Cleopatra and Ra - 4 March 2015

Egyptian night at Adrian's, starting with a game of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, the Days of Wonder 3D crocodile-fest which Andy and David had never played.  Cards representing building materials and special characters are collected and then exchanged for building extensions to Cleo's palace.  Employing corrupt practices allows the players to build more and faster, but the most corrupt ends up being fed to the crocodiles.  The philosophy of going all out to build was taken to heart by James who ended up on 62 points, but was the most corrupt by a significant margin so was consumed by the crocs.  Kieron was thus the winner on 49, David on 41, Adrian on 37 and Andy on 36.  A fun game, which we should play more regularly than the 5 or so years between this game and its last outing.

We then had the obligatory go at Ra, David triumphing on 41, followed by Kieron on 39, James on 36 and Andy and Adrian equal last on 32.  Nefertititastic.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, Ticket To Ride Europe - 24 February 2010

Orhan writes: After some discussion on games we decided that we'd play Cleopatra and see if we had time for another game. Despite dog Sam's contributions to games night and me spending much of my time crawling around on the floor, we did manage to finish Cleopatra and play a game of Ticket to Ride Europe as well!

 

Cleopatra consists largely of trying to earn as much cash as possible without being naughty; a noble aspiration as the player with the most amount of coruption at the end of the game gets fed to the crocodiles. This was my first shot at Cleopatra and I have to admit that I liked it, there are enough variable elements to keep it entertaining all the way through and like all great games it has the potential for cliff hanger endings. Stu was much maligned at the start of the game as the player far more likely to end up inside a crocodile than anyone else and despite an early leap into the sordid pool of corruption he managed to discount a lot of his corruption by some clever play with the mosaics and winning the one round of sacrificing to the gods that we went through. The end result was that it was Kieron who ended up being tossed to hungry reptiles (and there was much rejoicing) rather than Stu. Stu amassed an unassailable lead on 59 points whilst Orhan (47), James (43), Kieron (42) and Adrian (40) were all very close on points...sadly Kieron didn't get to enjoy his 4th place on points as he was busy being digested by a slumbering croc.

Ticket to Ride Europe is a little different from other Ticket to Ride games on two major points. First you get to use stations which allow you to use a single route owned by another player and Second, there are tunnels which have a random element to determine if you succed in tunnelling through the route. There were some general murmurings that the European map was a little more interesting than the US maps and certainly the game was very hard contested. A couple of different strategies were employed with most people going for a few route cards at the start although I started off with a lot of route cards taking several extra hands of cards in the first few rounds. The game proved quite exciting with James managing to make a fantastic single route and claiming the prize to the longest European route whilst Stu, having observed that his game was unlikely to be a winning one, decided in true Rivals spirit to attempt to nobble James; saddly with very little success. The ending proved to be one of the closest we've ever seen at games night with a truely nail biting count off. The final scores in reverse order were: Stu (85), Adrian (100), Kieron (131), James (132), Orhan (133).

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects - 31 January

The first outing for Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, Adrian's Christmas present from James. A really great looking game where the players compete to build elements of a temple without succumbing to corruption. The player who has the most talents (the credits received for building) at the end of the game wins - but only after the player with the most corruption counters has been fed to the Nile crocodiles. Quite a lot of luck involved with how the resource cards turn up and limited opportunities for backstabbing, but a lot of fun and short enough for two games in an evening.

The master builders were James and Stuart, who scored the most points in both games. In the first game, James just pipped Stuart by a few points but Kieron found himself in 2nd place after the corrupt Stuart was thrown to the crocodiles.

In the second game, the players placed mosaic tiles carefully to benefit from the consequential reductions in their corruption at the end of the game but the tiles were used up before Adrian got a chance to follow suit, so his corruption level saw him end up in the Nile. James and Stuart had exactly the same number of talents this time but Stuart's lower corruption allowed him to take 1st place.