Rivals Weekend - 7-9 December 2012

Another in the irregular "Camping it up" weekends at the Bungalow ("Bunging it up?") at Whitemead in the Forest.  Games played included: Poker, Japanese monster mayhem with King of Tokyo (great with two players but didn't really work with 6), A Brief History of the World, the Mafia-inspired Resistance and (about 8 times) the marvellous 7 Wonders.

Andy and his Advocaat:

Andy getting some fishing tips from Bert & Ernie:

Parkend Station on our walk to the pub:

Slightly surreal life-size nativity on the roof of the leisure centre:

Donner and Blizten:

A small snack from Al's Plaice:

A Brief History of the World - 20th Janary 2010

We'd played the old History of the World game a number of times in the early days of the Rivals. I'm not sure if we ever finished it, and it fell by the wayside as our game collection increased. However it was a favourite of mine and I was intrigued to see the new release of A Brief History of the World. The number of epochs has been reduced and combat speeded up a little. Although described as a 3-6 player game I was sure that we'd never finish a full 6 player game in an evening but could at least hope that we'd stand a chance with a 4 player game.

Good board design and the prospect of seeing empires sweeping across the world gave us a good impression as we started. The first round passed quickly with relatively minor empires giving us a gentle introduction. Epoch 2 saw Stew just behind the rest of us and picking empire first - and he gained the first super-power - Persia. Epoch 3 followed with James conquering Europe with the Romans. David then picked up the Mongols and turned a chunk of the map black. Kieron meanwhile built up and maintained control of much of China, South-East Asia and India for a number of Epochs and started to pull ahead at the end of epoch 4. For the last two epochs James and David closed in as Kieron was forced to take weaker empires, but he held out for a good victory.

In the end it was a late finish - after 11.30 - but with rule reading and set up we didn't start until 9.00 so it was just about ok for an evening's play. Probably not for more than 4. And now I've packed it away more carefully it hopefully won't take as long to set up next time.

Final scores Kieron 174, James 168, David 158 and Stew 122.