Lancaster - 3 February 2016

Four player Lancaster for a little Plantagenet fun on a Wednesday.  As per usual the difficulty of optimising all elements of the game (knight placement, battles, the laws, and collection of nobles) made for a damn close run thing.  Final scores: Adrian 51; James 49; David 45; Stu 41.

Lancaster - 4 December 2013

An introduction for Stu to the excellent Lancaster for a 5-player games night at Adrian's.  This is a very well designed game where the theme (each player takes the role of a Lord in the service of Henry V) matches the mechanics perfectly.  There are only 5 turns, each of 3 phases, but the options and enjoyable complexity means that the game still takes a decent evening to play.  The only slight complaint is the down time for players with fewer knights to place when Andy, James and Adrian spend several rounds booting each other off the most lucrative spaces on the board.

The game admits of different tactics: Kieron took an early lead by bagging victory points from the counties; James started off going for Castle extensions but then switched to a strategy of collecting knights; Adrian did the reverse of that; Andy and Stu acquired high value Knights quite early on.  There was some intense voting where cunning use of voting cubes by James swung a crucial law onto the statute books.

The end result though favoured those that racked up the points for the end game scoring options and Kieron and Stu's early leads were surpassed.  Final scores: Adrian 78, James 77, Stu 52, Kieron 48, Andy 26. 

Lancaster - 3 April

Another outing for the arch-optimisation game Lancaster - deploy your knights, pimp your castle, vote for laws, recruit your nobles and fight the French etc etc...  We were joined by guest gamer Andy the IT Guy from Kieron's school.  Once again Lancaster proved its mettle as a truly clever game where the theme is not merely an afterthought.  We should have known though that the game's bio-rhythms are so intimately attuned with Deej's that, despite a slow start allowing Kieron to establish an early lead, the Optimeister inexorably and completely took us all to the cleaners.  No one is quite sure how he did it.  Again.

Final scores: Deej 100 (yes 100); Adrian 59; Kieron 50; Andy 32; Andy the IT Guy 14.

Lancaster - 23 January

Another outing of Lancaster with 4 players.  Once again appreciation all round for a really well designed and clever game.  And once again consternation and wonder at David's extraordinary optimisation skills, trouncing the rest of us by winning pretty much on every victory point category.  Final scores, David 84, Adrian 54, James 52, Orhan 51.

Lancaster - 16 January 2013

A worrying moment of deja vu as I arrived at Orhan's before he did quickly passed and we settled down to a four player game of Adrian's Lancaster. Adrian and Kieron passed on some words of wisdom in light of their previous play and off we went. The first thing to note is just how quickly it plays. It seems to pack a lot into the 5 rounds and leaves you wanting more. Our initial tactics varied - Orhan went for castle improvements, Kieron and Adrian went for knight upgrades and nobles and I ended up going for earning extra knights initially by accident (after being bounced from castle improvements to an extra knight county and then making a mistake which left me winning on one of the laws gaining me another) but I quickly decided that as each knight gave me an extra turn this was actually a pretty good strategy to follow.

It took me a while to realise just how important it is to go after the battles in France as the instant rewards can set up the rest of the turn. The only thing that didn't quite gel for me was the voting - it felt a little messy although one poster on boardgamegeek recommended replacing the yes/no tokens with cubes the same size as the voting cubes.

Apparently it had been predicted that this game would be right up my street. Having almost all my knights out by the end of the game gave me so many extra turns that I was able to rack up a lot of extra points earning me my first win of the year.

The results:  David 101, Adrian 66, Kieron 64, Orhan 40.

Lancaster - 28 December 2012

As the second round of a two-games-Xmas-Friday-games-night-special we got out Lancaster, Adrian's combined birthday and Xmas present from Kieron.

This game probably has the highest production values for any of the games we own - excellent quality wooden pieces, very heavy cards, nice artwork, and everything beautifully designed.  The rules are simple (4 pages) but very rich - multiple choices each turn, different strategies to pursue, voting on laws which allows for Derrening (and in this first late night games two spectacular errors from James and Kieron who voted the wrong way on a couple of laws they really cared about), and some fighting over squares on the board - and it's all over in 15 phases which makes it quick.  The lovely thing about this game is that it all hangs together so well, we spent the 90 mins it took for the first play discovering new tactics and possibilities - lots of 'aaahhh' moments.  Overall a super game which those present (Adrian, Kieron, James and Andy) voted an instant classic.  James took first place with 70, then Adrian on 63, Kieron on 56 and Andy on 48.

On the rules point we queried, the forum is clear that there is no limit on the number of knights you can have in play, the 4 slots in the castle and on the board are for players to stack their knights of different strengths.

Let's play this again soon.