A second outing for this new game. Four players still makes the option of getting additional route tickets a risky undertaking. Stuart's coast to coast route also took in several six-long lines which bumped up his score. James and Kieron shared the longest route card, and Russell was again penalised by failing to connect all the cities on his tickets. Final score: Stuart 188, James 110, Kieron 77, Russell 54.
Then we dug out a game that Kieron had bought for Stuart some time ago (and also got for Adrian recently) - Villa Paletti. This initially looks like a kids game - a more colourful version of Jenga perhaps - but there's actually quite a lot of strategy to it. We were using a translation of the rules from the internet and there were a couple of things that didn't seem to work quite right to us. But this game won Spiel des Jahres in 2002, so worth checking Board Game Geek for any clarifications that would make the game even better. Russell seemed to have the shakiest hands in this game but it was Stuart who brought the edifice down, giving the win to Kieron.
Friday, 25 January 2008
Friday, 18 January 2008
Maharaja - 17 January 2008
Stuart and Russell replaced Andy and James for a second round of Maharaja. Interestingly there were new tactics employed. The scoring order was changed a few times, character cards were swapped and stolen much more often.
Result: David & Russel 9, Stuart and Kieron 7. David wins on money.
Result: David & Russel 9, Stuart and Kieron 7. David wins on money.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Maharaja - 9 January 2008
A first outing for David's Christmas gift from Kieron. Maharaja sees the players competing to build palaces and houses in a number of cities, with the order of scoring being controlled by the Maharaja processing from city to city. Money is very tight - a palace costs 12 coins, the same amount as you receive for providing the highest scoring buildings in a city. The game is enhanced by the use of special character cards that allow the players to bend the rules in different ways.
After a run through the rules we found ourselves playing a number of different tactics. Andy decided to skip the first couple of cities and built up and started to take control of one that the Maharaja would visit later. James took the #1 card allowing him first dibs when building. David and Kieron started building a transport network to allow cheap travel from city to city.
Alas Andy failed to capitalise on his city takeover, assuming he had a little more time available than he did, resulting in him dropping behind. Towards the end he surged back - at one point building two palaces in the same turn.
Kieron made good use of his road network, but when making use of the Monk character to give him access to one area not available to him, David almost managed to strand him there by stealing his card. Fortunately Kieron was ready to steal it back but it showed us how using the Monk, while cheaper, left the user vulnerable.
Finally David's network, and his use of the Merchant to earn extra money enabled David to get slightly ahead, and hold on. Final score - David 9, everyone else 8. (James, Kieron, Andy in money order?)
Verdict - a clever game with lots of choices that always leaves you wanting to do a little bit more than you can each turn.
After a run through the rules we found ourselves playing a number of different tactics. Andy decided to skip the first couple of cities and built up and started to take control of one that the Maharaja would visit later. James took the #1 card allowing him first dibs when building. David and Kieron started building a transport network to allow cheap travel from city to city.
Alas Andy failed to capitalise on his city takeover, assuming he had a little more time available than he did, resulting in him dropping behind. Towards the end he surged back - at one point building two palaces in the same turn.
Kieron made good use of his road network, but when making use of the Monk character to give him access to one area not available to him, David almost managed to strand him there by stealing his card. Fortunately Kieron was ready to steal it back but it showed us how using the Monk, while cheaper, left the user vulnerable.
Finally David's network, and his use of the Merchant to earn extra money enabled David to get slightly ahead, and hold on. Final score - David 9, everyone else 8. (James, Kieron, Andy in money order?)
Verdict - a clever game with lots of choices that always leaves you wanting to do a little bit more than you can each turn.
Thursday, 3 January 2008
Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures: War at Sea - 2 January 2008
With other gamers variously being out of the country/county/energy, David and James got together for the first games night of 2008. After discussing Andy and James' candidate army for Anderida (and getting some useful tips from the Deejmaster), it was a good opportunity to play one of James' two-player games for the first time - Axis & Allies Naval Miniatures: War at Sea - a birthday present from Adrian.
Despite having a ludicrously long name, this is a short and simple game, but no less fun for that. It's a collectible game (usually worrying, but perhaps not in this case) and the starter pack comes with 9 lovely little models of WW2 ships, submarines and aircraft, and two 30" x 40" playing maps. We had to conscript a German Kondor patrol bomber to fight for the Allies in order to better balance the two sides.
Game turns consist of initiative, movement, air defence and attack, followed by surface and torpedo attacks. Rules worked well and rolling a handful of dice as a wing of Spitfires attacked a Japanese destroyer was rather fun.
We had about half the number of units required for a full game, and the bloody and explosive affair was over reasonably quickly, with David winning for the Axis. James plans to look for some additional units on eBay so we can then see how it really plays will the full complement of units. This looks like a good quick game for one of our 2-or-3-games-in-a-evening affairs, and once we have twice as many units on the table, this would be a good game to play in teams too.
Despite having a ludicrously long name, this is a short and simple game, but no less fun for that. It's a collectible game (usually worrying, but perhaps not in this case) and the starter pack comes with 9 lovely little models of WW2 ships, submarines and aircraft, and two 30" x 40" playing maps. We had to conscript a German Kondor patrol bomber to fight for the Allies in order to better balance the two sides.
Game turns consist of initiative, movement, air defence and attack, followed by surface and torpedo attacks. Rules worked well and rolling a handful of dice as a wing of Spitfires attacked a Japanese destroyer was rather fun.
We had about half the number of units required for a full game, and the bloody and explosive affair was over reasonably quickly, with David winning for the Axis. James plans to look for some additional units on eBay so we can then see how it really plays will the full complement of units. This looks like a good quick game for one of our 2-or-3-games-in-a-evening affairs, and once we have twice as many units on the table, this would be a good game to play in teams too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)