Hit Z Road - 5 February 2020

One of James' new games... and it's a corker.  The artwork is next level - the conceit of the game is that it has been devised by a child who survived the zombie apocalypse and they've had to adapt what is to hand to make the game.  So the box is amended and tatty, the resource counters are bottle tops, player markers are things found in wallets (e.g. credit card, loyalty card) and the cards are mostl playing cards.  And best of all, some of the cards and counters are adapted from real world games, most of which we own, like 7 Wonders, Splendour, Ticket To Ride and Dixit.

And fortunately, the gameplay lives up to the production values (so finally, a zombie game that even Kieron might play...?).  There's a bidding mechanism so players interact to choose the best routes as they travel from coast to coast with the zombies in hot pursuit.  And there's dice rolling as your survivors battle it out with the groups of zombies who they regularly encounter.  Which brings the double joy of managing to survive for another round by some lucky rolls, and sniggering whilst your competitors group of survivors are unexpectedly decimated.

There was a bit of an issue with the resource runaway leader - if you've got most resources, it's easier to win the bidding, and then take the route that gives you the most resources back.  It would be interesting to see how much that is the case next play, now we have a feel for the distribution of resources and zombies throughout the game rounds.  But we also found a good variant on BGG where the second of the two cards in each route is hidden - which rather fits the theme well: you might be able to see down the road but not round the corner.

James was first to run light on resources and despite a fiery death for a horde from his molotov cocktail, his last survivor succumbed in the sixth (of eight) rounds.  Andy and David were both taken out in the seventh round - giving the Stuart the automatic win without needing to count the victory points we had attained.  Stuart did a lot of fleeing rather than fighting so actually had a lower number of victory points.  But he survived, which is more to the point.  Looking forward to playing this again.

Notre Dame & Colt Express - 8 January 2020

Another game in rat-infested Paris with worker placement and card game Notre Dame.  Andy's 4 block strategy gave him lots of double coins or rat removal but didn't generate the prestige points needed.  Stuart stayed out of Notre Dame itself, collecting plenty of prestige points from the character cards.  David, James and Andy visited Notre Dame each turn but James' extra cash enabled the larger donations, ultimately pipping Stu to first place by just two points.

We then played Colt Express with the Horses & Stagecoach expansion that David got James for Christmas.

As well as the obvious, this also adds hostages who can be ransomed (but cramp your style during the game), whisky flasks that give bonuses with the cards, and an extra strongbox defended by a shotgun-wielding character.  That sounds a lot but it all complements the original game really well, giving more variety and opportunities to shoot James.  Stuart and David got the strongboxes but a later punch-up saw Stuart take them both and climb to the roof in the last move to avoid sharing any booty.

Clank! & Medici - 24 April 2019

Back to the dungeon for original Clank!  With his very noisy robot causing lots of clank, James made a quick smash-and-grab and an early (low-scoring) exit.  David wasn't far behind.  Stuart and Andy made it above ground with Stuart collecting enough money and gems to more than make up for not securing the bonus 20 points for exiting.  Final scores: Stuart 87, David 73, James 68 and Andy 55.

Then we dusted off an old classic from Reiner Knizia, Medici.  Andy usually wins this (with luck and his Derren bidding skills) and managed to continue his run of winning a game each week.  Final scores: Andy 125, David and James 117, Stuart 57.

Carpe Diem & Photosynthesis - 16th January 2019

Smarting from his crushing defeat at Carpe Diem last week, David arranged a rematch. Everyone was keen given we all remembered the rules and after the fairly long set-up we got underway.

We certainly played better this time and Andy in particular designed a very neat arrangement.
Towards the end David made us of some excess bread to collect tiles he wouldn't normally have been able to get, surprising the others who had forgotten the rule. It was interesting that it was the first time in two games that one of us had done it as we'd previously been saving bread to be used to complete the task cards.

Doubling up on the forgotten rules, James also forgot that he needed to complete his villa in order to collect the bonus points.

