Colonia, 14 April 2010

A first try for another of Adrian’s presents from Orhan, and, given the small number of Rivals and the Easter holidays, we invited 2 guest gamers to join in - Fred and Felix. Colonia is a beautifully produced game where you deploy your workers, Puerto Rico style, to acquire power in the Council, acquire resources, turn these into goods, ship the goods, and use money (in four currencies) to buy relics which provide victory points. The game has some very clever mechanisms and some really nice ideas. I particularly liked the town council edicts which are voted on by the players to amend (or not) the rules in a given phase. There is a fair amount of luck in the game - especially in the ship departures and the relics which come up, and there was a feeling that this meant that the game was somewhat more reactive and less predictable than we would have liked. We considered that displaying which relics and ships were going to come up might fix this to some extent. Looking on boardgamegeek (where it scores 6.9) the mood was for more interaction - eg by allowing trading of goods and resources between players - and for giving more stability to allow players to see what is coming up (as we felt). At any rate though this game played well, finished promptly (we were done by 10.30pm including learning the rules), and was fun. For our game common strategies were employed - 3 players had a run on relics from Bergen; Felix tried to corner the Novgorod market (foiled by Orhan) and Adrian was fortunate (or skilful???) to get the Belgian top relic and shrine (which doubled its VP value). Orhan upped the drama stakes by declaring his vote on edicts last (whether or not he actually got a vote!). And Felix bizarrely named the ‘footwear’ goods as ‘Geoffreys” (coz they looked like Court Jesters’ shoes and he got the name confused). So Geoffreys it is then. Final scores: Adrian 17; Deej 16; Fred 12; Orhan 12; Felix 10. Good fun.

Ticket to Ride Europe and Ra, 7 April 2010

[Orhan writes] Time this week for two short games so out came two old favourites: Ticket to Ride (Europe) and Ra. Ticket to ride was the first game of the evening and was played in the usual vaguely anarchic style with everyone apparently wanting to go through Paris simultaneously. Almost everyone pulled a small number of routes at the beginning picking up more later on. I went for my usual strategy of grabbing a large set of routes at the start of the game and made almost all of them but threw caution to the wind in the last round and had an unlucky pull dropping me down into third place only a single point ahead of Andy. The fight for the longest route was very strongly contested with all four players being within five points of each other but in the end Adrian won it which also won him the game pipping David to the post. Adrian (121), David (110), Orhan (101), Andy (100).

Ra was as usual very enjoyable with some fun brinksmanship going on between David and Adrian. Andy was Mr. Nile and unlike Kieron in another game we could mention, seemed largely impervious to the crocodiles. After his earlier victory in Ticket to Ride Adrian was feeling bullish taking a number of risks on the RA pulls but unfortunately the luck of the Gods seemed to have departed him with David winning most of their tussles. At the end of the evening the scores were David (50), Andy (47), Orhan (35) and Adrian (24).

Imperial, 31 March 2010

Nearly a full house for games this week. We didn’t expect Stu and had just got Ra out on the table when Orhan arrived which precipitated a ‘what shall we play with 6 players?’ conundrum. The answer was Imperial, and, as it turned out, this was a top choice. We had all played before except for Andy, who took to the game not so much like a duck to water as a cold-hearted international investor to the Great Power politics of the early 20th century.

The starting draw saw James with Great Britain, Orhan with Austria, Adrian with France, Kieron with Italy, Andy with Germany and Deej with Russia (I think - things did change around quite a bit…). Orhan’s Austria expanded early into the Balkans, tussling with Russia throughout the game. Britain and Germany vied for control of the low countries and Scandinavia. Italy and France jostled for position in the Med and North Africa. In terms of investing strategies, David ended up with multiple cards, having had Russia taken off him a few times. Kieron and Adrian more or less stuck to their original countries but with Kieron managing to acquire a wider portfolio than Adrian. James had a small number of high value cards. Orhan and Andy (if I remember correctly) a mid-level spread in 3 or so countries. By the end game Italy and France were out ahead with the rest of the countries a small number of power points behind and so it all hinged on the last couple of turns. In a text-book finish, Kieron managed to acquire funds and invest, and then finish the game on his next turn by taxing Italy.

The final scores were amazingly close - Andy on 94, Adrian, James and Orhan all amazingly on 105, Deej on 110 and Kieron the winner on 125. A very good game with clever mechanisms and enough interaction and lack of down time to make it a good game for six. It also finished in under 3 hours. Good stuff.