Return to the Temple of Obi Thumpi, 25 April

Having felt it high time to get the Darkest Africa figures out - including the new character figures that I acquired at Salute 06 - I revamped the Obi Thumpi Temple game to bring in 6 players and a slightly different approach.

James' French were allied to Deej's Belgians, at diagonally opposite ends of the table. Their objective was to open the Temple and steal its treasure. Stu and Russell played the natives, but natives led by previously abducted and brainwashed European women (obviously...). Their objective was to protect the Temple by releasing its protector (a T-Rex) from the Land that Time Forgot in the next valley. The third faction was Andy (Brits) and Kieron (Italians) whose aim was to release their womenfolk from the Temple's thrall. All well and good. However, unexpectedly the Brits and Stu's gang of natives decided to team up - no doubt native mind control skills at play there. This contributed to the general mayhem. The Francophones managed to get the Temple open and reveal the treasure, the Belgians made a successful grab for it - just as the Dinosaur made its appearance. The game was decided on the last turn - the Dinosaur succeeded in eating some of the Belgian troopers just before the Belgian hero was able to whisk the treasure off table. So the natives win, and (predictably?) Russell's extra kills and treasure finds in the game gave him victory.

El Grande - 18 April 2007

What a cracking game this is, even in its basic form without the expansions. A most unusual line-up for this games session with Adrian, Kieron Stuart and Russell. With James out of the way, it left the rest of us with a fighting chance of success but then we forgot about Russell who, on only his second games night, won again!

Russell's grande was in Catalonia but one of his early moves was to chuck loads of caballero's into Stuart's region which, needless to say, went down well! Stuart went all out to get caballero's into every territory which early on worked quite well but when it came to the crunch i.e. the final scoring round he found himself a little too thinly spread out. There was much thinking time in the game and plenty of opportunity for friendly jibes. Adrian was heard to say that he could not believe that teachers take longer over decision making than civil servants! R, K and A put many caballero's into the castillo region but Stu pointed out that two or three is sufficient to cause disruption when they are reallocated. Portugal came into the game for the first time. Russell thoroughly deserved the win by playing the region scoring action cards to good effect gaining some 20+ points in two succesive rounds. Kieron pipped Adrian in the very final region of the final scoring round. Final scores:
Russell 138, Kieron 122, Adrian 120, Stu 115

Perhaps next time we will try one of the expansions now that everyone has played it?

Caylus - 4 April

A first outing for Caylus with just Adrian, James and David playing. This game sees the players building both a town and a castle in order to obtain enough victory points. There is an interesting balance as you need to build up the town in order to get enough industry going to enable the building of the castle. However players are allowed a great deal of freedom - you can ignore the castle altogether and earn points by providing services to other players, or build up a supply of gold instead.

This freedom made a first play quite difficult as we had no idea how different strategies would play out. The opening rounds were very interesting as it took a while for those investing in buildings to see the effects of their builds. It dragged a little in the middle before leaping to a sudden entertaining end-game.

There was a reasonable amount of interplay, as each player's actions limit those the next player can take, but it mainly involved adapting a strategy as the turn progressed instead of actively attempting crown moves. James may disagree on this point...

As the game concluded we all appeared to be in with a chance of winning. The end result then was a bit of a surprise as my gold hoarding took me well past the others for victory.

I think Adrian has the final scores?