Tichu (7 June 2010)

Anna and Andrew invited us for a game or two of Tichu.

Game 1
Andrew identified my tendency to avoid playing in the early rounds while I considered calling Tichu. But several times in the excitement of playing my first card and calling Tichu, I forgot the important bit -- calling Tichu!

Hnd Boys Girls
1.    50    50
2.   225    75 Andrew's Tichu
3.   295   105
4.   595   105 Tichu and 1-2
5.   895   105 Tichu and 1-2
6.   955    45 Anna failed Tichu
7.  1035   165 Anna's Tichu

Game 2
The second game was much closer, with the lead passing back and forth.

Hnd Boys Girls
1.    20    80
2.    90    10 Anna failed Tichu
3.   115   185 Anna's Tichu
4.    95   305 Andrew failed, Anne succeeded
5.   295   305 1-2
6.   295   605 Anne's Tichu and 1-2
7.   270   730 Ian failed, Anna succeeded
8.   500   700 Ian succeeded, Anne failed
9.   555   645 Anna failed
10.  580   820 Anna's Tichu
11.  880   720 Andrew succeed, Anne failed
12.  825   775 Ian failed
13. 1015   785 Andrew's Tichu

Princes of Renaissance (6 June 2010)

Once upon a time six Princes of Renaissance vied for control of Italy.

Despite our collective patronage of the arts, there are no pictures to record our exploits, and we rely on the failing memory and indecipherable scribblings of an old man for our knowledge of the treacherous deeds and battles of those turbulent decades.

These noble princes were:

Nigel Baglioni who seemed to have the ear of the military council in every city, regardless of the inferior nature of his army. He was of a religous persuasion, though some people uncharitably said that he merely had the Pope in his pocket.

Craig "son of gun" d'Este a successful general with no time for artists or religion he devoted himself to the art of war. He had an army equally formidible on attack and defense.

Iano Gonzaga, a patron of the arts and lost causes, who eagerly attacked and defended against the odds to loose battle after battle.

Cavalier Carlos Montefeltro, a peace loving prince who vetoed wars and collected art, a man of wide interests but overall the most astute investor in the cities of Italy.

John "money bags" Malatesta whose mechant empire spanned Venice and Milan and financed a decorative cavalry regiment and an art collection. In league with Ludovico Sforza (who did not believe in "Alea jacta est") he intervened to try and change course of battles.

Travis Bentivogli the greatest general of his time, despite his poor choice of investments, history will show him to be "Primus inter pares".

Player Tot City Wins Art Etc
Travis 43 = 15 + 21 + 3 + 4(most influence)
Carl   38 = 30 +  0 + 4 + 4(most influence)
Craig  34 = 19 + 15
JB     34 = 19 +  0 + 4 + 8(merchants) + 3(2nd cash)
Nigel  32 = 23 +  0 + 0 + 3(pope) + 6(most cash)
Ian    29 = 26 +  0 + 3

Die Macher (5 June 2010)

Its been about a year since we last played Die Macher and Peter and I were getting withdrawal symptoms, so as Queen's Birthday weekend was predicted to be wet we organised to get together for pizza and politics. John was keen on yellow, so I took blue (which confused me for the first hour or so, but not seriously).

Party Leaders

CDU   - Peter
FDP   - John R
Grüne - John B
SPD   - Anne
PDS   - Ian

Election Details
The first election (in Brandenburg) didn't attract a lot of attention from the parties (with the exception of Grüne). Grüne felt comfortable enough with the cash from their win to turn down a big donation and get a big boost in party membership and the some cash that way.

The next two elections attracted more attention with SPD and PDS romping away in Sachen and Rheinland being even more hotly contested. But the biggest prize was fourth election (in lucrative Bayen). FDP and PDS formed a coalition to see off the others, but everyone had a piece of the pie.

In Schleswig-Holstein FDP started to flex its muscles using an opinion poll to put paid to PDS's chances. Little Bremen was an anticlimax with only CDU and Grüne taking it seriously and only FDP took the last election in Saarland (with it potentially huge impact on National Opinion) as seriously as it should be taken.

