Power Grid - 30 November 2011

A cracking game of Power Grid with the original German map.  James built first and ended up with Kieron right next to him.  Orhan took the East, Stuart the West, and David attempted to take the North, but he hadn't counted on Andy.

Trying to emulate a previous win for Lynne, Andy's strategy was to build only a few towns and then sit on them for a few turns spending no money.  He could have done this anywhere but to force himself to keep to the strategy he built in the three towns that David had blockaded hoping to build them later.  This meant David's first few builds were more expensive that anticipated, and Andy couldn't build at all until Stage 2 of the game.

Incredibly in the final round, James, Stuart and Orhan all managed to build and power 14 towns, with David, Andy and Kieron building and powering 12.  So it was the money that separated the two groups, with James just pipping Stuart with 53 Elektros against 50, and Orhan on 32.  Then David clearly at the top of the second group with 100, and Andy's strategy giving him the extra one he needed to beat Kieron into last place, 15 against 14.

El Capitan - 23rd November

Looks like it's been over 2 years since we played this little gem, so we made up for things by playing it twice in one night.

Our first game featured Orhan and James fighting for the big scoring ports while David and Kieron went for diversity and attempted to get their markers on every port. Loans featured heavily - judging how many, what value and when to pay back is very important. Each time you take a load you effectively miss a turn, something that Kieron used to his advantage in the later parts of the game as he was able to control when the game finished.

Final scores were Kieron 182, James 168, David 157, Orhan 137.

For the second game we seemed to switch to opposing strategies. Kieron and David started fighting for control of the heavyweight ports while this time James and Orhan went for the diversity approach. However the big difference was that James and especially Orhan started a bit early resulting in an entertaining last phase where their vulnerable warehouses (placed first) started being closed down.

Final scores were Kieron 213, James 205, David 192, Orhan 175

Notice anything?

Rumours from Whitewash City

"Say, did ya hear what happened to Hank this weekend?"

        "No, wassup with him?"

"Well he was delivering grain to the Dry Goods store in Whitewash City, and he got shot in the ass by a Mexican!"

        "You're kidding.  Why?"

"Nobody knows.  But it was the start of an almighty shoot-out that lasted half the day.  See, what happened next was - "

        "Look - are we playing this game or what?"

"Alright, alright... I'll tell you more about what happened later..."

Steam - 9 November 2011

Orhan writes:  Wednesday the 9th of November saw an outing for Steam – Rails to Riches. After hunting around for an elusive set of rules we finally worked out what we were doing and got started. Several different strategies were played with David very effectively optimising his cash resources whilst Orhan went for a more business Moghul approach borrowing vast sums of cash. The interesting thing was that all the different approaches seemed to work well with an almost unbelievably close finish. with David on 29, Adrian on 28, James on 27, Orhan on 26 and Kieron just about out of the station on a 13. All agreed it was a very interesting game and one we have to play again soon before we forget the rules.

Vasco da Gama

Once Andy had finally decided to join us, we had a great game of Vasco da Gama.  There are some neat mechanisms in this game but it took me at least two of the five turns to recall how it all slotted together and get used to the amount of forward planning one has to do.  Kieron and Orhan surged ahead, with Andy and me struggling to keep them in sight.  Towards the end of the game, Kieron really pulled away and as two of Orhan's ships failed to move on to the next port, I managed to catch him up and just squeeze ahead.  Final scores: Kieron 86, James 59, Orhan 58 and Andy 34.