Ticket to Ride Europe and Dominion, 29 July 2009

A foursome this week (James, Adrian, Orhan and David) for Adrian's post-natal return to gaming. First up was Orhan's Ticket to Ride Europe, a shorter and denser game than the US map but in many ways more involved and engaging. The addition was stations, allowing players to use others' routes (a sort of 'leapfrog rule'). James eschewed the completing routes strategy in favour of going for top scores on individual connections. The other three opted for the more standard approach, but with Orhan collecting a fistful of route cards even before he'd looked at his opening hand. In the end, James racked up an impressive 129 and then had the agony of watching the others cash in their routes. But to no avail: Adrian and Orhan just made it to 125 and David to 124. A good win for James.

Having finished TTRE early, we went for Dominion, taking about an hour to play the standard game. Orhan had to go a bit earlier than the others so we followed up with a three player 'Big Money' variant (which was over very quickly but which had a couple of bemusing inclusions in the Action Cards - why 'Chapel' for example?). In these games the previous chaining combos so beloved of David didn't quite work out for him and Adrian snatched both victories with a money-heavy approach (acquiring decks with more Gold and Silver cards than Action cards). The scores: Game 1 Adrian 33, James 28, Orhan 24, David 23; Game 2 Adrian 48, David 42, James 39.

Pompeji, Ra - 22 July 2009

With just Andy, David and James around, it was a good opportunity to dig out a game for a smaller number of players. Five or six years ago, James bought a small collection of card games from Salute with themes including maritime trading, railway racing (of course!) and town building. We played the latter this evening - Pompeji. Players construct buildings in a town grid system and gain points by matching building types and background colours along the connecting roads that are created. The Pompeji theme provides the Roman architecture and an erupting Vesuivius to end the game but sadly (unlike Adrian's game) no lava to escape from!

James won the game with 208 points, David second with 156 (and more than a little confusion about which buildings lined up with which) and Andy on 115 (his lower score a result of not using his Extra Turn card so essentially having two less turns than the others). A clever and short (~40 minute) game.

We then played old favourite Ra to see how it worked with three players. Slightly (only just) less Derren-ing but the game worked just as well and was a lot of fun as usual. A strong win for Andy on 51, with James on 42 and David 37.

Maharaja - 24 June 2009

We'd left it a long time since we last played this game, but we soon remembered how good it was. Soon after setting up we embarked on different strategies. Kieron started putting out palaces as quickly as possible building up an early lead but running out of money. James made use of the Trader card to go first each turn and placed the central palace in several cities. David made use of the Builder card and concentrated on building a road network and making medium level scores in each city. Andy scooted around using the board using the monk, but gifted David a lot of cash for the use of his network.

Midway through the game Kieron, James and David were all with 4 palaces left to place and Andy was one behind. Then a series of fortunate events led to David acquiring some extra cash and being forced to give up the builder and take the cheap palaces card. Next turn he palced two palaces getting to a lead that the others couldn't catch.

Result: David (7), James (6), Kieron (6), Andy (5). James edged Kieron for second place on money.

We agreed it was a good game, although maybe the end game may be a bit lacking. Once someone gets ahead it's difficult to stop them. Maybe the game-end conditions need to be different from the victory conditions (like in Powergrid).

Railway Rivals - 17 June 2009

A (mostly) welcome return to the game that started it all. Amazing to think we spent a good couple of years playing Railway Rivals every Wednesday night in the early nineties. This was the first play of the Games Workshop boxed version that James bought at Newbury a couple of years ago (as opposed to the home-produced roll version originally purchased by James at Duncan's recommendation from Gameskeeper in Oxford's Cowley Road in June 1993).

The GW version has been simplified in a couple of places for families with the most significant (and worrying) change being the replacement of the 2,3,3,4,4,5 average die with a standard D6. We decided we could live with most of the rule changes but not that - so the average die was retrieved from the other set.

We played the original London-Liverpool map and the final scores were Orhan 181, Adrian 173, James 171, Kieron 133 and David 131.

Like other things that one spent a lot of time on and enjoyed in the past (Risk, The Clangers), it's never quite the same on return, and difficult to understand what the original enthusiasm was all about. But it was the game that started Games Night and brought the Rivals together, so will always be held in affection (even if we don't want to play it again for another five years!).

Ice Flow and New England - 10 June 2009

Only 4 rivals tonight but this gave James the chance to "show and tell" his two new games. He was itching for us to play Ice Flow so we did! Players must hop from ice sheet to ice sheet picking up rope and fish to help them on their journey from USA to Russia. We decided to ignore rule 23 this week and allow players to move any ice sheets rather than neutral or player controlled ones. This lead to much hilarity as Stuart was shunted back and Kieron just moaned about not getting the game. It was fairly level until the fish ran out and somehow Stuart and James managed to work their way into winning positions. Then the move of the evening from James as he pushed a polar bear on to Stuart's ice sheet allowing him a free move to win the game. DOH!

We then had an hour to kill so Kieron brought down an old favourite, New England. This game is always nip and tuck. Deej managed to secure plenty of land and Stuart went all out to constrain James as much as possible. Kieron kept forgetting to use his ship bonus which nearly left him missing the opportunity to cash in one of the tasty red 10 cards. Stuart and James fought over the 'most men' bonus and as the last card was drawn, the final scores read James 34, Stuart 33, Kieron 31 and Deej 30.

Ice Flow......OK if played quickly for no more than an hour.
New England......good fun (who says it has too much luck?)

UK Games Expo - 6 June 2009

Andy and I took a hazardous drive up a canal-like M5 to Birmingham for the UK Games Expo. Still a small and friendly venue, focussed more on board games than figures, with the odd RPG-er and Dalek wandering about.

Lots of new board games to look at, and I bought the winners of the Best New British Game at the last two years' Expos - Fagin's Gang (2-6 player economic i.e. thieving game) and Ice Flow (2-4 player Niagara-like game).

The Bring-and-Buy provided a couple of German bargains too - Ulysees (3-5 exploration/influencing game) and Verrat! (4 player palace intrigue, "Betrayal" in English).

Together with some new Wild West figures, some pirate cannons and an obligatory set of dice, a very happy shopping experience!

Ticket To Ride, Gnadenlos - 3 June 2009

A welcome return for Ticket To Ride. Scoring in the building phase was pretty well-balanced but the variety of success in satisfying the Destination Tickets saw quite a spread in the final reckoning, with Kieron going backwards to 54, Adrian and David jumping forward to 113 and 118 respectively, and James taking first place with four fortuitously close routes and 145 points.

Four players meant a chance to get out the cowboy game Gnadenlos. Usually quite quick, this somehow ended up taking 90 mins as well and despite never managing to rustle up a proper posse, Adrian won the game with his succession of winning cowpokes.