Regional Summary

#  State             Seats CDU FDP Grn SPD PDS  Winners  and Media
1. Brandenburg        (28)   5  13  28  11   9   Grüne   (25 media)
2. Sachen             (46)   7   0  21  26  26 SPD + PDS (20 media)
3. Rheinland          (42)  42  42   6  32   9 SPD + CDU (20 media)
4. Bayen              (60)  54  60  54  42  60 FDP + PDS (15 media)
5. Schleswig-Holstein (32)  10  32   0  22   5 FDP       (15 media)
6. Bremen             (15)   8   0  15   0   6   Grüne   (12 media)
7. Saarland           (20)   9  17   9   3   4 FDP       (10 media)
Σ                          135 164 133 136 119

Nation Wide
Of course elections are not just about the regions. What about the party members, the secret donations and the national opinion? Unusually the parties seemed to care about their membership (especially Grüne which continually had the biggest membership).

As you might expect the National opinion favoured those who won the later elections. But only one opinion was secured.

Final Results

Parties         CDU FDP Grn SPD PDS
Mandate Σ       135 164 133 136 119
Media Points     20  40  37  40  35
Party Members    42  42  53  49  50
bonuses                 +10      +6
National Opinion 37  70  72  15  47
secured opinions     +5  +5      +5
Totals          234 321 310 240 262

Pundits Summary
Unlike previous elections there was little use of opinion polls to harm opposing political parties. Political observers noted that it had been a long time since the last election and perhaps the politicians had become soft. Against the trend FDP start using opinion polls aggressively in the last three elections. SPD was particularly upset with FDP in the Saarland election, saying it was "uncalled for".

Another trend the pundits noticed was the over use of Shadow Cabinet early, with very few kept until the last two elections.

In an interview with the press after the election the leader of the Grüne said:

I turned down 30,000 on round 1, (getting 5 dice, and launching me to the front of party membership for most of the game) and it was the only cash I did turn down - though I thought about doing so on round 2 as well, but decided not to because Ian was "certainly" going to do so, and could afford to turn down more than I - and not only did he not - but no-one did that round, and there was much [silent] gnashing of teeth on my side of the table!

The FDP government might not last long as there have been calls for an early election, possibly in July.

Friday 4 June 2010

Frank's Zoo
While we were waiting for John we pulled out Frank's Zoo. He arrived during the second hand and joined in the third hand once he knew the rules. Given seven players I expected pairs to be rare but we seemed to have plenty and even a few triples. Because the first player to go out gets 7 points the game can be over pretty quickly.

John R 3  9 14 21
Andrew 5 12 11 20
Anne   5  8 13 18
Ian    2  3  9 10
Nigel -2  3  6 10
Anna   5  4  6  6
John B -  -  4  6

Easter Island
Anne bought herself a game on TradeMe and was keen to get it played. I don't know much about this race game but I heard that of the first two finishers, the one with the most rocks in her/his head wins (naturally!)

Anne finished first with 26 stones (winner)
Anna finished second with 24 stones
John R finished last with 30 stones

Metropolys
Nigel stunned us by deciding to play a game he has hated since first playing it a couple of years ago. The other players were the usual suspects. I had gold and lakes and started strong but only got 2 pieces around each of two lakes when I lost the initiative. It bounced around the others. John surrounded one statue and finished the game when he noticed what Andrew had noticed earlier that placing his #13 piece gave him 3 single spots to get his last 4 pieces down, while we still had too many pieces yet to play!

John B 30
Andrew 28
Ian    21
Nigel  16

Attika
My set of Attika might get worn out before I next get to play it. John R got all his buildings down ahead of Anne and Anna.

Anna was aiming to catch a bus so the second game was played at speed and she won (also by getting all her building down).

Patrician
Looking for a short game I cajoled the others into learning this quick game of majorities. You have a hand of three cards and you turn consists of playing a card, building a bit of tower in the city matching the card and picking up the card next to that city. The trick is not only getting the majority in each tower but also picking up cards which further your aims. Some of the cards also have faces on them. A set of 3 of the same face also scores 6 points. Interestingly in the first 3 or 4 cities to be finished both towers were won by the same person.

Andrew 40
John B 37
Ian    32
Nigel  20

California
After Anna, Andrew and Nigel ran to catch the bus (leaving a couple of games behind), we played California. We needed to give John R a quick rules refresher. It is about shopping and interior decorating and the mechanics are easy to explain if you keep that in mind. The scores were close.

