Tzolk'in - 1 June 2015

We managed to squeeze in an Extraordinary Games Night (the first on a Monday?) before Kieron leaves us on Wednesday.  He chose one of his favourites Tzolk'in (with the amazing rotating board) as his last game with the Rivals (for now).  With his copy in transit, Kieron had the added bonus of helping press out the pieces in David's unplayed copy.

However, despite our best efforts, we couldn't compensate for the wine Kieron had quaffed with dinner and he sadly came in last place with 39 points (plus some overlooked and unscored bonuses earlier in the game).  David still had his holiday head on and was only just ahead on 41.  Andy combined skulls and temple to reach 50 but James' all out attack on the temple points bonuses gave him 60.

A great evening to finish this chapter of the Rivals story.  Bon voyage, Kieron!

Tzolk'in - 7th January 2015

Five of us at David's and a return to a favourite Tzolk'in. Kieron had brought along the expansion pack, providing pieces and additional cards for a fifth player. It also introduced two additional features. The first of these was a set of cards determining special rules for each epoch. We took a look at these and there was an (almost) unanimous decision to leave them out. The general feeling was that it risked driving all the players towards the same strategy which felt wrong.

We did however play with the second feature - each player has a special ability and our attempts to guess as to which ability would be most effective were spectacularly wrong...

David had reduced corn costs for worker placement. This seemed to be quite powerful, but only saved a single corn on each worker placement phase, so it probably saved a couple of trips to collect corn overall.

Andy had reduced research costs. This meant he played the research track more than usual, but again didn't appear to have a great impact.

James' ability sounded amazing. For a corn he could take the action one ahead of where he was. For some reason though he couldn't make that much use of it. Maybe that's one you'd have to play with a few times to get the hang of it as it does disrupt the tempo.

Kieron's ability was to pick up a worker when he placed two or more. Again it sounded good, but the circumstances where he could use it were limited.

And then there was Stu's. His ability let him link pairs of gears. When he took a worker off one gear, he had the option of taking the action from the equivalent place on the paired gear. And boy, did he use it well.

Stu developed a strong resource intensive strategy, helped along by his abililty to switch gears, and soon he was buying lots of buildings. The rest of us never really got going.

Final score:

Stu: 92, James: 61, Kieron: 56, David: 41, Andy: 38

Downfall of Pompeii & Tzolk'in - 10 September 2014

We started with Stuart's Downfall of Pompeii (which I half-remember playing at Adrian's many years ago).  A bit of strategy, a fair bit of luck, but a lot of fun in particular in the second half of the game as you direct lava over your opponent's pieces!  Nicely self-levelling too as one tends to direct the lava over the colour with the most pieces, and it did end up very close.  Final scores Stuart 9, David 8, James 8 (third place because of more people taken out by the lava), and Kieron 7.

Plenty of time to then play Tzolk'in with its rotating cogs.  Stuart went for skulls, David a bit of everything, James went for gods, and Kieron seemed to always be short of food.  Final scores James 76 (jumping ahead thanks to a card that rewarded the god strategy), Stuart 61, David 48 and Kieron 31.

Tzolk'in - 3rd July 2014

Another Thursday games session brought the rivals to Kieron's for a cracking games of Tzolk'in. Every time we play something new happens. This time James and Kieron struggled all evening to gain enough food. Stuart went for a building strategy which was a slow burner but almost worked. Deej made it to the top of a god track.  There were plenty of "oh no" moments as well as some senior ones. Kieron hardly moaned at all, but just spent the evening quietly recycling skulls.
In the final reckoning, Deej's strength on all the god tracks as well as some clever chaining [ (c) Deej games systems 2003 ] proved to be the winner.
Deej 62, Kieron 58, James 43, Stuart 42
Sorry Stuart for not letting you win on your Rivals membership 10th anniversary games session!

Tzolk'in 24th Feb 2014

We introduced Stu to this intriguing worker placement game and he wiped the floor with us.
Kieron and Andy went for the skull placement tactic. James went out to build temples and Stu went for technology upgrades with the Special temple earning him 33 points.
Kieron actually spent most of the evening begging for money and not feeding his workers. James built a load of buildings but for little reward, although he did gain almost all of his points from temples. Andy picked up the skull temple from under Kieron's nose after a double turn on the cogs of doom  left Kieron bereft of skulls. Meanwhile Stu having moved quickly to the top level on the building technology, was amassing close to 10 buildings as well as the temple which rewarded his technologies.
Final positions were Stu on around 70, Andy on 50+, James and Kieron in the 40's. At the end we forgot to go to market which would have affected points a little, but Stu was out of site!

Tzolk'in - 13th February 2014

A rare journey over to visit Andy meant games in his grand hall. Tzolk'in is becoming a Rivals favourite and once again it lived up to our expectations.

Kieron and I both spotted that one of the temple buildings offered a massive 32 points if the owner could complete 3 or 4 research lines. I decided to focus most of my game on getting that score and avoided the rush to get skulls. I also tried skipping a lot of resource collection and used food to pay for some buildings. Just as I acquired the temple, Kieron realised that he'd misread the card as he'd assumed he needed 4 lines to get the points not 3. It was looking like a high risk strategy anyway as I was a long way behind when we came to the end. However when the final scores were calculated it turned out to be worth it.
David 67, Andy 57, Kieron 50 and James 45.

Tzolk'in - 8 January 2014

Kieron brought along his new game Tzolk'in (subtitled The Mayan Calendar, which is helpfully a good indication of the game's theme as well as being more pronounceable!).

This is a worker placement game but with a great mechanism of interlocking gears that move your workers around as time progresses.  Lots of different ways to earn victory points so a variety of strategies to try, and the "Pelopennes civilization" type starting tiles encourage players in different directions from the start.

After going through the rules, we played in a couple of hours.  A great theme and good fun, with the added benefit of who's in the lead not being completely clear until the end.  The game has won a number of international prizes and there are already a few expansion packs.

David perfected his optimisation with a winning 58 points, Kieron and James joint second (or last...) on 50.