Friday 8 October

Drakon
While we waited to see if anyone else would show up John pulled out Drakon as a filler. This is a game we went mad on in March 2008 (11 plays in one month). There were two good areas but Anne made the best of it and I ended up trapped in an empty maze of twisty little passages, all alike.

Anne  10
John B 6
Ian    2

On the Underground
We were all pretty close for most of the game with Anne jumping ahead a couple of times (including with her 6 point loop). Then I pulled ahead when I managed to get my grey line to join two pairs of symbols and then started to score a bunch of red end points.

Ian    59
John B 49
Anne   47

Patrician
We play this simple game so infrequently that I had to teach it again. This is a short Michael Schacht board game about building the majority of floors in towers. You start with a pile of stackable tower pieces and a hand of three cards. Each turn you play a card, place a tower piece (or two) and pick up a card. The card indicates which city you are to build in, whether you are building one tower piece or two, a special action or a portrait. Each city has two building spaces and two victory point tokens and a face up card which will be the one you refill your hand with. Once a the number of tower pieces in a city equals the number on the larger victory point token that city scores and the tokens are given to the players with the majority control of each tower. The game ends when the last city is scored (which is also when the cards run out). There are also 6 VP for each set of 3 matching portraits on the cards you've played.

Ian    62
John B 48
Anne   31

Thinking about the game afterwards I was struck by some similarities and contrasts with China (or Web of Power / Kardinal und König). Both games are primarily about scoring majorities. Patrician is a bit shorter. In both games you have a hand of three cards. Each turn you play a card (or cards), put one or two pieces on the board in a place indicated by the card(s) and then pickup card(s). When an area is filled it is scored. There is also end game scoring in both games. In China everyone in a region scores. In Patrician only the person with the majority control of a tower scores - which probably leads to bigger swings in the scores. In China there are two types of pieces (houses and emissaries) and three types of scoring and all the cards of a particular colour are the same which means the cards are means to an end. Whereas in Patrician the cards tell you how many pieces you play, may give you a special action or a portrait to score with, so the cards are more important. Also each card you play in Patrician determines which card you pick up, so you are often thinking through a chain of possible moves. In China the first player to play in a region can only play one house, which often discourages players from starting new regions. Whereas in Patrician ties are broken by player nearest the top of the tower so player often want to hold back so that they can play the final pieces in a city.

Hornochsen!
With three players only 45 out of 98 cards are in play which makes for big surprises. Unusually this is a game where more players makes the game less random. The first game was low scoring.

Ian   6
Anne  2
John -8

In game two there were plenty of nice piles and a few stinkers. I ended up with fewer cards than the others which is usually bad news as it gives you fewer choices, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

John 26
Anne 14
Ian  10

Change of Location (6 October 2010)

Peter and family were spending the week in Auckland so I hosted his Wednesday games. Anne was out at a dinner/seminar, while Andrew and Anna wanted one last games fix with us before heading off to Brisbane.

Tichu
John agreed to play a couple of hands as a filler while we waited for others to show up. As seems usual nobody called Tichu on the first hand (I had passed Anna the Dragon while she passed me an Ace, Andrew and John swapped Kings). But it seems that Anna and I had better hands than our opponents and she went out first and I followed for a 1-2. In the second hand Anna called Tichu but the our opponents managed to prevent me going out second. So the final score was 360 to 40.

Metropolys
With a big pile of games on the table it took the six of us a while to make up our minds. Andrew, John and Nigel decided on Metropolys while the rest of us were still dithering.

Andrew played very well, at one point I looked over and he had 5 Ladies (15 points) and was winning in two regions.

Andrew H 39
Nigel    27
John B   21

Nexus Ops
I wasn't sure that Nexus Ops was Anna's cup of tea but she was enthusiastic to learn. Jarratt found lots of Rock Strider including two adjacent to the Monolith so he jumped up and started collecting Energize cards. I got a 3 point Special Mission to win a battle on the Monolith with a Dragon and then an Energize card to jump a Dragon to anywhere. So I bought a Dragon and jumped up with some Rock Strider support but threw badly and ended up leaving my Dragon to be finished off by Jarratt on his turn.

Anna's verdict was that Nexus Ops is a crazy game.

Jarratt 12
Anna     6
Ian      4

No Thanks!
While they waited us to finish off Nexus Ops the others played No Thanks!. Andrew won again, while Nigel made a record bad score.