Ian    22
Anne   21
John R 20
John B 19

Aton (30 May 2010)

Anne and I haven't played Aton for awhile. I like Temple 4 and Sunday's results show that:

• I aimed for Temple 4 but we had a scoring round and were on the second time through the decks before I managed to fill it.
• Luck was on my side my first hand was (4, 4, 3, 3), ditto the second hand and the third hand also had a pair of 4s -- I didn't need a fourth hand.
• This was a much closer game I switched to Temple 1 fought over colours too.
• Back to Temple 4, Anne didn't get many 4s and it finished on the fourth hand.
• This time Anne won with a Temple 1 victory.

Aton is a game where you look at your cards and it is either obvious and you slap them down or struck by indecision. There also is a bit of luck.

Friday 28 May 2010

It was a dark and stormy night and five people sat around a table playing board games. As an antidote to the rain we set up business in Mongolia and played Oasis.

Oasis
It was interesting to see that by the time we had the game set up and I finished my high speed rules refresher, Moira and John had all their camels lined up in neat grid patterns. Andrew had 7 or 8 camels in a line leading out of a heap of camels, whereas Anne's camels were jumbled up in a heap. Andrew started the first camel herd, if you can call two, not quite adjacent camels, a herd. Not to be out done Anne arrived next door with a much bigger herd and once Moira, John and I had heard of camels Andrew was blocked in. But more troubling was his tendency to be #4 or #5 giving him poor choice of cards. John and I battled it out for control of the northern area, where John had the largest meadow. I quickly accumulated 4 Ovoos (the "multiplier" for stone plains), so was after every offer with a stone plain. John had lots of most things on the board but few "multiplier" tiles, while Anne's camel herd bred like rabbits - eventually 18 strong and winning her the game. Because the scoring depends on multiplication, the scores are often lopsided but with one exception we were relatively bunched.

Anne     93
Ian      89
John B   81
Moira    78
Andrew R 58

Vegas Showdown
As compensation for loosing we let Andrew suggest the next game. He wanted to learn Vegas Showdown. The first three cards turned up were "No Bid" events, which forced people into harder choices early on than usual. John was very keen on yellow and blue rooms to boost his income. Anne was keen on the theatre. Unusually for me, I had to re-organise because I had walled off a corner of my Hotel end. Not to be out done John re-organised twice. All the three basic rooms ran out before the end, as did the large rooms. But the game dragged on for a couple more turns. In the final scoring Andrew almost caught Anne while John raced into a healthy lead.

John B   62
Ian      48
Moira    37
Anne     31
Andrew R 29

Friday 21 May 2010

We started the evening with 2 city building games: Attika and Metropolys. Attika has been played quite a lot on Friday nights recently, while Metropolys has been popular with a more select crowd.

Attika
In Attika there were an unusually high number of threats to win by linking two shrines. First Nasia covered the board in blue and nearly joined two shrines but she was thwarted, not to be put off she almost did it again only to be stopped again. Nigel tried and then Anna, but these were successfully countered and in the end it came down to whether Nasia or Anna would get all their pieces out first. Anna won beating Nasia, Anne and Nigel.

Metropolys
I (re-)taught John R. I had the statue goal, which I think is the trickiest. I couldn't decide which one(s) to concentrate on. Once I had a couple of pieces down (next to separate statues) I couldn't figure out how to finish either of them off. Meanwhile John avoided playing buildings and Andrew did a rush and got lots of Trendy locations while I settled for the first Metro. Perhaps I should have concentrated on highest in area, the Trendy regions, my colour and perhaps the Metro card. In the end Andrew was too powerful for us. John was struck by the agonizing decision.

Andrew 39
Ian    24
John R 13

After the city building Nasia and Andrew swapped seats and we moved onto a pair of more meaty games: Sylla and Taj Mahal.

Taj Mahal
Anna played the connection game though not as successfully as Andrew and Anne, who concentrated on Elephants though Andrew did it better. Nigel also played. Unfortunately no one wrote down the scores.

Andrew
Anne
Anna
Nigel

Sylla
We taught Nasia. I led on the points track for the entire game, and lost lots of people (mostly slaves and another Christian). John saved his people, was Consol three times and controlled the events keeping the Slave Revolt and Christian Persecution going throughout the game. Nasia bought lots of stuff and lost lots of people too, but she also quietly collected lots of tokens, to win on début.

Nasia  77
Ian    70
John R 66

Frank's Zoo
Taj Mahal finished first and that end of the table moved onto Frank’s Zoo. Apart from Andrew who was rapidly heading for 30 no-one else seemed keen on reaching 18, so the game went on for 6 hands!

