Quacks of Quedlinburg, 22 January 2020

Naff name, great game.  That was the verdict from Wednesday's try out of Quacks of Quedlinburg at Adrian's.  A beautifully produced game involving potion creation via ingredients drawn, a la Ra, from one's own personal ingredient bag.  Pull too many of the wrong ingredients (which alas are compulsorily included at the outset) and your potion blows up.  Too few of the right ingredients and your potion isn't worth very much in terms of victory points or cash to buy new ingredients.  All in all it's a game of managing jeopardy and opting for menu strategies that allow different approaches to brewing up.  Or blowing up.  At any rate it was good fun and James stole the show with his effective use of Yellow stuff.  Final results James 81, Adrian 60, Stu 58, Andy 53.  Definitely worth another go.

Notre Dame & Colt Express - 8 January 2020

Another game in rat-infested Paris with worker placement and card game Notre Dame.  Andy's 4 block strategy gave him lots of double coins or rat removal but didn't generate the prestige points needed.  Stuart stayed out of Notre Dame itself, collecting plenty of prestige points from the character cards.  David, James and Andy visited Notre Dame each turn but James' extra cash enabled the larger donations, ultimately pipping Stu to first place by just two points.

We then played Colt Express with the Horses & Stagecoach expansion that David got James for Christmas.

As well as the obvious, this also adds hostages who can be ransomed (but cramp your style during the game), whisky flasks that give bonuses with the cards, and an extra strongbox defended by a shotgun-wielding character.  That sounds a lot but it all complements the original game really well, giving more variety and opportunities to shoot James.  Stuart and David got the strongboxes but a later punch-up saw Stuart take them both and climb to the roof in the last move to avoid sharing any booty.

New Year Games Bonanza - 2 January 2020

A lot of players and a lot of games for the first session of 2020.  Lucas, Kieron and James started with Byzanz, a neat little card game with bidding and collections.  In a promising sign of a good game, the final scores were really close: 32, 34 and 36 points.

Andy was then subbed in for a game of St Petersburg.  Kieron went for buildings only leaving James and Andy to collect large numbers of nobles, with James winning with a set of nine.

After Adrian and Stuart arrived, we played James' new game Flash Point: Fire Rescue.  This cooperative fire-fighting game had a great theme, looked the part and modelled the spread of fire really well.  Perhaps we were lucky with some of the rolls but we rescued the target number of victims with ease, so we didn't really experience the peril.  Next time,we'll play in heroic mode with more initial explosions and hazards to make it more of a challenge.

Next up was Ra.  The usual shenanigans.  Another win for Andy.

Lastly, Lucas, Kieron, Andy and James played 7 Wonders - yet another win for Andy.