Rivals' 20th Anniversary weekend - June 2013

Regrettably without Adrian, the remaining six Rivals set off to Llangarren for a weekend of gaming.  Llangarren is a village comprising a church and just a handful of houses.  No shop or pub but set in beautiful countryside.

We stayed in really well converted and kitted-out granary - loads of space and a bit of lawn for eating and playing outside (board games as well as a nail-biting game of boule).

This was probably the hottest weekend of the year so far and there were a few pink patches after Saturday - even Kieron's getup didn't completely protect him.

We played some excellent old favourites (Pelopennes, 7 Wonders) and tried out what were disappointingly less than excellent (Warriors & Traders, Wild Fun West) and the not-quite-there Porto Carthago (even with the correct rules).  I particularly enjoyed the late night games of O Zoo le Mio with Stuart and Andy.

We even made time for a circular walk around the countryside.  We enjoyed the views and old houses, and narrowly avoided being run down by a Tesco delivery van.

With no pub within walking distance, we did the usual pizzas on the first night, and then a barbecue on Saturday evening.  On Sunday morning, no-one could face a second cooked breakfast, but we did make a pretty good dent into our meat-packed fridge.

All in all, a pretty excellent way to mark twenty years of weekly games-playing! 

Amun-Re - 26th June 2013

Forgot to blog this one at the time. I managed to get Amun-Re out for another go and it's really neat little game. It has a great bidding mechanism, elements of luck and lots of different ways to score. Let's try to play this one more than once a year?

Scores: David 44, Kieron 39, Andy 35, James 31 and Orhan 29

Porto Carthago - 19 June 2013

First play for Orhan's latest purchase - direct from Pelopennes designer Bernd Eisenstein himself - Porto Carthago.  This is a worker placement game set in the ancient port of Carthage, with players using their influence to buy goods from the market, load them onto ships bound for other ancient cities to earn money, and ultimately to build up influence in the palace.

Lots of ingenious mechanisms, some lovely artwork, and memories of Pelopennes meant we had high hopes.  But it just didn't seem to come together and some of the mechanisms seemed broken - we were accruing far more money than we needed, we were turning away countless ships from the port.  Although we were each having various levels of success, nobody thought it felt quite right.

Right at the end of the night, another read of the confusing rules (where perhaps some clarity was lost in translation) revealed the missing Rule 23.  Each of the five decades didn't comprise five turns - but one turn in which each player had five actions, so the ships that arrived and the income earned had to last five times longer than we playing it for.

Much relieved and with faith restored in Bernd, we resolved to play this again soon with the proper rules.  But we were all playing with the wrong rules, so Andy deserves his win - gaining 7 influence in the palace, James coming 2nd with 5, unable to sustain and build on his early lead, and Kieron and Orhan both on 4, but with Kieron edging into 3rd place with more trading points.

Tigris & Euphrates and Gold Diggers - 29 May 2013

A hard core of 4 gamers this week - James, Orhan and Andy at Adrian's ('assisted' by various children throughout the evening).  We dug out an old favourite, Tigris & Euphrates, that Andy and Orhan had never played.  James and I suspected that we hadn't played this one for a good number of years.  This is a classic Knizia tile placement game where victory points are acquired by extending one's kingdom and most notably by constructing and then owning monuments.  James' tactics of building up a strong kingdom and creaming everyone in a series of well chosen fights saw him to a clear victory, with Orhan and Andy equal second, and Adrian last.  I've mislaid the paper with the scores but James accrued a large margin over us, something like James 13, Orhan and Andy 7, Adrian 6.

We then got Gold Diggers out for a rapid 3 rounds of another Knizia winner.  Despite Andy getting help from Cottie, James managed to pull off a coup in round 2 (12 points solo on one claim) to allow him to bag a second victory of the evening.  All good fun.