Puerto Rico - 29 April 2009

A return of a classic game, especially pleasing as games nights these days are often attended by more than the 5 player maximum for Puerto Rico.

The Rivals employed a range of contrasting strategies with duplicate tactics being enforced by the fact that most of the buildings come in pairs. Thus James and Adrian started on the Construction Hut gambit, allowing them, plus Stu to acquire 2 Quarries (with Deej and Kieron only getting one apiece). Stu and Kieron were able to gain Factories. Deej maintained a tobacco monopoly for most of the game. Adrian had no Warehouses but was the only one to enjoy the use of an imaginary ship (via his very own Wharf).

Each of the players acquired a large building, and the bonus points we acquired from them (7 for everyone except Kieron who got 6) showed that they were much of a muchness.

The final scores were close: Kieron winning on 51; Adrian on 48; Stu on 47; Deej on 45; and James, who finished the game by his acquisition of a 12th building, last on 43. Our post-mortem on tactics suggested that Haciendas were not much cop; Hospices and Factories were however dead good.

So, a Smith victory then. But this, Kieron's second win in a row, was a 'Lucky Win' (see tag). Once again Stu helped spoon him onto the winner's podium by a crucial error of judgement which, had he noticed, would have allowed a different move and a joint victory for him and Adrian. Kieron's win then, not so much 'standing on the shoulders of giants' as 'getting a leg up on the back of a distracted fellow schoolteacher'. It can't continue like this...
:-)

Power Grid - 22 April 2009

Ni Hao!
This game never fails to impress and this week was no exception as the rivals, numbering 6, took on the Chinese Challenge. The Chinese map also comes with an altered set of rules meaning that power stations come out in strict order and players can only bid on what is there as power stations in the market only become replenished once the bidding round is over.

There were no chinks in Adrian's plan as he spotted the need to keep his options open by only buying power stations with duel fuel. Andy, however, went crackers and decided on a rubbish option. Orhan was determined not get egg fried rice on his face (no room, what with the beard, chicken sticks and Mr Kipling's pies) as he carefully avoided becoming trapped by setting up in the middle of the country and mixing his fuel options. James' sweet option of waiting for the best power plants went sour as he was continually outbid for these by richer opponents. You can always canton Deej to come up with the best optimisation of the 18 or so variables in front of him and this week was no exception. But, just for a bit of fooyung, this week he also decided to get involved in every bid just to make everyone pay a premium for their power stations. Kieron chopped and changed his plans suey was behind at first, but being cut off in the north meant that he just saved his money and could take away cheap power stations and buy resources cheaply. This left him able to (by keeping out of the red) book his place on the podium. Was this win from Kieron a sino things to come next week?
15 Kieron
14 Ade
13 Deej
12 James/Orhan and
9 for Andy

El Capitan - 1 April 2009

Over to Andy's for the four April fools and a quick return to El Capitan. It's good to get a chance to replay a game soon after the first outing as there's less rules learning and a chance to remember what worked and what didn't from the previous game.

Andy played a very loan-heavy game and started to sink under the debt mid-game. Orhan played to concentrate his influence in a small number of high paying cities, but lost out on the diversity scores and probably wasted resources intimidating others out of attempting take-overs. Kieron played a balanced game, but found a number of his warehouses vulnerable towards the endgame. I played cheaply in the first phase, raced for proliferation in the second and spent the third phase shoring up my position.

According to Kieron this is a deejious game. I don't have a clue what that means but I guess his theory is at least partially supported by the scores: David - 283, Kieron - 226, Orhan - 211, Andy - 198.

El Capitan - 18th March 2009

Deej finally had the chance to let us play his Christmas present from Kieron, El Capitan. Why did we leave it so long and why is it languishing in position 358 on Board Game Geek?

