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

Ticket To Ride - 24 January 2008

A second outing for this new game. Four players still makes the option of getting additional route tickets a risky undertaking. Stuart's coast to coast route also took in several six-long lines which bumped up his score. James and Kieron shared the longest route card, and Russell was again penalised by failing to connect all the cities on his tickets. Final score: Stuart 188, James 110, Kieron 77, Russell 54.

Then we dug out a game that Kieron had bought for Stuart some time ago (and also got for Adrian recently) - Villa Paletti. This initially looks like a kids game - a more colourful version of Jenga perhaps - but there's actually quite a lot of strategy to it. We were using a translation of the rules from the internet and there were a couple of things that didn't seem to work quite right to us. But this game won Spiel des Jahres in 2002, so worth checking Board Game Geek for any clarifications that would make the game even better. Russell seemed to have the shakiest hands in this game but it was Stuart who brought the edifice down, giving the win to Kieron.

Maharaja - 17 January 2008

Stuart and Russell replaced Andy and James for a second round of Maharaja. Interestingly there were new tactics employed. The scoring order was changed a few times, character cards were swapped and stolen much more often.

Result: David & Russel 9, Stuart and Kieron 7. David wins on money.