Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, Ticket To Ride Europe - 24 February 2010

Orhan writes: After some discussion on games we decided that we'd play Cleopatra and see if we had time for another game. Despite dog Sam's contributions to games night and me spending much of my time crawling around on the floor, we did manage to finish Cleopatra and play a game of Ticket to Ride Europe as well!

 

Cleopatra consists largely of trying to earn as much cash as possible without being naughty; a noble aspiration as the player with the most amount of coruption at the end of the game gets fed to the crocodiles. This was my first shot at Cleopatra and I have to admit that I liked it, there are enough variable elements to keep it entertaining all the way through and like all great games it has the potential for cliff hanger endings. Stu was much maligned at the start of the game as the player far more likely to end up inside a crocodile than anyone else and despite an early leap into the sordid pool of corruption he managed to discount a lot of his corruption by some clever play with the mosaics and winning the one round of sacrificing to the gods that we went through. The end result was that it was Kieron who ended up being tossed to hungry reptiles (and there was much rejoicing) rather than Stu. Stu amassed an unassailable lead on 59 points whilst Orhan (47), James (43), Kieron (42) and Adrian (40) were all very close on points...sadly Kieron didn't get to enjoy his 4th place on points as he was busy being digested by a slumbering croc.

Ticket to Ride Europe is a little different from other Ticket to Ride games on two major points. First you get to use stations which allow you to use a single route owned by another player and Second, there are tunnels which have a random element to determine if you succed in tunnelling through the route. There were some general murmurings that the European map was a little more interesting than the US maps and certainly the game was very hard contested. A couple of different strategies were employed with most people going for a few route cards at the start although I started off with a lot of route cards taking several extra hands of cards in the first few rounds. The game proved quite exciting with James managing to make a fantastic single route and claiming the prize to the longest European route whilst Stu, having observed that his game was unlikely to be a winning one, decided in true Rivals spirit to attempt to nobble James; saddly with very little success. The ending proved to be one of the closest we've ever seen at games night with a truely nail biting count off. The final scores in reverse order were: Stu (85), Adrian (100), Kieron (131), James (132), Orhan (133).

Field of Glory: Assyrians v Babylonians, 17 February 2010

With alternative half-term activities claiming the attentions of the majority of the Rivals, Orhan, David and Adrian met for FoG practice, testing out the new (Neo...) army choices of Neo-Assyrians for Orhan and Neo-Babylonians for Adrian and David. This was not so much civil war as generational strife - the Assyrians taking on their descendants.

In terms of lists, Orhan had gone for a light horse heavy variant, taking the Cimmerian allies. Adrian and Deej went for lots of light foot archers, with each army having at its core heavy chariots, guard cavalry and medium foot. We fought on agricultural terrain, the Babylonian centre based around a plantation and with lots of open fields on the right flank. Both sides had one flank largely dominated by medium foot archers and psiloi and the other with massed cavalry - the photo above shows the Babylonian right with mounted units facing off against Orhan's chariots and elite guards. As the armies came together Orhan launched three units of light horse to try to outflank Adrian's heavies. The manoeuvre failed as medium foot bowmen were brought up who, after shooting off 1 unit, charged another. The fact that there wasn't sufficient a gap for the Cimmerians to flee (which would have meant them bursting through Orhan's guard cavalry just as they were closing to contact) meant that they stood and fought - and miraculously held off the bowmen plus Adrian's Skythian light horse for several turns.

This delay allowed Orhan's guard and chariots to close with Adrian's and, with one more general to joint the fight and some nifty rolling, saw Adrian's heavy units crumble away. Meanwhile however, David's foot units were doing heavy damage to Orhan's on the other side of the board. The Babylonian guard spearmen and archers with front rank spears mashed up Orhan's unprotected Kushite bowmen, who very sportingly had decided to get stuck into the fight. As the Babylonian centre was staved in, the flanks were triumphant - the Cimmerian light horse being chased off and killed on the right and the Kushite rout taking 2 or 3 other units with it. The final score was a Babylonian victory - 4 routed and 2 fragged to 2 routed (I think).

Learning points: we liked the heavy chariot unit as a 'six' but next time it needs a general to accompany it all the way through. Five units of light foot was too many. Unprotected bow are really a bunch of pants. All in all a very entertaining game - and great to get the new figures on the table.

Gnadenlos! - 10 February 2010

And an hour left for a quick game of "Merciless" - the four player cowboy game with the ingenious and nail-biting IOU / Pay Day mechanism.  Lots of fun as always.  A close game with a final pay day leaving us all very short of money but unusually nobody was bankrupted at any point.  Final score was exactly the same order as the first game: James, David, Stuart and Kieron.  I'm posting a separate blog entry thanks to David pointing out that this means I can get credit in the tag tally for both my wins :-)

I'm sure I won't be the last to do it....

