Colonia, 17 November

Everyone but Stu round at Adrian’s for a game of Colonia. We opted for this to give it its final road-test as opposed to the tried and tested six-player Imperial. As it turned out we felt that it was a good game, certainly a pleasant way to enjoy a Rivals evening, but that it was ultimately unsatisfactory - probably because of the way the luck works in the game. All of us played a solid tactical game, planning ahead as far as we could, but the randomness introduced into every phase of the game from both the random set up, the random draws and dice rolling, and the player interactions meant that one could never really plan ahead and in many cases the hard-set-up schemes came to naught as players were pipped by another Rival to the action that they had been relying on. Going into the final turn we had thought that it could be a runaway win to either Deej or Adrian. In the event it was much closer than we thought, and James clinched it from a steady accumulation of Relics. Scores: James 15; Adrian 14; Deej 13; Kieron 10; Andy 9. So, although an attractive game with lots of nice bits, we wondered whether it would be tweakable into a classic. Must look it up on Boardgamegeek...

Colonia - 6 May 2010

A good turn-out of six Rivals this evening to play Adrian's game Colonia. A beautifully-produced game with some neat mechanisms. Unusually though, there is no indication of who's winning whilst you're playing the game. There's a fair bit of luck involved so probably better suited to a smaller number of players to allow the time for a second game in an evening, but good fun nevertheless. Final scores: David 18, Kieron 16, Andy and Adrian both 13, Stu 12 and James just getting into double figures with 10.

Colonia, 14 April 2010

A first try for another of Adrian’s presents from Orhan, and, given the small number of Rivals and the Easter holidays, we invited 2 guest gamers to join in - Fred and Felix. Colonia is a beautifully produced game where you deploy your workers, Puerto Rico style, to acquire power in the Council, acquire resources, turn these into goods, ship the goods, and use money (in four currencies) to buy relics which provide victory points. The game has some very clever mechanisms and some really nice ideas. I particularly liked the town council edicts which are voted on by the players to amend (or not) the rules in a given phase. There is a fair amount of luck in the game - especially in the ship departures and the relics which come up, and there was a feeling that this meant that the game was somewhat more reactive and less predictable than we would have liked. We considered that displaying which relics and ships were going to come up might fix this to some extent. Looking on boardgamegeek (where it scores 6.9) the mood was for more interaction - eg by allowing trading of goods and resources between players - and for giving more stability to allow players to see what is coming up (as we felt). At any rate though this game played well, finished promptly (we were done by 10.30pm including learning the rules), and was fun. For our game common strategies were employed - 3 players had a run on relics from Bergen; Felix tried to corner the Novgorod market (foiled by Orhan) and Adrian was fortunate (or skilful???) to get the Belgian top relic and shrine (which doubled its VP value). Orhan upped the drama stakes by declaring his vote on edicts last (whether or not he actually got a vote!). And Felix bizarrely named the ‘footwear’ goods as ‘Geoffreys” (coz they looked like Court Jesters’ shoes and he got the name confused). So Geoffreys it is then. Final scores: Adrian 17; Deej 16; Fred 12; Orhan 12; Felix 10. Good fun.