Final scores: David 161, Andy 145, James 140
Wednesday, 18 November 2015
St Petersburg - 18th November
Andy hosted James and David for a game of St Petersburg. Following our recent previous games we played a lot more tactically resulting in a much more challenging game. As the cards started to run out David picked up a high scoring card in what looked like the penultimate turn. The return looked marginal, but then to our surprise the board clogged up and we ended up playing several more turns.
Sunday, 15 November 2015
Peloponnes - 12 November 2015
A welcome return to Peloponnes this week. The usual review of all the expansions, followed by the usual rejection of pretty much all of them - admittedly, it is an awesome game with the standard rules. We used just the Sea Tiles (correctly this time, with just one per player, not the whole stack!) and the final round "D".
The bidding dynamic changes a lot with just three players as there are only three cards to be bid against with a further two alongside the Conquest tile (which can be purchased outright for three coins more than face value). We therefore were bidding high so that if bounced we could pick up a 2nd choice on the Conquest line.
This game's winning strategy belonged to James, who bought up lots of wood-producing tiles, and used the excess to build up a lot of luxury goods, which were cashed in for other items as needed during the game. In the final round James bought the card (Oracle?) that allows the higher of the Population or Prestige scores to be counted, rather than the lower, as long as the card owner has more than 20 luxury goods.
Final scores: James population/prestige 12/29, David 21/30 and Andy 12/26.
The bidding dynamic changes a lot with just three players as there are only three cards to be bid against with a further two alongside the Conquest tile (which can be purchased outright for three coins more than face value). We therefore were bidding high so that if bounced we could pick up a 2nd choice on the Conquest line.
This game's winning strategy belonged to James, who bought up lots of wood-producing tiles, and used the excess to build up a lot of luxury goods, which were cashed in for other items as needed during the game. In the final round James bought the card (Oracle?) that allows the higher of the Population or Prestige scores to be counted, rather than the lower, as long as the card owner has more than 20 luxury goods.
Final scores: James population/prestige 12/29, David 21/30 and Andy 12/26.
Saturday, 14 November 2015
Puerto Rico - 5 November
Stu, James, Adrian and David for a game of Puerto Rico which had last been on the table a long time before - with Andy providing trenchant commentary. This really is a great game, fully justifying of its continued high rank on Boardgamegeek. The slickness of the design proven in this game by all of the various 'ending the game' conditions being fulfilled in the same round. For this game the tactics that we variously employed were pretty asymmetric, with the James' corn-only-no-production-building option proving surprisingly and comprehensively victorious. Final scores: James 69; Adrian 57; Stu 49; David 48.
Sunday, 1 November 2015
Easy Rider
This is a classic Matchbox toy (model number K-47) manufactured in 1974. I received my Easy Rider the following year, a gift from my parents to cheer me up following an operation. I was four and I loved it. I found it again recently and it was looking much the worse for wear - missing a front tyre, much of the silver paint flaked off and the rider went AWOL in the late seventies.
I bought another cheap knackered bike which donated its front tyre and found a perfect condition rider on eBay. He's a yellow/beige colour and looks so boring on the brightly coloured bike. So I took him apart and painted him.
The figure is modelled on the Easy Rider film - he appears to have Peter Fonda's head and bottom half, and Dennis Hopper's jacket...
...so I painted him up accordingly.
And repainted all the chrome on the motorbike. A fun little project.
I bought another cheap knackered bike which donated its front tyre and found a perfect condition rider on eBay. He's a yellow/beige colour and looks so boring on the brightly coloured bike. So I took him apart and painted him.
The figure is modelled on the Easy Rider film - he appears to have Peter Fonda's head and bottom half, and Dennis Hopper's jacket...
...so I painted him up accordingly.
And repainted all the chrome on the motorbike. A fun little project.
Ticket To Ride & Ra - 21 October 2015
It had been a long time since we'd last played Ticket To Ride. We used the 1910 expansion, which provides much larger cards, and a set of extra tickets. James had a good initial set of tickets which pretty much gave three routes from one elongated route (despite almost blowing it by attempting to build a short connection to New York with the wrong colour cards - fortunately no-one blocked the route before the build was completed the following turn). Stuart had a similar coast-to-coast route allowing him to build to pick up other tickets. David and Andy were more geographically contained and weren't able to break out and cash in too many more tickets. Final scores: James 187, Stuart 130, David 95 and Andy 90.
In a complete reversal of fortunes (we decided it's about being fortunate, not being lucky!), James completely messed up Ra, ending up with less points than he started with. Andy just pipped Stuart to first place with a large collection of buildings. Final scores: Andy 39, Stuart 36, David 21, James 9.
In a complete reversal of fortunes (we decided it's about being fortunate, not being lucky!), James completely messed up Ra, ending up with less points than he started with. Andy just pipped Stuart to first place with a large collection of buildings. Final scores: Andy 39, Stuart 36, David 21, James 9.
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