Andrew H 35
John B   77
Nigel   129

Vegas Showdown
Jarratt went mad on Slots and probably bought at least half of them. Nigel had the early lead on the score track, but he and I were stuck on incomes of 6 and 5 for a long time. I was tempted first by the Night Club and then by the Theater before I had a Fancy Lounge or Lounge (so I had them sitting off board for a long time). If I had managed to get everything down I would have been very competitive score wise. It ended badly as Jarratt made sure I didn't get a Fancy Lounge.

John B  52
Jarratt 51
Ian     39
Nigel   25

Friday 24 September 2010

TransAmerica
The way to make people show up is to start a game. With this aim in mind I put TransAmerica on the table, and before I could start explaining the rules John and Nigel arrived. TransAmerica is a quick, light game with a good dose of luck, but also a game of judgement where you want to cooperate with others in ways that benefit you slightly more than them.

The game ended when I made a very bad choice of start position assuming wrongly that other people would be as interested in the north east as I was and ignoring the cardinal rule of starting near the centre of the board. The newbies came first and second.

Jim   10
Margo  9
Nigel  7
Anne   4
John B 4
Ian    0

Power Grid
After TransAmerica we were looking for a 6 player game that would take no more than two and half hours. For some reason we not only thought that 6-player Power Grid would be quicker than Age of Steam, but we also thought it would take two and half hours! (Our last game of Power Grid took 3 hours with 5 players)

We played the German board, but we forgot to use only 5 regions, so there was plenty of room especially for Margo and myself. She had the cheap north while I had the more expensive south. Jim, Nigel and John shared the centre with Nigel in the cheapest area (which acted like a magnet for the others).

I got a lucky break and got the #35 power station (1 oil powers 5 cities) as my second station, which allowed me to ignore the power station market for the next few turns. Nigel kept the pressure on the price of coal by stock piling it every turn. Jim started off green but didn't keep up his green credentials. Anne started in the east and John did the big leap over Nigel to get to the North.

In the final turn we were all trying to calculate if we could get to 16 cities and power them, but only Margo had the necessary funds.

Margo 16
John  15 + $158
Nigel 15 + $145
Ian   15 + $145
Jim   14 + $167
Anne  14 + $151

Tichu (18 September 2010)

More Tichu with Anna and Andrew. Anna was disappointed with her Tichu calling on Friday night and was eager to redeem herself. After a promising start, we failed twice in a row, while Anna and Andrew surged ahead. When I called Grand Tichu I felt confident with the Dragon and four Aces, but not so confident by the time the third bomb was played against me! Anna and Andrew cruised to victory only going backwards once, and making three 1-2s.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.   160    40  Ian's Tichu
2.   200   200  Andrew's Tichu
3.   270   130  Anna fails Tichu
4.   170   330  Ian fails, Anna and Andrew 1-2
5.   120   380  Ian fails
6.   120   580  Anna and Andrew make 1-2 again
7.   385   615  Ian makes Grand Tichu against 3 bombs
8.   385   915  Andrew makes Tichu and 1-2
9.   545   955  Anne makes Tichu
10.  520  1080  our only points were the Pheonix!

In game 2 we were almost even after the fourth hand, but we stagnated soon after that and were well beaten. I think Andrew and Anna are well practiced for their Brisbane trip.

Hnd IA+AM AJ+AH
1.    30   170  Anna's Tichu
2.   130   170  Anne fails Tichu but we made 1-2
3.   325   175  Ian's Tichu and lots of points
4.   245   255  Anne fails Tichu
5.   245   455  Andrew and Anna 1-2
6.   315   385  Anna fails Tichu
7.   410   490  Anna's Tichu but not many points
8.   445   555
9.   445   855  Anna's Tichu and 1-2
10.  415   985  Ian fails Tichu, Andrew makes Tichu
11.  415  1285  Andrew's Tichu and 1-2

Anne and I had discussed passing strategies earlier but such things are tricky to put into practice. We probably didn't swap Aces as often as Carl and I had the night before but apart from that I don't think the agreement helped us very much.

Friday 17 September 2010

Carl showed up first, followed by Anna and Andrew. We had decided to play Frank's Zoo when Jarratt rang the door bell, so we dealt him in while he came upstairs. We gave him the fastest rules explanation we could and got underway. But we only managed one round before John and Nigel showed up.

