Red 7, The Mind, Space Alert - 17 December 2019

A bonus games session for James, Kieron & Lucas following some Christmas carolling in the street.  A few fund hands of Red 7 which Kieron called a halt to as only Lucas and I were winning.  Then a couple of games of The Mind where (as previously) we couldn't get past Level 6.  Highlight was an extended Mexican standoff between Lucas and Kieron, where the former had card 99 and the latter had 100.  Lucas successfully played his 99 after Kieron started snoring, and we won that round.

Then we played the first training mission of Space Alert which we've played once before but I clearly failed to blog about it.  This is a collaborative space exploration game with Robo Rally-like cards to program the movement and actions of your character in a frantic real-time 10 minute mission, as your spacecraft scans the area whilst being attacked by space anomalies and aliens, as announced by the accompanying app.  After laying out the cards, the round is resolved at a slightly slower pace to see what actually happened.  The spaceship took a fair bit of damage but we survived our first mission.

I really like this game but both times now we've played with three players and an android (to make up the numbers) and it's really hard to coordinate that fourth character effectively, so I'm keen to play with four or five of us in future.

Peloponnes & Ra - 11 December 2019

A classic double bill for the (almost) surprise appearance of Kieron.  Peloponnes was the usual fun with groans as the disasters wiped out our progress.  Andy pipped James to the bronze medal by the virtue of having a single luxury good left at the end of the game.  We resolved to not let Kieron win any more now he has decided to return!  Final scores: Kieron population/prestige 27/31, David 24/32, Andy 18/17+, James 18/17, Stuart 12/27.

Then Russian Roulette with Ra.  A very unusual first epoch where the Ra tiles were really slow to come out.  Which of course meant the other two epochs were particularly frantic.  Final scores: David 39, Stuart 34, James 31, Kieron 29 and Andy 22.

St Petersburg and Carpe Diem - 18 December 2019

Kieron, Stu and Andy at David's this week for some nearly festive games. Surprising none of us, Andy insisted on playing St Petersburg and spent the entire game mocking his fellow players, before cruising to victory through extreme financial domination. Once again the game plays surprisingly quickly with four players, lasting only 5 rounds, so it is really unforgiving if you fall behind.

Final score: Andy 57, David 53, Kieron 40, Stu 38.

Then an introduction to Carpe Diem for Kieron. David had discovered the second edition rules had done away with the somewhat confusing movement rules and replaced them with a simpler (but equivalent) move left/right mechanic. This proved to be easier and quicker to play.

This game seems to be as much about not making mistakes as it is about picking a good move, but David managed to get ahead in the first round and just about hold on until the end.

Final score: David 98, Stu 91, Andy 72, Kieron (who was "playing to learn") 68.