Everyone else's failing memory helped David sneak a close win. Honour restored?

David 96, Stu 91, James 86, Andy 62


Flush with his success, David produced a second game for the evening - Photosynthesis. In this game you play seeds and trees and attempt to collect victory points by seeing trees through their life cycle. You achieve this through your trees collecting light, and the most intriguing part of the gameplay comes through working out which trees are in shade and which can collect sunlight. Each round the sun moves around the board changing the light dynamic.

David and James followed a similar approach dropping seeds all over the board, growing trees and generally getting in each others' shade. Stu set up a sort of defensive formation and was soon collecting vast amounts of light most turns except when his own trees blocked each other. In the end this approach won.

It's a really odd game - not really like anything else we've played.

Stu 95, James 86, David 72.

Carpe Diem - 9 January 2019

First play of David's new game Carpe Diem.  A clever tile building game where players construct Roman gardens.  Some neat mechanisms and a variety of ways to acquire victory points.  Good fun.
Final scores: Stuart 84, James 81, Andy 48, David 45.

Airlines Europe - 22 August 2018

First play of Airlines Europe, the revised version (21 years later) of Airlines, which we played a few weeks back.

I'm pleased to say this lived up to expectations.  Same essential gameplay as Airlines but much clearer and less fiddly to play, and with vastly improved production values including the lovely little aeroplanes.

It's quite a short game (just over an hour with the three of us) and the first scoring round arrived much more quickly than we were expecting.  Good fun to play, some judgement in when to declare your interests in airlines, and some interaction in either grabbing the coat tails of other players' successful airlines or trying to take them over.

And in a further indicator of a well-designed game, the scores were incredibly close: Stuart 74, James 73 and David 71.

Airlines - 26 July 2018

This is a classic from Alan R Moon, inventor of dozens of games including the Spiel des Jahres winner, and occasional Rivals game, Ticket To Ride.  James got it in a swap for Porto Nigra, a rather nice looking game but one that was always going to get overlooked in favour of others in the collection.

In Airlines, players are competing to become majority stockholders in several companies with the player owning the most valuable portfolio at the end being the winner.  Each turn, a player chooses between expanding an airline or playing stock from his hand. Expanding an airline adds to its routes on the board and increases its value but exposing your stock cards too early means that other players may not also expand that airline.  Scoring happens three times during the game and again at the end, but only stock played out counts, not what you are still holding in your hand, so timing your investments is key.  Clever game mechanism and pretty good player interaction as you keep an eye on the others' stock and try to takeover "their" companies.

This game was published in Germany in 1990.  And it has not aged well.  The artwork and production values of modern games is brilliant, and unsurprisingly Airlines really looks drab in comparison.

More significantly, keeping on top of which airline can expand routes in which region of the board is a bit of a challenge.  This is frustrating because otherwise it is a really good game.

Fortunately, the game was reimplemented as Airlines: Europe in 2011 and reading the rules, it looks (as one would hope) to have kept all the good bits of Airlines and got rid of the fiddly complicated bits.  And the counters are replaced by lovely little aeroplanes!  So I've bought a copy.

We had a full house for our game which was great.  Andy got a bit stuck with his initial cards and, after helping Stu earn plenty of points for his monopoly airline, only really got a good set of points in the final scoring.  Throughout the game, first place switched from James to David to Stuart in the three scoring rounds, but the gaps got a little wider at the very end.  Final scores: Stuart 84, David 79, James 69, Adrian 51, Andy 27.

The Castles of Burgundy - 20 June 2018

Stuart had never played this before so David and James explained the rules, shared their insights and then were comprehensively thrashed, although closed the gap somewhat in the end of game scoring.  Final scores: Stuart 204, James 192, David 174.

Clever game this.  We haven't yet tried it with the alternate player mats where everyone's layout is different.  Not sure about that but we should give it a go to see whether it adds or subtracts from the game.

