Kingsburg - 20th June 2012

Unluckily, only 3 rivals made it round for games this week.  Luckily for Kieron, this meant that he only had 2 people to out-roll in order to win.  As luck would have it, Orhan started with a series of unfortunately low rolls which stunted his ability to make the best of two rivals new to the game.  After the first year, Stuart was very unfortunate to be the only one to lose his battle which removed his chapel. Then, luckily for Kieron, it was Stuart's turn to have a series of unlucky rolls of '8' which he was unable to claim a mulligan on.  Kieron made the best of his fortunate rolling and made a collection of gold which enabled him to construct the best buildings on his card.  He risked all by not really concentrating on building an army and watched as lucky high rolls saved him in the battles.  So unsurprisingly, Kieron won with 42 points.  Orhan was unlucky to miss out with 41 and Stuart blamed it all on bad luck languishing on 31 points.  If only as many games had as much luck in them; Kieron would be assured a win every time ;-)

Canal Mania - 27 June 2012

The first outing for Canal Mania, purchased by James direct from the Ragnar Brothers at the recent UK Games Expo.  This has elements of Railway Rivals, Ticket to Ride and Steam, but the jury is still out as to whether it combines the best elements of those games effectively (i.e. given the choice, would we rather play Ticket to Ride...?).  But it is promising and worth a replay.  BGG says best with 4 players and it has a pretty good score with lots of supporters (I'd checked BGG on my phone before buying) so I'm keen to try it again before we've completely forgotten the rules.

As with many of our other games, we use our huge brains to work out every possible option each round, and so end up turning a 90 minute game into one lasting 3 hours.  I think that's where some of the dissatisfaction creeps in.  If we'd finished it in an hour and a half, and then had a game of Ra (for example), I suspect we all (even Orhan! :-) would have gone home thinking it was a pretty good game.  But as we invest more and more time, so our expectations grow.

Final scores: David won with 71, Adrian and Kieron both had 69, Orhan and James both on 63.

Caylus - 6th June 2012

With only one Rival confirmed (although with 2 nil responses and an enigmatic "ok") I was preparing for anything from 2-5 players this week. As luck would have it Kieron, the only person I was expecting for sure was running late so when he turned up at 8.30 we settled for a 2 player game. At this point Stu phoned up - he'd already been over, seen no cars, assumed he'd got the location wrong and left.

Stu made it back over and we decided to play Caylus.

The initial set up presented some interesting problems - the woodcutter was placed ahead of any of the resource production buildings making it a little more difficult than usual to develop the town. For the first phase I managed to get a single build in rounds 1 and 3 while Kieron and Stu fought over a double build in round 2. Stu and I also managed to get a couple of buildings down. Kieron then started making use of the joust to gain extra favours and moved ahead of us in developing residential buildings at the expense of sacrificing some castle builds.

The endgame came very suddenly as Stu decided to make the most of his lead and rush the bailiff to the finish line. Kieron suddenly developed a prestige building and shot some 20 points into the lead. On the following turn he was able to both block my attempt to build a prestige building and influence the provost causing the bailiff to move to the finish line and win the game.

Except - I paid out to move the provost back and switched player order to put me first should there be another turn. It was then up to Stu - he could move the provost to cause the game to finish early, but probably give himself second place, or he could allow another turn and mix it up. He chose the latter.

At this point it looked like Kieron disintegrated. He hadn't planned for another turn and he'd effectively finished early. I on the other hand had a fist full of resources that Kieron had blocked me from using last turn and with first move was able to make sure I wasn't blocked. As Kieron and Stu fought over the victory point and gold earning buildings at the end of the road I was able to build a prestige building and earn enough favours to take the lead.

Final scores: David 100, Kieron 80, Stu 74.

Sorry Kieron...