Yspahan - November 30

Stu, Andy, James and David decided to give Yspahan another go. Well actually David decided and ignored Andy's protests.

It plays very differently as a four player game. Going third or fourth in a phase can be pretty brutal as there's often slim pickings available. This means there can be a lot riding on getting the dice you need on your turn. Going for cards can be a particularly evil manoeuvre - as you can do that using any set of action dice - a great way of preventing someone else getting something they want.

We ran into a number of edge cases this time. What happens when a player runs out of tokens - we said you couldn't build any more (meaning you have to manage your token supply). Can you play both "don't pay camels" and "don't pay money" cards to get a building for free - we said no. In both cases a later reading of the rules clarification page online showed we'd made the opposite call to the designers.

Knowing how well the camel train had worked last time, David went back in, but to his surprise no-one else bothered leaving him stranded. Well Andy dipped his toe in and then decided to leave it alone. Stu collected as many cards as possible and when for precision souk takeover where as James repeated his tactic of the previous week and took over most of the shops on the board. For some reason we let him get away with this and he had a convincing victory.

James 77
Stu 63
David 58
Andy 56

Yspahan - November 23

Just James and David for games this week, so we decided to try James' birthday present to David - Yspahan. The theme is set around controlling different areas of a market and delivering goods to a camel train, but it uses some interesting game mechanics. Each turn the dice determine which actions are available and how powerful they are. This can lead to some great balance decisions - I need camels, but this turn there's only one available so do I take the one, or do something else and come back for camels on another turn. Also actions are used up when taken by a player to it is possible to be blocked from the activity you need the most.

As it was our first game, we felt a bit unsure of what we were trying to do to start with, but we gradually settled into opposing strategies. James concentrated on taking over the market, making the most of a building that gave him 2 extra points per souk. David went for the camel train, building up significant bonus points. However in the end, James was able to secure victory.

James 115
David 99

We really enjoyed this game. Unusually it has very different rules for the two player game, so we'll have to try with more players and see how it is.

Warfare 2016

Andy and I went to Reading on Saturday for Warfare 2016.  This compared well to Newbury (which is also good) as it's a bit bigger, not much further away, has a better organised Bring & Buy, is all on one floor, and there's a nice pub next door to the leisure centre that hosts the event.

Highlights from the demonstration/participation games include:

Minion racing...

WW2 Horsa Glider landings...

Lots of zombies... (in 1/32 i.e. Scalextric scale!)

European armies in Egypt...

And a well-presented Eastern Front game (with a soldier who didn't move quick enough to escape my camera)...

I bought some additional Samurai figures (with the aim of pushing me to get on with them) and a fair bit of scenery, mostly from the Bring & Buy.  The highlight is this enormous mountain.  It's about 30x22 inches so don't think I can get away with using it for DBA(!), but it'll make a great piece of scenery for pirates (featured in the photo to show the scale) and Japanese.  It's a bit crazy but I had to have it...

Not the Anderida weekend (12th November) Part 2 - Peloponnes

After the game of Macao proved less than successful we reverted to an old favourite to get us back on track.

The usual mayhem ensued with each of us at some point declaring that we may as well give up. Andy and David ended up very balanced in scores compared to James and Stu's prestige heavy approach. In the end it was the pain of feeding your people after the last turn and the consequential population loss for James and Stu that gave David the win.

David 22/24
Andy 17/18
Stu 35/15
James 31/15

Not the Anderida Weekend (12th November) Part 1 - Macao

In an effort to recreate the spirit of our Anderida weekends we decided to have a Saturday afternoon get together for games followed by the best fish and chips in the country.

First up was a chance to revisit an old game - Macao. The only previously recorded blog entry on this game ended with me noting that we must play it again soon. So three and a half years later we did. Unfortunately it's probably fair to say that the complexity of the game and the busy nature of the cards detracted from the really clever wind rose game mechanics. I have a feeling it may be several more years before it gets another outing.

Final score:

David 95
James 81
Andy 56
Stu 56 (on wall tie breaker)

Cargo Noir - 2 November 2016

Another go at Cargo Noir, but this time without the (ahem, unnecessary) house rule of rotating the first player marker...  With much banter and Derrening, and the reappearance of James' bottle-top fleet, Andy managed to outfox everyone with a win based on highest single card.  Scores: Andy 130*; David 130; Stu 125; James 105; Adrian 75.