Antike - 20 February

The last time we played Antike was June 2008, which is a reasonably long time to forego playing a clever little game which, like Imperial, uses the Rondel mechanism, but unlike Imperial lacks the twisty elements that sometimes exclude players early on. We played on the Western European side of the board and opted to take the countries that our choice of seats around the kitchen table indicated. Asymmetrical play occurred from the start with some players going for the temple strategy, others looking to expand and others again going for knowledge. The early game was dominated by border tensions between Andy, Orhan and Deej. Andy as Carthage amassed a large army south of Orhan's territory and asked for clarification on exactly how many men he'd need to wipe it out. This bit of Derrening probably over-achieved as Orhan (who had not only been the first to build armies) was also the first to use them in attacking Andy - clearly pre-emptively... Alas, fighting gave Orhan no pleasure as he looked longingly at the peaceful lands to the East where James, Adrian and Kieron quietly gained technologies and settled new cities.

The game played out faster than we remembered as players amassed victory points quickly. The highest scoring players all had a mixed economy of scoring methods, but Adrian marched to victory in the end. Points: Adrian 7, James, Kieron and David 5, Andy 2 and Orhan 1.

Antika - 4 June 2008

A welcome return to a game we haven't played for a long time. A good turn out this evening with five of us around the table. We each started along different strategies focussing on land, temples, or inventions, and the first third of the game was all peaceful coexistence.

But then Kieron attacked Deej. Who then counter-attacked. As then did Kieron (and so on). Neither would (or could) break away first and their slog carried on for the rest of the evening.

Meanwhile Andy, Adrian and James continued to develop their empires in size and inventions, making steady progress, with James getting to the required 8 victory points just before Adrian was about to.

Final scores: James (Red) 8, Adrian (Blue) 7, Andy (Green) 5, David (Black) 4, Kieron (Yellow) 2.

Antike - 3 January

We played the war and civilisation game Antike. New player Russell played the knowledge game and spent coins on inventions rather than armies and joined Adrian (who played a similarly peaceful game until a lightning armada strike on one of David's temples) on the podium with 7 points. James managed to scrape 14 sea territories in the last round but couldn't destroy one of Andy's temples to take him beyond 6 points. David's empire left lots of temples and 5 points. Kieron and Andy spent the game accummulating forces for a huge battle that never happened, after Kieron attacked one of Andy's cities early on in the game, and they both finished on 2.