Dinosaur Island, Century: Spice Road - 16 February 2019

A flying visit by Kieron and family was a great excuse for some weekend gaming and a night out.  First up was Adrian's kickstarter game Dinosaur Island, which is essentially Jurassic Park without any royalties (I feel a trick was missed here - since it would have been one of the very few TV/movie tie-in games that is actually any good!).

It has a huge number of luridly-coloured playing pieces and setting it all up plus rules explanation took a while but the game itself is straightforward enough.  Harness DNA, create dinosaurs, entice visitors to your park, and make sure not too many of them are eaten.  Lots of fun.  I especially like the different dinosaur models.  Final scores: James 59, Kieron 51, David 43, Adrian 35, Andy 27.

We then played a three-hander of the very neat Century: Spice Road and finished with a couple of games of Red7.

Great to have Kieron back for some games - we miss you!

Peloponnes & Spice Road - 7 March 2018

Four of us this week so after a bit of a catch-up, we dug out Peloponnes.  Usual fun game with the usual devastating end-game of disasters and final feeds.  David and James ended up with the same large population but James' buildings edged it.  Final scores: James population/prestige 30/27, David 30/20, Andy 18/17, Stuart 12/28.

Then we introduced Stuart to Spice Road and he promptly (well, not promptly) thrashed us.  Final scores: Stuart 68, David 50, James 47, Andy 37.

Village & Spice Road - 2 January 2018

Final games night with Kieron before he set off for Africa the following day.  First game was Village where we mostly stuck with our usual strategies - James travelling, David to church, Andy to market - and Kieron to the council, where he coined it in for several turns.  For the first time, Andy's strategy paid off and he scored 54 points ahead of the rest of the group clustered together: David 46. James 45, and Kieron 43.

Then we introduced Kieron to David's excellent game Spice Road.  This is a clever card game where players build up hands of cards to grow and enhance their spice resources, and compete with each other to get the right spices to buy up market cards.  Final scores: James 64, Andy 56, David 52, Kieron 50.

Century: Spice Road and 7 Wonders - 21 December 2017

A pre-Christmas games night saw us play the first of many Christmas gift games - Cenury: Spice Road. It's a fun game with clever mechanics as you collect and play action cards to trade spices from one type to another. When you own the right spice combinations you can claim victory point cards, so you have to pay attention to how many moves you are away from acquiring a card and whether someone else will get there first. You also have to decide whether to go quickly for cheaper cards and finish the game early or build up to the big scoring cards.

We played two rounds. In the first, no spice production cards appeared and we all made do with a small hand of cards each. In the second game we went for bigger hands of cards and a greater variety of actions as we figured out how to use them more effectively.

First game: David 66, James 62, Andy 56, Adrian 51
Second game: James 77, Andy 71, David 67, Adrian 65.

Adrian had to go home early so we finished off with a game of 7 Wonders. Exceptionally Andy didn't all out for blue buildings but had a lot of military success and bought a lot of guilds in the last round.

Final scores: Andy 67 (including 31 on guilds), James 54 and David 50.