Peloponnes - 27 July 2016

Stuart writes:

A game of two halves:

First half - peaceful everyone buying, building, growing and feeding

Second half - Boom (Decline) Boom (Tempest and Earthquake) Boom (Drought and Plague).

The third Boom hit nearly everyone's population very hard e.g. Deej going from 17 down to 6.  Andy's stone mountain, Jame's pile of luxury goods and Kieron's massed tiles didn't ease the pain. Plenty of lovely civilizations with no-one to live in them. In the end it was Stuart's immunity to the last Boom that made the difference. 

Scores

1st Stuart 27/27     2nd Deej 18/30    3rd   James 18/26       4th Kieron 12/31       5th Andy  9/29  

Rule 23

After another classic "Rule 23" event from Adrian last week, I thought I'd blog about the origin.

My recollection was that this from a game we played in the mid-nineties called Kings & Things.  After having played it many times, we spotted a rule that said that the first player in each turn was supposed to change i.e. the second player became the first player.

This makes sense in many games where there are limited options and each player should have the same opportunities across the whole game, but in a fighting game like Kings & Things, it essentially means that players are encouraged to fight the first player because everyone else has two turns to their one them when that person "misses a go" as they shift from being first player in one round to last player in the next.

Anyway, the belated discovery of a crucial rule in a game has become known as "Rule 23" ever since.

So I dug out a copy of the Kings & Things rules and found the first player change rule.

It's rule 29!

This either means I've misremembered the game which is the source of our "Rule 23" legend, or we played an edition of the game with different numbering of the rules.

Can anyone solve the mystery?  Otherwise, it looks like our very own "Rule 23" story is itself subject to a kind of "Rule 23" effect!

Cargo Noir - 13 July

Cargo Noir with an inadvertent house rule at Adrian's this week.  The host confused the existence of a first player counter with all the various games that use said counter to rotate the first player around the board (Stone Age, Puerto Rico etc).  Implementing this accidental variant had the effect of stalling David's game for 3 of the 9 rounds of play - or so he said anyway...  Despite the addition of this new rule the game still played well and makes for a fun evening.  The end result was very close - Andy stormed to victory on 135 points; Stu, James and Adrian all had 125; and David (plus extra rule) got 95.

Village - 29 June 2016

Three of us for a game of Village this week.  Andy continued his usual strategy of visiting the market at every opportunity, James unusually didn't go travelling to every location and instead spread his options, but David stormed home with points from every element of the village, in particular from his domination of the church throughout the entire game.  Final scores: David 57, James 45 and Andy 38.