Fagin's Gang, Gold Diggers - 3 November 2010

Finally, the first outing for Fagin's Gang, a game James bought back at the Birmingham Games Expo last June.  This is sold as a 'euro-style' strategic trading and commodity-collecting game for 2-6 players. In reality, it's a complicated version of Ludo.  Each player has five urchins that move around six areas of London, stealing goods and money.  The goods are required for the movement of the urchins, and the money is required (15 a time) for an urchin to leave the board and take it back to Fagin.  The first to have three urchins leave is the winner.


It's hard to dislike this game.  The mechanisms worked, it's got an interesting setting, it played in 2 hours with four of us.  But it's hard to get really excited about it too.  Perhaps it's just too mechanistic, certainly when someone is a few turns away from winning, there's little anyone can do about it, and the wandering constables (which "bump" the urchins up and down the goods tracks) mean that following a strategy can be more a matter of luck.


So a reasonable game, but given the competition it has from the contents of the various Rivals games cupboards, I don't think we'll see this one again.  The final outcome was quite close - towards the end James, Kieron and Adrian all had two urchins free, with a third just a handful of steps from leaving, and Andy, although still having all his urchins on the board, had three within a couple of steps each from leaving.  So was all about who could collect the right goods fast enough, and James had the luck this time.


With an early finish, we got out Gold Diggers - fast becoming a favourite short game.  We had three hands - all pretty close in the first two but Adrian really pulled ahead in the third round, getting a sole share on one mine worth double figures.  Final scores Adrian 41, Kieron 30, Andy 29, James 26.

Gold Digger twice, 13 October

We had initially intended to play Dominion after Ra, but Adrian couldn’t find it quickly so we dug out a second Reiner Knizia game, Gold Diggers. Carol had originally bought this as a stocking filler for the boys but it is a real gem. Players either allocate value cards to mines or lay claims on those mines, but the beauty is that all 60 cards must be played and it’s a fine balance between committing too early or missing a chance for high points. Lots of luck involved but somehow it feels like there’s more skill involved. We played 2 games, the first of 3 rounds, the second of 2. Scores: Stu 26, Adrian, Orhan and Andy 25, James 22; and then Andy and James joint first on 21, Stu 13, Orhan 11, Adrian 10. A great game.