Classic Double - 9 May 2018

Peloponnes and Ra double bill.  Andy made it this week before his holiday so we let him crush us.  Andy population 40/prestige 34, Dave 33/29, Stuart 24/24, James 24/20.  An unexpectedly early earthquake pretty much wiped out James, resulting in the smallest final civilisation ever:

After catching up with news, we had a late finish with a game of Ra.  Final scores: Stuart 47, Andy 41, David 40 and James, last again, on 26.

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.

Peloponnes & Ra - 29 December 2017

Last games night of 2017 and a double win for Stuart.  First game was Peloponnes where Stuart got a very balanced score of Population 36 (with a 4x card) and Prestige 37.  Other scores were David 33/28, Kieron 27/34, Andy 33/24 and James 24/27.

The second game was Ra where Stuart managed to get through the first epoch with only one winning bid and still sitting on his 16 tile.  Despite this and thanks to an impressive collection of five Civilization tiles in the second epoch, and getting five extra points from James at the end due to having the highest sum of bidding counters, he won the game!  Final scores: Stuart 38, James 37, David 34, Andy 31 and Kieron 28.

Imperial Settlers - 10 May 2017

Second play of Imperial Settlers.  Stuart won with the Romans, using their Engineers to destroy other players' cards.  David was second with the Japanese, with the reduced opportunity for trading this time with the threat of trade disruption from James' Barbarians, who came last.

I was concerned that the result was exactly the same as last time we played it.  I was partly right - but not about the settlers.  I managed to come last with the Romans the first time we played it, and Adrian won with the Barbarians with a huge score!  So it's me not the game... or at least possibly my bad luck in which cards in the deck actually come out.  Definitely one to play again soon.

Final scores: Stuart 51, David 44, James 40

7 Wonders - 15 March

After a long absence we returned to 7 Wonders. Special guest Adam acting as an observer and giving David advice about getting as many military cards as possible.

I suspect this is the first time the phrase "Get in there Daddy" has been used at games night.

We rattled through 3 games.

Scores:
David 54, Andy 53, James 44, Stu 41
David 53, Stu 52, James 49, Andy 47
Stu 57 (on tie break), James 57, David 43 (on tie break) Andy 43

Phalanxx - 1 February 2017

Second play of Phalanxx.  The game started with a pre-emptive strike on James by Stuart, which dented James' growth plans for a while.  In the fight for the cities in the centre of the map, James took the safer option of attacking David's city in order to avoid further Wrath of Stu, but inadvertently stalled David's game as he was holding a couple of cards that required that second city in order to play them.  Andy jumped in the fight in the last round taking one of James' cities away.  In the final reckoning Stuart took the top place.

Final scores: Stuart 52, James 50, Andy 46 and David 34.

Five Tribes - 5 October

A second play of Five Tribes, the game of meeple dropping, camels and Djinn.  A fun game even if it isn't really possible to have a coherent strategy - Five Tribes is more a game of trying to optimise your luck from turn to turn.  Broadly, the players who relied more on scoring points for territories on the board (James and David) didn't do as well as those who aimed for the off board scoring (from yellow meeples in particular).  It was a close finish though:  Stu 141; Adrian 140; David 128; James 113.

Peloponnes - 27 July 2016

Stuart writes:

A game of two halves:

First half - peaceful everyone buying, building, growing and feeding

Second half - Boom (Decline) Boom (Tempest and Earthquake) Boom (Drought and Plague).

The third Boom hit nearly everyone's population very hard e.g. Deej going from 17 down to 6.  Andy's stone mountain, Jame's pile of luxury goods and Kieron's massed tiles didn't ease the pain. Plenty of lovely civilizations with no-one to live in them. In the end it was Stuart's immunity to the last Boom that made the difference. 

Scores

1st Stuart 27/27     2nd Deej 18/30    3rd   James 18/26       4th Kieron 12/31       5th Andy  9/29  

Peloponnes Card Game - 25 May 2016

First play of the card game version of one of our favourites, Peloponnes.  Unsurprisingly it has lots in common with the board game but with some interesting twists: resources aren't stockpiled, production is only used to construct buildings (with any excess going to luxury goods - the only track still remaining in the game); the cards double-up as money and resources.

