Ticket To Ride & Ra - 29 September 2010

We managed to fit in a couple of games this week.  Starting with Ticket To Ride with the 1910 variant (lots of extra tickets, a bonus for successfully using the most tickets, plus larger easier-to-read cards!).  This encourages you to go for more routes but it's challenging with the full five players to get where you need to go.  Despite  thinking he had got to Chicago when his route was actually a town short (a mistake repeated by Stuart on the West Coast), Kieron held on to his lead to win Orhan by just a couple of points.  Final scores Kieron 109, Orhan 107, James 104, Andy 83 and Stuart 71.

Then back to old favourite Ra.  The usual fun plus a new twist introduced by Kieron who only managed to win one auction in each of the three rounds.  And that was by reusing the chip he was picking up in the previous round, so he actually managed to spend the entire game with chips 10 and 13 in front of him.  However, this did have the advantage that he did have the highest value set of chips at the end of the game, enabling him to sneak past Andy (who had the lowest set) in the final scoring.  James went full on for collecting the whole Nile but only managed a single building, and was beaten by Stuart's more balanced set of tiles.  Final scores Stuart 39, James 35, Orhan 28, Kieron 25 and Andy 19.

Hamburgum - 22 September 2010

For a variety of reasons, we were down to just three this week.  We played the beautifully produced Hamburgum (actually the English language side of the board - Londinium) with its clever game mechanisms, including our current favourite - the rondel.

It's not always clear who's winning this game as prestige points from making church donations only need be cashed in when a donation token of the same type is picked up, so the lead changed regularly as we leapfrogged each other on the scoring track.  Kieron and Stuart took a balanced approach whilst James tried a donation-light but building-heavy strategy.

Right up to the final scoring we knew it was close and we couldn't see who was in the lead but James' targeted selection of donation tokens matching his buildings gave him the edge.  The final scores were James 101, Kieron 96 and Stuart 79.  Kieron could have earned bonus points for this week's spillage but made the schoolboy error of knocking tea into his own lap, rather the traditional Brotherton approach of going for the game board or a fellow Rival.

Ra, 15 September

You cannot beat a good game of Ra and once again this provided a fun hour of Derrening and general banter. From starting the first epoch having only bought 4 tiles for the use of 3 suns Adrian cashed in on monuments grabbing a stack of high scoring combos for the last epoch. Pharoahs were largely ignored in terms of tactics and solid play all round meant that things pretty much came down to the last few tiles. A hugely suspenseful counting of the suns’ values revealed that Deej’s optimisation catapulted him to the top, the rest of us lurking close by: Deej 46, Kieron and Adrian 44, James 38 and Stu 24. Great fun.

Endeavour, 15 September

With Deej substituted for Orhan, we got out Endeavour for a return match (before we all forgot the rules again). And once more it played very well, giving the impression that it would be over all too swiftly but allowing for some in-depth play by the end game. The game was much more balanced this time round with more combat and the subtleties of getting the tempo when opening up new zones brought home to us (especially to Kieron who lost out a couple of times). By skilful use of cards and actions Stu got into a commanding lead and pretty much held it for the whole game. The key question was how the rest of us would stack up. The answer? Stu 58, Deej 53, Adrian and James 51, Kieron 40. Plus there was time for a second game…

Endeavour, 8 September

Five Rivals this week at Adrian’s and we decided on Endeavour, Adrian’s Xmas present from Orhan (the one described on Boardgamegeek as ‘the perfect Euro Game’). The game seems like it should be quick to play, with only 7 turns each of 4 phases. In reality the fourth phase of each turn gets longer as the game plays through so it would probably be possible to finish in between 60 and 90 minutes. At any rate, since nobody knew (or could remember) the best strategy or tactics we all embarked on various approaches with Orhan and me opting for lots of shipping to explore unknown regions, James and Kieron going for colonizing cities and Stu going for the offensive option and waging war on the lot of us. At the end of the evening (an early end to the evening allowing us a final cup of tea and chat session) the scores were: Orhan 53; Stu 51; James 46; Kieron 44; Adrian 38. We all thought that this was a ‘good’un’ and merited further plays.

Imperial, 1 September 2010

Everyone bar Andy round at Stu’s for another outing of Imperial. This time we opted to go for the random start option - which allowed us to opt in to buying bonds in the countries in turn. This meant that we didn’t all start owning governments - James sat back for a couple of rounds aiming to anticipate which country would be worth buying in to; Deej picked up Germany as a bargain because no one was keen to particularly to own it. If I remember correctly Orhan went for Italy, Adrian for Austria, Kieron for Britain (which caused him no end of trouble with its red pieces) and Stu for Russia (or was it Deej?). The game started along fairly predictable lines - Russia and Austria having a stand-off in the Balkans, Italy and France tussling in the Med and Britain and Germany scrapping in the North Sea and Low Countries. Mid-way through the game everyone ganged up on Germany (as per usual). Stu managed to twice pull off the manoeuvre of buying out another player’s country just before they were going to tax it for the first time thereby making him substantial amounts of money. Adrian did the same to Kieron (but slightly belatedly). Countries changed hands quite a bit and the game felt much more fluid with the random start positions. As the game progressed Russia went into a commanding position and her bonds were bought out soon after. Adrian and Kieron swapped Britain and Austria and Kieron re-acquired Britain later, not before both of them had bought the majority of its bonds. As the final turns approached the game reverted to the well understood ‘Investor’ then ‘Tax’ then ‘Investor’ then ‘Tax’ approach. This meant that Kieron was able to pull off a racing through of Great Britain to finish the game. The final scores were reasonably spread out: Kieron first on 128; Adrian second on 116; Orhan third on 106; James fourth on 87; Deej fifth on 81 and Stu last on 73. There was a consensus for including the Imperial 2030 rule of adding some kind of multiplier or additional cost for racing round the roundel for countries which are higher up the power track to try to stop the accelerating spiral before the finish. One for next time.