Ticket to Ride Europe and Dominion, 29 July 2009

A foursome this week (James, Adrian, Orhan and David) for Adrian's post-natal return to gaming. First up was Orhan's Ticket to Ride Europe, a shorter and denser game than the US map but in many ways more involved and engaging. The addition was stations, allowing players to use others' routes (a sort of 'leapfrog rule'). James eschewed the completing routes strategy in favour of going for top scores on individual connections. The other three opted for the more standard approach, but with Orhan collecting a fistful of route cards even before he'd looked at his opening hand. In the end, James racked up an impressive 129 and then had the agony of watching the others cash in their routes. But to no avail: Adrian and Orhan just made it to 125 and David to 124. A good win for James.

Having finished TTRE early, we went for Dominion, taking about an hour to play the standard game. Orhan had to go a bit earlier than the others so we followed up with a three player 'Big Money' variant (which was over very quickly but which had a couple of bemusing inclusions in the Action Cards - why 'Chapel' for example?). In these games the previous chaining combos so beloved of David didn't quite work out for him and Adrian snatched both victories with a money-heavy approach (acquiring decks with more Gold and Silver cards than Action cards). The scores: Game 1 Adrian 33, James 28, Orhan 24, David 23; Game 2 Adrian 48, David 42, James 39.

Pompeji, Ra - 22 July 2009

With just Andy, David and James around, it was a good opportunity to dig out a game for a smaller number of players. Five or six years ago, James bought a small collection of card games from Salute with themes including maritime trading, railway racing (of course!) and town building. We played the latter this evening - Pompeji. Players construct buildings in a town grid system and gain points by matching building types and background colours along the connecting roads that are created. The Pompeji theme provides the Roman architecture and an erupting Vesuivius to end the game but sadly (unlike Adrian's game) no lava to escape from!

James won the game with 208 points, David second with 156 (and more than a little confusion about which buildings lined up with which) and Andy on 115 (his lower score a result of not using his Extra Turn card so essentially having two less turns than the others). A clever and short (~40 minute) game.

We then played old favourite Ra to see how it worked with three players. Slightly (only just) less Derren-ing but the game worked just as well and was a lot of fun as usual. A strong win for Andy on 51, with James on 42 and David 37.