We played the basic version with 9 cities and soon realised that the loan cards are an essential part of the game after quickly spending the paltry 20 notes given to players at the start of the game before even half way through the first phase. The key point was when to decide to get a loan, how much do you get and do you pay it off early (therefore leaving yourself vunerable to coming in for a loan again and wasting a turn). Andy and Kieron came in for an early small loan and James helpfully pointed out this was daft as it cost half the value of the loan just to sail in to get it! He duly came in for a massive loan.

After pay day, we were left with the tricky decision of how much of the loan to pay back. James and Kieron opted for the safe middle ground of paying half the loan back and Deej was just canny with his spending so only had a small loan. Deej and Kieron started a race to gain 9 cities first, with Deej pipping Kieron but both cashed in on having lots of fingers in pies when the second pay day came around. Meanwhile Andy was collecting travel cards like they were going out of fashion! In the final phase of the game Andy and Deej enjoyed knocking James' early placement of warehouses out of cities to reduce his final income. At the same time Deej was his usual optimising self and came out on top. I'd like to play this again soon and see what it's like with the expansion and a 5th player. Deej 230, Kieron 218, James 172, Andy 112

Ra, Wings of War - 11 March 2009

We introduced Orhan to the delights of Ra this evening. As always, plenty of Derren-ing going on, including from non-player Adrian who arrived later. Kieron had a storming game and accumulated a massive thirty points in the Third Epoch, giving him a huge lead. James and David battled for second place, but David's risk at the end didn't pay off and we was unable to pick up the final tiles at the end. Scores on the doors: Kieron 45, James 33, David 28, Andy 27 and Orhan 11.


We followed that with a couple of games of Wings of War - Andy, David and James the dastardly Germans, against Adrian, Kieron and Orhan the plucky Brits. The first game was a devastating and rapid three-nil loss by the English. Perhaps feeling too confident, in the second game the Red Baron conducted a personal reconnaissance mission whilst his two freunden had to engage the three British 'planes on their own. After taking an incredible eleven cards of damage (of which six were zeroes), James finally succumbed to the English bullets, and although one Sopwith was taken out, it wasn't long before all three German airplanes hit the deck.

Field of Glory - 4 March 2009

My first game of the DBM replacement ruleset Field of Glory, partnering Andy with the starter Alexander army against Adrian and Kieron with the starter Seleucids.


Whilst the rulebook is much prettier and better laid out than the DBM rules, its ancestry is clear and I was worried that although many of the improvements are self-evident, it might still be a bit of a grind to play. So I was really surprised that with the combination of Adrian's coaching and the handy reference sheet, the game was much simpler than I expected and even though we were learning, seemed to run quite smoothly and swiftly.

It was certainly more fun than DBM, none of the gamey measurement and angles to worry about, and more like Shako in the sense of just commanding your battle groups to do what you wanted. And what a relief to have no PIPs to agonise over distributing.

The game resulted in a minor victory for Adrian and Kieron. They sacked our camp, destroyed two of our battlegroups, and fragmented one more, earning 7 points, against our 3 points for destroying one BG and fragmenting one.

Citadels - 25 February 2009

Time to wheel out a rivals old-timer - no not Orhan, Citadels. With numbers up to six this evening the choice of games was pretty limited, but I found this one lurking at the back of the games cupboard. Last time we all played it, Kieron enjoyed it so much that he bought his own copy only to leave it in another country.

The game played slowly with six, the card selection phase taking long enough that there were plenty of opportunities to catch up on news. For the first few turns, Kieron felt a little picked on as he fell victim to the assassin and the thief.

As the game progressed, Orhan kept churning cards with the magician, but never quite seemed to find the right ones, Andy kept playing the king, but stayed out of trouble as no-one thought he'd be stupid enough to play it again. Kieron went after the merchant and assassinated anyone who dared take it off him. Through use of the magician and the architect I was able to quickly get out the five different colours needed for the bonus and then played out the last few to finish the game for the bonus and a win.

Final scores, David 35, James 29, Adrian 28, Orhan 24, Andy and Kieron both on 22.