Frank's Zoo
Nigel joined Anna, Anne and Jarratt to restart Frank's Zoo. Jarratt wanted to stop playing after the first round, and perhaps he should have. Nasia joined in at the third hand and challenged Jarratt for third place. No surprises about who won.

Anna    2 8 15 24
Anne    4 7  8 11
Jarratt 7 7  9  8
Nasia   - -  5  7
Nigel   0 2  1  3

Clans
I've been keen to play this game again since I noticed the similarity between this and Metropolys. Both being essentially abstract games with secret missions. It's been a couple of years since I last played this, and longer since Carl, John or I last played it regularly. It was Andrew's first time. Unfortunately for Andrew and I, in the last third of the game we got into the rhythm of he and I being forced to set up situations where John and Carl could make villages (which they did). This was partially due to the seating order, which was: John, me, Carl, Andrew.

The early part of both games is the least important and the initial moves are not obvious. The mid-game starts as board position becomes interesting, and the end game is where choices become more limited and more critical. The obvious difference between the two is that in Metropolys the end game is about keeping the initiative whereas in Clans it is about giving away as few opportunities to your opponents (in particular the player following you) as possible.

John B   49
Carl     47
Andrew H 43
Ian      43

Andrew Rae arrived in time for the next set of game choosing. We had ten people and lots of indecision. We probably should have split into two five player groups as there are plenty of good five player games available. But we didn't.

Tichu
Carl hasn't played for awhile and was initially worried that we weren't strong enough for Anna and Andrew and the first two hands suggested he was right. But then Carl and Anna went head to head for the first of three times. The seventh hand turned up an interesting situation I called Tichu but Carl also had a good hand and ended up in a position to go out before me, controversially he choose to go out, leaving me to finish second for 200 minus 100 points. If he had not gone out, his final card would have been something like a 3 ruling out a 1-2. A Tichu would have given us more points but also have given Anna and Andrew points.

Grand Tichu calls are rare in our games, but on turn 9 Andrew called Grand Tichu and made it! But while Anna and Andrew were making a come back it was too late.

Hnd IA+Ql AJ+AH
1.    25    75
2.    85   215 Andrew's Tichu
3.   280   120 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails
4.   345    55 Andrew fails
5.   450   150 Carl makes Tichu
6.   600   100 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails
7.   700   100 I fail, but Carl and I make a 1-2
8.   875    25 I make Tichu, Anna fails
9.   800   300 I fail, while Andrew makes a Grand Tichu
10.  810   390
11.  830   570 Andrew makes Tichu
12. 1030   470 Carl makes Tichu, Anna fails

Nuns on the Run
Engrossed in Tichu I didn't pay much attention to what was happening at the other end of the room.

Nasia taught this deduction game that she had brought with her. It is like Scotland Yard in reverse, instead of one player being hunted by everyone else, one player hunts everyone else. She said it went OK, but none of the novices managed to get their secret wish and return to their cells. So Abbess Nasia won.

Pompeii
Rumors from Pompeii talk of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Amid destruction and disaster Nasia had fun, Andrew went crazy and found time went quickly.

Andrew only had cards for unplayed areas and John just kept on playing the same card after him for more relatives. John had 22 on the board to Andrew's 14. Driving Andrew crazy. Still it was to his advantage because he didn't have to worry about so many guys and got them all but three out. Andrew won, Nasia lost, with John in the middle.

Nexus Ops
Jarratt loves Nexus Ops but Nigel hasn't had enjoyed his previous experiences, while Anne hasn't played often. Jarratt did the rules refresher but forgot the easily forgotten rule that you can sell unwanted cards. Jarratt followed the standard strategy getting early control of the Monolith and fighting many battles. Nexus Ops is a game of winning battles but not wasting too many troops defending territory.

The experience didn't improve Nigel's attitude towards the game, but Anne wants to play again.

Jarratt 15
Anne     8
Nigel    6

California
John suggested we try this two player but neither of us checked the rules differences for two players until I had filled my house. Then Jarratt read that we should have finished much earlier, so we stopped at that point when I was one point ahead. If we had played by the real two player rules we wouldn't have scored as many present points (which would have hurt me more than John) and the game would have ended earlier with John probably winning.

Ian    36
John B 35

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