Race for the Galaxy - 10 February 2010

First outing for David's Race for the Galaxy which has just slipped out of the BGG Top Ten where its been for a couple of years.  This is a card game where players settle and conquer planets, build developments and produce/consume goods to earn victory points.  Echoes of Agricola in that each player is trying to make the most out of the game mechanism and interaction is quite limited.  The sole interaction is in the choice of which phases occur each turn - seven to choose from and everyone does each phase but only the chooser gets the bonus.  So you have to gamble on whether to select, for example, your second choice in the expectation that someone else will choose your first choice and you'll still get to complete that phase.

Some clever mechanisms but initially rather confusing, and so it took a while to click.  One to play again before we forget what all the symbols mean.  There are three expansion packs which might be worth investigating to see what they add to the game.  Final scores James 43, David 39, Stuart 38 and Kieron 32.

Imperial, 3 February 2010

The second outing for Imperial, this time with 5 players - which meant that for pretty much all of the game one player controlled two of the Great Powers. The players' strategies varied: Stu lost no opportunity to bankrupt whichever countries he could, casting Germany into a deep depression from which it didn't recover; James played Britain and France at various times but didn't branch out further East; Adrian built up Austria-Hungary into the pre-eminent power but didn't get much of a stake in anywhere else; Kieron and Deej were more balanced taking stakes in a couple of nations each which put them on top at the end.

The game saw a good mix of conflict and financial dealings with war in Germany and the Low Countries, Scandinavia and in various sea zones.

We think that we probably made a couple of mistakes in terms of providing extra cash to players who had no nations in the bidding stage - plus we weren't sure whether the bidding could bounce back and forth for players who then found themselves with no nation. This meant that it was a positive advantage for someone to have their nation taken off them since they accrued more money. Will have to look that up.

At any rate a good game. The final scores: Deej 142; Kieron 125; Adrian 111; James 75; Stu 70.

Endeavour and Bang, 27 January 2010

From thinking that we might have seven players this week, we were, on the day, down to four - so time for an outing of Endeavour (or rather Endeavor), a new game that Orhan got me for Xmas.

This is a very tightly optimised game - I think I read on Boardgamegeek it described by one poster as "the perfect Eurogame". The setting is 17th and 18th century expansion, exploration and colonisation. There are only seven rounds, each one allowing players quite limited numbers of actions. You build buildings, gain workers, activate them, explore, attack or draw cards - all aiming to raise your stats on your home board allowing you to do more of whatever stat it is next turn. Many of the mechanisms are familiar (eg worker activation of buildings) but this game has more interaction as the players vie for advantage (and victory points) on the main game board.

This was very much a learning game for all of us. The rules were simple, but optimising (even for the Great Optimiser Deej) was tricky and we all made some silly mistakes. As it was, and despite some asymmetric play, the final scores were pretty close: Adrian 52, Deej 51, James 49 and Kieron 42. A jolly good game which can probably be played in 90 mins, even with five players. Eurotastic.

We then had a go at 'Bang' - a rapid play card game. At least it would have been rapid a second time. Good fun Sheriff versus the Outlaws versus each other versus the Renegade. Adrian managed to be the last man standing.

A Brief History of the World - 20th Janary 2010

We'd played the old History of the World game a number of times in the early days of the Rivals. I'm not sure if we ever finished it, and it fell by the wayside as our game collection increased. However it was a favourite of mine and I was intrigued to see the new release of A Brief History of the World. The number of epochs has been reduced and combat speeded up a little. Although described as a 3-6 player game I was sure that we'd never finish a full 6 player game in an evening but could at least hope that we'd stand a chance with a 4 player game.

Good board design and the prospect of seeing empires sweeping across the world gave us a good impression as we started. The first round passed quickly with relatively minor empires giving us a gentle introduction. Epoch 2 saw Stew just behind the rest of us and picking empire first - and he gained the first super-power - Persia. Epoch 3 followed with James conquering Europe with the Romans. David then picked up the Mongols and turned a chunk of the map black. Kieron meanwhile built up and maintained control of much of China, South-East Asia and India for a number of Epochs and started to pull ahead at the end of epoch 4. For the last two epochs James and David closed in as Kieron was forced to take weaker empires, but he held out for a good victory.

In the end it was a late finish - after 11.30 - but with rule reading and set up we didn't start until 9.00 so it was just about ok for an evening's play. Probably not for more than 4. And now I've packed it away more carefully it hopefully won't take as long to set up next time.

Final scores Kieron 174, James 168, David 158 and Stew 122.