Andrew 3 8 15 21 23 26
Anna   5 9 11 13 17 20
Anne   4 2  6  9  8 12
Nigel  0 4  3  1  8 10

Null & Nichtig
I finally got to play my card game Null & Nichtig for the first time. I had been apprehensive about how this simple game plays. The deck contains five 13 card suits, numbered 0-11 with two zeros. Suits are irrelevant for determining what cards you can play or who wins the trick, but they are crucial for scoring. Tricks are won by the highest card played, between two equally high cards the first one played wins. The cards won are placed face up in front of you, one pile for each suit. Your score for the hand is the sum of the top card showing on each pile at the end. So you don’t want the last card you take in each suit to be a zero!

John R 38 65 87
Ian    24 58 82
Nasia  17 32 60

It was an interesting learning experience as we gradually picked up the principles of the game. Most obviously the last player to play on a trick is usually in the most powerful position. Also both low cards and high cards are powerful, while middle ranking cards can are a nuisance. I would class it as simpler and perhaps slightly more random than David and Goliath while slightly less painful than Stichlen. An interesting light filler of a trick taking game.

After most people had gone home Nasia and I played Null & Nichtig again, introducing Anne to this surprisingly nasty little game.

Nasia 30 72 95
Anne  27 52 95
Ian   38 69 93

Race Day (19 May 2010)

Anne had other plans on Wednesday so we could play games she doesn't like. It turned out we played race games all evening, starting with two that Anne doesn't like and finishing with one that I am usually less than keen on. Race games feel like straight forward theme for a board game but in fact it seems that it is tricky to get one that is: fun to play, invokes the feel of a race and requires skill to win. Perhaps race games should be real time (like the build, i.e. non-race, part of Galaxy Trucker).

Winner's Circle
Winner's Circle is a game of 3 races in each race 7 horses are competing and we, the players, get to both bet on 3 of the horses and jointly race all 7 of them. Each horse has a card with 4 symbols, with a number by symbol. Betting is putting your betting markers on 3 of the horses, while racing is throwing a die a die with symbols on it and choosing one the horses that haven't yet moved this round and moving it the number of squares corresponding to the symbol on the horse's description card. At the end of the race there is a payout for the people who bet on the horses who finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd, with slightly more for horses that weren't popular.

I learnt the hard way the disadvantages in backing a horse by yourself. Everyone else has an interest in making sure your horse fails to finish in the first 3. You need other people to help your horse win but you also need to do better than other people! Which was beyond me.

Lance  1450
Nigel  1350
John R 1250
Peter   950
John B  900
Ian     600

Around the World in 80 Days
This race is not about how many turns it takes you to get around the world but how many days it takes, i.e. how efficiently you do it. The most controversial aspect to this game is the blue (bad) special cards. John R suggested that if you draw a blue card the effect is carried out but then you draw another card (this extra draw only happens once per turn). We agreed to this variant, but in retrospect I am not so sure because if you don't already have special card then there is almost no risk in drawing/buying one.

I stayed behind initially to pick up the rewards for arriving last and to try and improve my hand but I didn't get around to making the necessary acceleration to finish before the game. At one point I had 4 special cards in my hand but not a particularly useful combination. Lance also didn't finish, whereas Peter played the opposite strategy and raced to the finish, taking all the finish first rewards, grabbing the watch (start player) several times. Once Peter had finished Nigel panicked and rushed to London, followed more efficiently by John R, but most efficiently by John B.

John B 66
Peter  72
John R 79
Nigel  84
Lance  Did not finish
Ian    Did not finish

Ave Caesar
Race I
Ave Caesar is a cute idea, chariot racing where everyone has their own deck of movement cards, a small hand to choose from each turn and tracks with choke points. But I think the luck of the start and the luck of the draw outweighs the skill in choosing your card and route. Though to be fair Lance does win more often than luck would account for. We usually play with 6 players, but Nigel and John B had gone home. Though even with only 4 there was plenty of blocking. I should have recorded the starting positions because it is interesting to see how much places you made or lost from the start positions, but unfortunately I didn't.

Lance
Ian
Peter
John R

Race II
We flipped to the lesser played side (without the loop), and Lance won again. Actually this side is quite hard with a shorter finishing straight and more choke points.

