Bumper Short Games Night, 30 May 2007 - Niagara, Gladiators and Ra

A fun evening of short games with guest 8 year-old gamer Fred. Two games of Niagara opened up the evening. The first saw James steal victory quickly by the deadly '4 amethyst grab' technique. Wise to this, game 2 was much more tactical. Some shrewd moves by Fred won the admiration of the adults; Kieron and James, both close to victory were swept over the waterfall by the raging torrent; Adrian pipped Fred to the finish and won with a double '4 diamonds' plus '7 any gems'.

We then tried out James' new Gladiator figure game. Quite a nice little system, and perfectly suited to Fred - who systematically murdered all our fighters to be last man standing (having personally wiped out his opponents). Happily for James, his gladiator was spared by the Emperor. Kieron and mine were given the 'pollice inverso' (turned thumb) for being feeble. Finally, we introduced Fred to Ra. A super game as ever, with the usual mix of Derrening, risk taking and entertainment. Kieron stormed to victory with 47 points (having scored big on green tiles each turn); Fred was second with 31, then Adrian with 30 and James last with 21. All in all a great evening, with all the players winning a game - and thus racking up a huge number of points towards the end of year scores.
:-)