Takenoko - 21 December 2016

First play of David's new game from Adrian called Takenoko - a game of tile-placing, bamboo-growing and panda-teleporting!  With beautiful tiles featuring blossoming trees and detailed miniatures of the panda and gardener, this is a very nice-looking game - and indeed its Golden Geek award was for Best Artwork/Presentation - but it delivers on its promise because there is a very clever game underneath, with clever mechanisms and challenging choices to make each turn.

I hope I'm not being too biased by the results ;-) but even in the second game where I was struggling to score anything for a while, a long-term strategy appeared and I started collecting irrigation channels so that I could score several of my terrain objectives in the final round instead.

First game: James 29, Andy 26, David 25, Adrian 18
Second game: James 35, Adrian 29, Andy 25, David 25

Cargo Noir - 14 December

Another outing of Cargo Noir which is becoming more and more a favourite, but this time with guest gamer Otto and guest observer Betty (who drew all the family into the kitchen for dog therapy, giving the evening an additional social boost)...

David and Stu played for early expansionism, being able to buy extra fleets and syndicates early and then going for a spread betting tactic of putting fleets out with one coin only, hoping to get bumped for extra cash.  Adrian, Andy and Otto were thus confined to the more mixed economies of 4 fleets and earlier warehouses.  Perhaps inspired by Betty though, Otto and Andy engaged in a dogged (geddit?) struggle for supremacy in Rotterdam, with several turns of outbidding.  The Battle of Rotterdam ended with victory for Andy, and a higher placing because of its key cargo.  David capped his evening of good fortune on the tiles by drawing a wildcard on his last pick of the game from the bag, allowing him to buy the top 81/90 card.  (He then reported that on his journey home all the traffic lights turned green for him, so we're now expecting that he has only another 20 years to live before his soul is due in...).

Scores: David 160; Stu 155; Andy 95; Adrian 90; Otto 45

Peloponnes & Ra - 7 December 2016

Another cracking double feature of Peloponnes & Ra.  James got a huge early population growth followed by a similarly huge population slump in the final few rounds.  Adrian collected lots of prestige with extra points for his stack of money with the 2:1 card.  Andy got a better result but David won with an almost perfect balance.  Final scores: David 24/25 population/prestige, Andy 30/21, Adrian 18/40, James 12/26.

After Adrian headed off for an early night, we had a game of Ra.  Final scores: David 36, Andy 35 and James 33.  However, Andy had scored loads of points in all three epochs, ending up with "der längste Fluss" of 11 tiles of Nile, and there is a very very slim possibility that he picked up tokens representing 5 when scoring instead of 10, so should have scored something like 55 points.  Steward's enquiry generously awarded Andy the win.

"Historic" Formula Motor Racing

I was having another sort through the loft and uncovered a handful of scoresheets from Formula Motor Racing over the last couple of decades!

Highlights include: when we played inside Kieron's VW at the local dogging spot viewing point back in 1998; Camping It Up in 2003; and Serbia in 2005.