Lance
John R
Ian
Peter

Lance says that he is good at majority (or area) control games but it looks like he is good at race games too.

Friday 14 May 2010

Dschunke
Andrew and Anna taught Nigel the rules while I finished the washing up. Nigel might have been hyped about his week at work, because I overheard him being admonished for not paying attention. From the start Andrew and Anna were competing fiercely for the special cards. I was constantly low on commodity cards and so concentrated on getting crates down, taking the money action and being opportunistic in the blind auctions. Andrew and Nigel in particular always seemed to have plenty of cards. Despite this Anna was in the lead for the whole game, but when we added up the final scores Andrew had won beating her for probably the first time (though he came close last year). She claimed he must have cheated!

Andrew 69
Anna   67
Ian    64
Nigel  31

Expedition
Anne and Judith had arrived from the airport and so I went to find a six player game. This was my fiftieth game of Expedition (since my first game in August 2008), but not a good one for me. Andrew finished first but left a 3-way tie between Anne, Anna and Nigel.

Anne   15
Anna   15
Nigel  15
Andrew 13
Ian    10
Judith  7

Frank's Zoo
Playing this with six has been a mixed bag, but this session was a lot of fun with big scores being made by everyone (except me). Anne started with an outrageous score of 8, while Andrew started by going backwards. On the second hand Andrew recovered by showing that 8 wasn't such an outrageous score and jumping from last to second equal with Anna. But on the third hand Anna lost 4 points, while Anne extended her lead and Judith caught up with Andrew. The fourth hand should have been the last hand except that Anne stagnated while Andrew scored 9 to hit 20 while three of us still hadn't hit double figure, though Anna started on her come back. On the final hand Anna scored 8 but it only enough to give her share of third place. It was Judith's first game.

Andrew -1  7 11 20 25
Anne    8 12 17 16 18
Judith  5  6 11 13 16
Anna    3  7  3  8 16
Ian     3  1  4  8 11
Nigel   3  6  8  9  8

It was Andrew's night with two wins.

Frank's Zoo (12 May 2010)

We played Frank's Zoo at Peter's place for the first time. It was John's first time. I started at the back and stayed there. Nigel leaped in the lead on the 3rd hand and stayed there until the last hand when Anne and John jumped past. Anne won.

Anne   3 8  9 13 13 20
John R 4 4  7 11 15 19
Nigel  3 7 15 14 16 15
Ian    1 4  3  6 10 12

Sunday 9 May 2010

When I arrived at Wargames Supply, Susan and Raymond were playing a game of Three-Dragon Ante, they were kind enough to restart and teach me. Basically each round the players are playing to win the pile of gold in the middle, by having the highest value set of three cards. Obviously playing high value cards is good, but to balance this if you play a lower value card than the previous player you get to do the extra power written on the bottom of the card. There are other complications and the deck has 70 cards mostly illustrated with dragons. Susan had the dragon's share of the gold when Raymond ran out of money (and I wouldn't have been far behind).

Lucy joined us for a game of Stone Age. Susan tried the othodox green cards strategy (getting 65 points worth). Lucy went after tools. Raymond and I aimed for lots of people (ending up with 9 each). Huts and agriculture were popular across the board, and we all ended up on 5 on the crop track. I think this was my first Stone Age win, and possibly the first where the green strategy was not successful.

Ian     172
Raymond 164
Lucy    152
Susan   152

In the final few minutes Susan taught us all Merchants: Lords of the Sea (a Reiner Kniza card game with a box that looks like a PC game). It is a game to earn the most money playing cards to match the goods on your ships, but everyone else also earns for the goods that match your cards. Raymond and I helped each other but not enough to beat either Lucy (who came second) or Susan (who won).

Susan   55
Lucy    46
Ian     39
Raymond 35

Friday 7 May 2010

Frank's Zoo
Carl, Andrew and Anna were the first to turn up and we tried to get a game of Frank's Zoo in before the others arrived. Well we got two hands in, and terminated the game with Anna well in the lead.

Anna   5 12
Andrew 6  8
Carl   2  5
Ian    3  2
Anne  -1  1

Wars of the Roses: Lancaster vs. York
Carl was keen on playing his new game and it turns out that Andrew and Anna had met the designer in Brisbane. I got off to a good lead on turn one so all the others cashed in their French Aid for between 15-25 pounds each. I had no mercenaries and not much money so gradually lost ground. I ended up with lots of port but lost my ship to John. Carl went religious and also won the Captain of Calais every turn except the first. Carl caught me but never got more than 2 points ahead before the end of the game so my French Aid was pretty much worthless. Carl ended up with 3 bishop-cathedral town combinations earning 9 points per turn.

