Saturday, 26 January 2013
Lancaster - 23 January
Another outing of Lancaster with 4 players. Once again appreciation all round for a really well designed and clever game. And once again consternation and wonder at David's extraordinary optimisation skills, trouncing the rest of us by winning pretty much on every victory point category. Final scores, David 84, Adrian 54, James 52, Orhan 51.
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
7 Wonders - 16th January 2013
As Lancaster played so quickly we were able to finish off the even with a quick game of Seven Wonders. I'm not sure we've played it as a four player game before and it played well, maybe a bit better than with seven as you influence more of the players with your choices.
I was clearly having a good night - final score was David 60, Orhan and Kieron 46, Adrian 45.
I was clearly having a good night - final score was David 60, Orhan and Kieron 46, Adrian 45.
Lancaster - 16 January 2013
A worrying moment of deja vu as I arrived at Orhan's before he did quickly passed and we settled down to a four player game of Adrian's Lancaster. Adrian and Kieron passed on some words of wisdom in light of their previous play and off we went. The first thing to note is just how quickly it plays. It seems to pack a lot into the 5 rounds and leaves you wanting more. Our initial tactics varied - Orhan went for castle improvements, Kieron and Adrian went for knight upgrades and nobles and I ended up going for earning extra knights initially by accident (after being bounced from castle improvements to an extra knight county and then making a mistake which left me winning on one of the laws gaining me another) but I quickly decided that as each knight gave me an extra turn this was actually a pretty good strategy to follow.
It took me a while to realise just how important it is to go after the battles in France as the instant rewards can set up the rest of the turn. The only thing that didn't quite gel for me was the voting - it felt a little messy although one poster on boardgamegeek recommended replacing the yes/no tokens with cubes the same size as the voting cubes.
Apparently it had been predicted that this game would be right up my street. Having almost all my knights out by the end of the game gave me so many extra turns that I was able to rack up a lot of extra points earning me my first win of the year.
The results: David 101, Adrian 66, Kieron 64, Orhan 40.
It took me a while to realise just how important it is to go after the battles in France as the instant rewards can set up the rest of the turn. The only thing that didn't quite gel for me was the voting - it felt a little messy although one poster on boardgamegeek recommended replacing the yes/no tokens with cubes the same size as the voting cubes.
Apparently it had been predicted that this game would be right up my street. Having almost all my knights out by the end of the game gave me so many extra turns that I was able to rack up a lot of extra points earning me my first win of the year.
The results: David 101, Adrian 66, Kieron 64, Orhan 40.
Saturday, 12 January 2013
The BoardGameGeek Game - 9 January 2013
First try of a game I bought second-hand from the Ragnar Brothers back at the UK Games Expo last May. The BoardGameGeek Game was published to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the BoardGameGeek website.
Players represent one of six (real) game publishers supplying their company’s (real) games to the games shops of the Cotswold village of Boardway, receiving Geek Gold (GG) for each game they sell to another player. Then each player has a team of three ‘dicey’ geeks who are trying to collect sets of games to meet their gaming group’s requirements, which earns more GG at the end of the game.
It was fun to play a game celebrating a website we use so much and with lots of the games we play featured in the game itself. But the game split the group in terms of whether or not it was too random to make tactics pretty irrelevant. As a novelty game, it was better than I expected. You have to keep aware of what others are collecting and decide whether to compete or not, or make it harder to buy the games of yours they need, so there was more to it than there might have been. But compared to the pair of cracking new games we played in the last games night of 2012, it's nowhere.
Final scores: Adrian 144, David 131, James 120, Orhan 108, Stuart 107 and Kieron 99 - missing getting into three figures by being cursed with starting third on only ten points which really made it impossible to win, and frankly the fact that he even carried on from such a handicapped starting position deserves an extra bonus of at least five points....
Players represent one of six (real) game publishers supplying their company’s (real) games to the games shops of the Cotswold village of Boardway, receiving Geek Gold (GG) for each game they sell to another player. Then each player has a team of three ‘dicey’ geeks who are trying to collect sets of games to meet their gaming group’s requirements, which earns more GG at the end of the game.
It was fun to play a game celebrating a website we use so much and with lots of the games we play featured in the game itself. But the game split the group in terms of whether or not it was too random to make tactics pretty irrelevant. As a novelty game, it was better than I expected. You have to keep aware of what others are collecting and decide whether to compete or not, or make it harder to buy the games of yours they need, so there was more to it than there might have been. But compared to the pair of cracking new games we played in the last games night of 2012, it's nowhere.
Final scores: Adrian 144, David 131, James 120, Orhan 108, Stuart 107 and Kieron 99 - missing getting into three figures by being cursed with starting third on only ten points which really made it impossible to win, and frankly the fact that he even carried on from such a handicapped starting position deserves an extra bonus of at least five points....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)