Antika - 4 June 2008

A welcome return to a game we haven't played for a long time. A good turn out this evening with five of us around the table. We each started along different strategies focussing on land, temples, or inventions, and the first third of the game was all peaceful coexistence.

But then Kieron attacked Deej. Who then counter-attacked. As then did Kieron (and so on). Neither would (or could) break away first and their slog carried on for the rest of the evening.

Meanwhile Andy, Adrian and James continued to develop their empires in size and inventions, making steady progress, with James getting to the required 8 victory points just before Adrian was about to.

Final scores: James (Red) 8, Adrian (Blue) 7, Andy (Green) 5, David (Black) 4, Kieron (Yellow) 2.

Struggle For Rome - 28 May 2008

This evening we tried out a new game - an impulse purchase of Catan Histories: Struggle for Rome. I really must sort out getting mobile phone access to Boardgamegeek when faced with a shop full of boardgames...

The game is based on the well-known Settlers of Catan rules, but set during the time Rome was collapsing under the threat from multiple barabarian invaders. To begin with the players control invading tribes - moving around the map sacking cities and collecting resources. At some point the players have to decide to settle and take control of a city, at which point they start expanding, city by city.

There were some interesting decisions that we had to make - such as:

• go for the bonus for 5 sacked cities or settle and start earning earlier?
• position the barbarian for an attack or to maximise the chance of getting resources?

We all felt short of supplies and found that the trade option was useless as we tended to want the same things at the same time. Maybe with 4 players that would be more useful.

In the end it was a close run ending - Kieron won with 10 points, David finished on 9 and Adrian on 8.

Not sure if it qualifies as a great game, but straightforward, fun, and worth another play.

Bank Robbery - 9 May 2008

A second outing for Legends of the Old West using the rulebook's Bank Robbery scenario and the Whitewash City cardboard buildings. James and Adrian were the robbers starting in the bank in the centre of the town. David and Kieron started on two edges of the playing table, one of which had already been nominated by the robbers as their exit point.


For added fun, the side who got the initiative each turn could move three of the dozen "innocent bystanders" into tactically advantageous positions. Remarkably, very few of them got in the way of gunfire. After several exchanges of lead, the town defenders were overcome and the robbers escaped with the loot.

Razzia & New England - 2 April 2008

First play of Reiner Knizia's Razzia, bought for David by James for Christmas. BoardGameGeek describes it as "similar to Ra". I'd say "similar" is an understatement. Razzia came out in 2005, six years after Ra but it's effectively the same game but with an Italian Mafia theme rather than Ancient Egyptian - every element in Ra has a corresponding one in Razzia. Indeed the Ra write-up on BGG describes Razzia as a "reimplementation"

The advantages might be that this is more portable (no board or victory chits) and a variation in the theme, but the disadvantage is that it has one element of Ra's complexity removed, namely that there are no "negative" tiles equivalent to drought or destruction. I'd also say the Egyptian theme is more engaging and the shortness of the turns (7 "Ra" cards have to be turned up to stop the round rather than 9) also counts against it.

Given the choice, we'd be playing Ra instead and so expect Razzia to be on eBay or a Bring & Buy stall sometime soon! Final scores were very spread out (unusually for a Rivals game) with David on 33, James 22, Kieron 14 and Andy 3.

Next we brought back out New England which we played last week. James tried a completely different and unsuccessful tactic of collecting men, ships and barns and failed to realise many points from converting his land. The other guys took more balanced approaches and their scores were extremely close, with the garland going to our host Andy (whose only other win recorded on the blog is Emira last September, so perhaps this represents a change in fortune). Final scores were Andy on 34, Kieron 32, David 31 and James languishing on 18.

New England - 25 March 2008

A replay (for some) of one of Kieron's bargains from last year's Games Expo in Birmingham. New England sees the players as settlers in America grabbing land and developing it for victory points. A nice bidding mechanism for turn order and limited amounts of money keeps the decision-making really important as players try to make the best value purchases of the land and development cards that get turned up. Additional victory points are available from using the land to support pilgrims, barns or ships rather than developments.

Initially a bit confusing (possibly connected with Kieron's insistence on explaining the game from memory rather than the rules ;-) this game worked well and proved to be pretty close in the final scoring with James on 32, David 31, Kieron 29 and Andy 22.

Caylus - 13 February 2008

Down to just two rivals this week - so Kieron and David took a look at Caylus. My initial misgivings about whether the it would play well with just two players were shown to be unfounded as a great game unfolded. The game does change as players alternate for player order, and with only two players there is a reasonable chance of being able to follow at least part of your plan. With more players there is more competition for resources and more scope for other players to mess up your turn.

Much of the game revolved around our choices on the King's Favour chart. Kieron plumped for prestige - figuring that he might as well get victory points directly. I initially went for money and then when that was maxed I switched to the building favours, allowing some free builds.


The result of these choices affected our game-play. Kieron was ahead on prestige for most of the game, but would sometimes stall due to lack of funds allowing me to close the gap. I was awash with cash and in the later game able to use the favours to switch some buildings to the valuable prestige buildings.

Then approaching endgame I made a significant error. So used to having plenty of money I spent all my cash building a prestige building in an effort to catch up with Kieron. It worked but left me with no money as we entered the penultimate turn. All I could do was get a quick favour to earn some cash for next turn, and was left to watch as Kieron shot ahead again. Knowing that Kieron had no ready source of income I spent a little of my remaining money to force Kieron to spend a couple of coins to keep his game plan alive.

On the final turn - it was Kieron's turn to be short of cash, and I was able to build a final prestige building. As we calculated the final prestige scores Kieron was on 141 and I was on 139 - neither of us had enough money to change this, but I was left with a single unused gold resource - putting me on 142. After a couple of hours and very different play styles there was a single point in it.

A great game - we must play it with more players.

El Grande - 31 January 2008

If games night was an international sporting event, there would now be an enquiry into match-fixing. Like a boxer down on his luck, it looked like one of the players had taken a bung in order to throw the match. A series of inexplicable moves gave more and more points to his opponents, as his own caballeros waited patiently at the side of the board in the forlorn hope of being put into play, and the claim of a long-term strategy failed to be realised.

If there was an enquiry underway, it would not be appropriate to name names at this time, but the final scores may give a slight clue:

David 145, James 140, Andy 129, Kieron 79