We did get the tie breaking rule wrong in the first half of the game, and Andrew and Carl both made planning mistakes putting troops in illegal places. John didn't like the game, whereas I found that the theme and components reminded me of Kingmaker (which seems like the obvious inspiration) but the mechanics were a combination of straight forward majority control with blind bidding style planning (but not quite as innovative as Wallenstein). I got an impression of a game with plenty of randomness (due to the blind bid style planning) . I'd be happy to play again though I don't think it is a game to be taken too seriously.

Carl   126
Ian    116
Andrew 101
John B 100

Attika
While we were refighting the War of the Roses the other went back to ancient Greece. Anna won the first game with an end-to-end victory. Nigel won the second game with another end-to-end victory.

China Moon
Anne taught Anna and Nigel this nasty no luck race game. Which Nigel won. Then Nigel, Andrew and Anna went to catch the bus.

Nigel 14
Anne  11
Anna   8

The Kids of Carcassonne
Carl's other new game is a simplified Carcassonne with a twist that the meaples are placed only when a road is finished. The winner is the player to get all their meaples on the board first. I beat Carl, John B and Anne.

Attika
Carl went home and we finished the evening with a third game of Attika. This time I won by building all my buildings first.

It was a good evening for Attika fans.

Friday 30 April 2010

Frank's Zoo
Last week we planned to play this again.

I handed Anna 5 points in the first hand by playing 3 lions on Nigel's 2 lions. Anna played 3 Elephants and no-one could top that. So she got off to a good lead with 9 points. On the second hand Nigel jumped into second place and from there he caught up with Anna, dropped behind and caught up again, using a Hedgehog strategy (getting all the Hedgehogs on one hand). I pretty much ignored Hedgehogs and Lions, aiming to go out quickly but I wasn't overly successful.

This time Nigel did make up for previous games and won on the tie break (which is the player who made the most points on the last hand).

Anna   9 12 13 17 19
Andrew 5  4  7 11 17
Nigel  2  8 13 15 19 (winning on tie-break)
Ian   -1  3  7 10 10
Anne   2  3  2  4  8

Rheinländer
We fulfilled another promise to ourselves by playing this again. I grabbed a lot of castles (again) and also tried for churches but Anne was always one step behind me and I was never Archbishop long enough to use the power. I lost 3 of my Dukes at the end. Nigel had by far the biggest Dukedom but size doesn't matter as much as how many Dukes you finish with.

Andrew 41
Ian    32
Anne   27
Anna   25
Nigel  24

We played again. This time I went for 3 and 4 point cities. There was quite a bit of aggression in this game, which Andrew survived the best. While Nigel went on a religious kick and became the unchallenged Archbishop and won the game. The scores were close this time.

Nigel  33
Andrew 30
Ian    30
Anne   29
Anna   28

China
China and Rheinländer are both 45 minute games where you play card(s) to get your pieces on to the board in order to gain majorities. In both games the cards have two uses: an obvious use and an alternative one. In Rheinländer you can play a knight onto empty space who's number matches your card, in China you can play in a province whose colour matches your card. Alternatively in Rheinländer you can use any card to extend a region, in China a pair of cards can be used as a wild card. In both games you end your turn by refilling your hand. In addition to the mechanical similarities both games have traps for beginners. In Rheinländer, unlike what the theme might suggest, expanding or attacking is more often than not counter productive. In China the importance and timing of Emissary placement is hard to get right.

I enjoy this quick area/majority control game, probably because it is more about opportunistic moves than deep strategy. I think most of the others had only played once before and need a rules refresher. The game started in an unorthodox fashion with everyone starting in a different region. When you start a region you only get to place one house in it, while on other turns you get to place two pieces. So often players are reluctant to start regions because it often helps the player to their left. Perhaps it is in the way I explained the game or may be it is better with fewer players but no-one else enjoyed it.

Ian    38
Anna   33
Anne   27
Nigel  25
Andrew 24

It was Nigel's night with two wins.