One claim of the game is that not all the disasters will occur - but they did for us, one in the 2nd turn - and the card-disabling effects of these disasters was devastating.  At the end of the game David and Andy had more cards disabled than still available, with significant impact on their final population.  BGG Forum suggests starting each disaster counter one step earlier so that four of the same disaster cards have to appear to make it happen, rather than just three.  We will try this next time.

It also felt to us that the civilization tiles didn't feel very balanced with one seemingly providing a strong advantage and another making it very difficult to develop, but no-one has mentioned this on the forum, so we won't tweak this on the basis of just one game.

All in all, not as good as Peloponnes but certainly an interesting and playable alternative, with the advantage of portability.

Final scores: Stuart 21 Prestige/14 Population, James 10/8, Andy 9/5 and David 10/4.

Notre Dame & Ra - 5 May 2016

A good night for Stuart with a double win.  Despite the name of the game, Stuart managed to win Notre Dame with 60 points without a single visit to the church, followed by James 53, Andy 50 and David on 43.

A much closer result with Ra and Stuart pipping David to 1st place by just one point.  Final scores Stuart 50, David 49, Andy 30 and James 26.  I still really enjoy this game although I've forgotten how to play it well - must try harder to rise out of the lower quartile!

St Petersburg and Port Royal - 27th January 2016

A series of unfortunate events resulted in Andy missing the news that the venue had switched from Adrian's to David's and consequently enjoying the chance to explore a lot more town than he was intending.

Given the delayed start we decided to go straight to an old favourite - St Petersburg with no need for rules reading and a quick setup. James looked to be disadvantaged in the first turn with the last most expensive pick of workers, but his luck turned when he had first pick of buildings and the Observatory appeared. With its ability to select a card pile and either buy, hold or discard the top card, James then built up an advantage in workers, and then with finances assured, switched to building a large collection of aristocrats. A couple of lucky draws cemented his victory (but I think he'd have won without this). Although it wasn't immediately clear, it turned out that the rest of us were scrapping for second place.

Final score: James: 108, David: 75, Stu 66, Andy: 61

The was enough time to bring out one of David's Christmas presents: Port Royal. This is a quick card game based around the idea of collecting people and ships to build up victory points. It has some clever mechanisms:

Face-up cards have the value of what is shown on the card, but face down cards are used as currency. This means that you can't rely on certain cards coming up later - they may well have been used to pay for something without you knowing about it.

It has a push-your-luck gameplay. You keep drawing cards to create a tableau from which you can make your purchases. However if two ships of the same colour appear your turn is abandoned. Drawing a lot of cards can also give others the chance to purchase cards on your turn, but this can be a source of income as you are paid a tax. Some of the characters have special abilities that encourage you to go for large draws, creating an interesting conflict.

The game played well, although the utility of some cards wasn't hugely apparent on first play. It was reasonably close until the end when Stu and James jumped ahead through completing expeditions to finish the game.

Final score: Stu: 18 James: 17, David: 15 and Andy: 13

St Petersburg - 2nd December 2015

A quick return to St Petersburg at David's, but this time we added Stuart to the mix. James, Andy and David had played a few times recently, but the Stuart wildcard completely changed the direction of the game. The cards ran out incredibly quickly, meaning that the usual steady economy building and big payoffs for collecting people didn't have time to emerge. Instead an early move by Stuart risking financial ruin to get some high scoring cards early paid off.

Final Score: Stuart 46, James 32, Andy 31, David 31. (Very low scores)

Given the speedy resolution, we had an immediate rematch. This went more in line with traditional games, although the fourth player does change the gameplay a lot.

Final Score: James 86, David 85, Stuart 80, Andy 49

Lesson: When you think you are getting better at playing a game, make sure you aren't just optimising your play against the same opponents.