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!

Alea Iacta Est and Circus Flohcati - 25th June

We started the evening with a game of Alea Iacta Est. Lots of fun with the usual Derrening and helpful suggestions, combined with a couple of nya-ha-ha moments when a round was finished unexpectedly.

Final score was Adrian 49, James 43, David 36 and Kieron 33.

Burnt out by his victory, Adrian departed mumbling some excuse about early starts and important meeting tomorrow.

We then tried out Circus Flohcati (one of Reiner Knizia's two flea circus themed games), a game aimed at the whole family and one that plays extremely quickly. We ended up playing three hands and while it was fun, it didn't engage us as much as we'd hoped. Kieron ran away with the first two hands (luck or judgement???) but although James convincingly won the third it wasn't enough to catch up.

Final score: Kieron 171, James 162, David 140

Hanabi & Love Letter

A very relaxed evening playing a couple of card games.  The first was brought by Stuart and called Hanabi, currently quite popular on the BGG Family Game list.  This is a cooperative game with a unique mechanism - you hold your cards the other way around, so everyone else knows what you have, and tries to give you information during the game to enable the playing of a sequence of cards to set off one of five fireworks.  Really clever and led to some good-natured frustration when ESP failed.  I think we played it about three times in the end.

We finished with a very close game of Love Letter (using James' home-made Dad's Army set of cards).  I think we all got to three cubes each but Kieron got the fourth cube first, winning the game.

St Petersburg - 5 June

Three Rivals for anecdotes and St Petersburg at Adrian's.  A lovely game that Adrian and Kieron hadn't played for ages.  Asymmetric tactics commenced from the very first turn with Andy opting for a hand-expanding warehouse and a relentless collection of aristocrats; Kieron with multiple buildings; and Adrian balancing his options.  Come the final analysis Andy's tactics paid off big time, overtaking both others to win handsomely.  Kieron was second, Adrian last.  All the scores were above 100 but because we did a comparative calculation, just how awesome the scores were is, alas, lost to history.

St Petersburg - 21 May 2014

I introduced David, Andy & Keren to Love Letter whilst we waited for Stuart to find us(!), and then we played another great game of St Petersburg.  A number of different strategies resulted in a very close finish but unfortunately Andy didn't surge at the last moment like last time.  Final scores Stuart 75, David 74, James 73, Andy 51.  This is swiftly becoming one of my favourites and I was interested to read on BGG that there is an expansion for five players.

Love Letter & Ra - 7 May 2014

Stuart, Kieron and James met up for a last minute convened games night.  We played a couple of light games which allowed plenty of time to catch up.  The first of these was Stuart's excellent Love Letter - a very clever little game involving just 16 cards, some bluffing, some informed guesswork, and a fair bit of luck.  The winner is the first to win five rounds so there is inevitably some levelling as the person out front gets more attention from the other players.  So we all got to four points before James' lucky "Princess protected by a Handmaid" combo won him the last game.  Enormous fun and it plays quite quickly, so definitely one to bring out at the end of games evenings (I've already bought another copy!).

We followed up with the comfortable pair of old slippers that is Ra.  Always fun - James scored big early on with pharoahs and civilizations, Stuart scored late with a huge collection of buildings, Kieron had a more balanced strategy, but the final scores were James 48, Stuart 38 and Kieron 37.

Zulus - 1 May 2014

A Thursday night for a second go at the Zulu siege skirmish game with new appropriate scenery (2 mission station buildings, a dry stone cattle kraal and sandbag defences) and a reversal of sides - Deej and Kieron as the Brits and Andy and Stu as Zulus.

A plethora of Zulu cards coming up early resulted in large forces surrounding the mission station and managing to rush the defenders without the chance for them to fire many volleys.  Both buildings were overrun with the Redcoats managing to recapture the hospital once before having to fall back.  Mid-way through the game it looked like it was all up for the British but a run of Red cards allowed them to stabilise the position.  The relief column arrived reasonably quickly in the second run through the pack allowing the British to claim victory.

A good game but again quite an abrupt end.  Next time we'll try it with all 4 Aces having to come up in the second pack run through for a victory to be declared, allowing hopefully for more tension to build up.

The moment before the relief column arrived - the handful of survivors have pulled back to the inner courtyard as the Zulus charge in