Friday 23 April 2010

Take It Easy!
I was on the phone when Andrew and Anna arrived so they played this quick tile laying game with Anne while they waited for me and other people. It is essentially a multi-player solitaire game where each player has their own set of tiles and layout, and they all add tiles to their layouts in the same order. Each line of tiles that all have the same number (colour) score the sum of the numbers.

The game was finishing when Nigel arrived and I finished my phone call.

Anna   174
Andrew 134
Anne   104

California
Its been a long time since I last played this game, but it is easy to teach and it didn't take long to bring Andrew and Anna up to speed. Some people had a bit of trouble with the coins (in this game silvers are $1 and gold/bronze are $5). Nigel initially collected money (having $10-15 at one point) but still managed to buy as much floor as everyone else. He also decided that the characters should have names, calling one of the women Jane, Anne named the brown guy ??? and the blonde guy became Brad. Anna's house was party central and she was collecting a pile of presents (and other bonuses). A steady stream of people were arriving at my house but very few bought presents, but I got some bonuses. Nigel and Andrew were similarly short of presents. Only Anne stayed out of debt. Anna demonstrated her ability to pick-up new games by winning.

Anna   19
Ian    14
Anne   12
Nigel  11
Andrew  9

Frank's Zoo
Nigel was keen to make up for his previous bad showing and Anna and Andrew rarely need persuading to play this game.

Nigel started badly but recovered and got into his stride. Anna started well but dropped off the pace until her comeback at the end. Anne played a steady game. Andrew lead for most of the game but couldn't hold off Anna in the last hand. I started OK but it then fell apart.

Anna   6  5  9 11 17 25
Andrew 4 10 12 15 19 22
Anne   4 10 12 14 16 21
Nigel -1  3  7 12 14 13
Ian    3  4  6  8  7 10

Everyone, except me, wanted to play again. I vetoed and suggested...

Rheinländer
... a game where I wanted to make up for my previous bad showing.

I went after castles in a big way (as dictated by my initial hand). Nigel and Anna also grabbed a castle each. The churches remained evenly divided for much of the game so the Archbishop was out of play for most of the game and never converted anyone. I was a bit aggressive but with only one success (crossing the river and grabbing a castle off Nigel). Anne and Anna also fought over the central island (Anna won) and Anne took the other island off Nigel. People seemed to think I was winning despite Andrew having more dukes and cities than anyone else, so efforts to stop Andrew were too little too late.

Andrew 39
Anna   36
Anne   33
Ian    26
Nigel  18

It was Anna's night with 3 wins and a second place. While Anne specialised in coming third. There was a consensus that next week Frank's Zoo and Rheinländer must be played again.

Friday 16 April 2010

Lots of games were suggested and after some discussion we split into two city building games, four people playing Metropolys and three playing Attika.

Attika
Again it was a close game between Anne and Anna with Anna winning and Nigel a long way behind.

Metropolys
This was possibly the slowest game of Metropolys ever. I got my first three pieces down and everyone (correctly) thought I was after statues. Andrew then got 6 pieces down in a rush and appeared to be after gold neighbourhoods. Finally John got some pieces down, I got one more, and still Carl hadn't played anything but seemed to favour red. Once Carl got under way he got all his small pieces down and scared John into taking back the lead. Andrew and I were in weak positions at this point and Carl and John pretty much dictated the rest of the game. The scores were close though.

John B 27
Ian    25
Andrew 23
Carl   23

Scotland Yard
John went home and we were 6. Unable to decide on 3 player games we tried this as a six player game.

I was Mr X. I made a mistake on my first move that I didn't notice until after the game but I don't think it made any difference as I was easily cornered after my second reveal and was caught just before the 3rd reveal.

Anne was bored because she was in the wrong part of the board and was accidentally blocked by Nigel from getting back into the play. Andrew and Carl who grew up with the game were in their element.

Psychologically it is an interesting game. The person playing Mr X feels claustrophobic seeing how close the detectives are to catching him, while the detectives seeing heaps of empty space see their task as impossible.

Frank's Zoo
Andrew warned us against 6 player Frank's Zoo and while it is OK the fewer cards and more players playing before your turn mean less control. The bigger range of scoring favours getting out early above getting lions and hedgehogs.

Anna dominated each hand which probably means there is still skill in the 6 player game.

Anna   7 14 19 25
Anne   5  8 13 19
Andrew 2  7 11 18
Carl   4  6  7  9
Ian    4  2  5  4
Nigel -1  1  0  1