeper John had to discard a card). After Nasia won her first battle she immediately caught us on the hop by starting another. She built up a sizeable lead by the halfway point and John had avoided all the fighting so far. But once John (who had been collecting low value cards) joined in the war, he dominated the battlefields.

John B 27
Nasia  24
Nigel  21
Anne   14
Andrew 13
Ian    11

Wildlife
Nasia popped down to her flat to fetch this game specifically designed for six players. It tracks the evolution of six species over millions of years. Early on Crocs became the most intelligent species, while Humans eagerly paid plenty of food for opportunities to expand. Several species ignored their normal habitats. In particular Snakes stayed clear of the water, Mammoths largely ignored the plains, preferring the mountains and water. Mammoths were consistently the most evolved species, appearing everywhere except the desert. While Snakes and Crocs had the most abilities (Snakes favouring Food and Crocs Intelligence). Bears and Eagles had the biggest herd instinct.

Most cards were auctioned for over ten food and it was only in the last couple of rounds that the price dropped. Abilities didn't change hands much. I enjoy Wildlife, though in keeping with its theme it does seem to take a long time.

Crocs  (John B) 89
Eagles (Andrew) 79
Snakes  (Nigel) 63
Humans  (Nasia) 57
Mammoths  (Ian) 51
Bears    (Anne) 36

Change of Location (16 June 2010)

Peter was at a meeting so Wednesday games were at our house. Though with the games played and the people attending it felt more like Friday night games.

Frank's Zoo
Starting the evening with Frank's Zoo has almost become a habit. A six player game certainly means big swings in the scores. But Anna was in the lead until the last hand when John (and I) jumped ahead.

Anna   6 11 15 16 18
Andrew 3  7 12 15 16
Ian    5  6 12 14 21
John B 3  9 11 16 23
Anne  -1  3  2  9 13
John R 5  3  8 12 11

Havoc: The Hundred Year War
I bought this card game in a bunch of six games via TradeMe a few months ago. It turns out to be game of building up your hand of cards, choosing your battles (showdowns) and bluff. (Here and here is the story of the games design) We got two rules wrong: there should have been an extra recruiting round before the first battle and you can use any dogs from the battle (not just those outside the battle). It turned out to be a hit.

Anna   26 (winner on the second tie break)
John B 26
Andrew 19
Anne   18
Ian    16
John R 13

Friday 11 June 2010

Frank's Zoo
We started this game while we waited for Nigel to arrive. He arrived half way through the first hand and took over Anne's hand while she talked on the phone.

There is no stopping Andrew at the Zoo.

Anna   2  5 10 15 19
Andrew 4 11 17 24 27
Ian   -1  5  5  9 15
Anne   4  5  9 10 12
John B 4  7 10  9 10
Nigel  -  0  1  3  6

Attika
Anne got boxed in, in her original location and started another location. She and Nigel both tried for shrine to shrine victories but were stopped. Anna got all her buildings built to beat Nigel and Anne (who was one building behind).

Clippers
It's been a long time between plays. This game were players have incentives to take the routes to visit particular destinations is superficially similar to Expedition. But it involves much more thinking and taking into account the other player's potential actions, as the various shipping lines are much limited and number of points for a destination can vary between zero and 72 or more.

The red shipping line got sidelined to Hawaii, while the black line zig-zagged until it ran out mid-ocean and green got all the way across the Pacific. Attention then turned to white and purple. Finally red branched and restarted and blue took off for a run to NZ and Australia.

Following John's example we got all our ports down and Andrew and John even paid to move some ports to more valuable spots.

Andrew was initially confused by the choices but soon got into the evil shafting that makes up this game. The results were pretty close.

John   216
Ian    210
Andrew 208

10 Day in Europe
While the final clipper lines were snaking across the Pacific Anne and Anna each won a game, while Nigel whined and complained a lot!

Beowulf
Anna, Andrew and Nigel were all tired and left three of us. John wanted a revenge for his disastrous showing on Wednesday.

I started with an amazing streak of luck with my risks. But by the time we got to the swap 5 cards for 5VP I only had 7 cards (+2 specials) left. I rashly traded in 5 cards for 5VP and then 2 drinking horns for a scroll. I used my 5 card risk special card to put pressure on the others in Dragon's Rampage (both had large hands of cards). Anne got the Iron Shield. In Dragon Battle Anne and John still had a number of cards. I started with the Hides of Land (3 wild) but risked and lost to collect the double wound and two cards. Anne and John ran each other down to one card as they fought over the 7VP and to avoid the scratch. I had the most money for 7VP and my two cards beat the others so I could heal my third wound and avoid loosing 15 VP.

John managed to collect far more scrolls than Anne and I put together and we were close at the finish.

Ian  27
John 26
Anne 11

The three player game tends to make the competition sharper as there tends to be one very good reward, one very bad "reward" and a mediocre one in each major event.