Imperial, 26 May 2010

A full house (with Stu but no Andy) round here again for one of our 6-player favourites - Imperial. Starting countries were (I think) Orhan with Germany, Kieron with Russia, James with Austria, Adrian with France, Stu with Britain and Deej with Italy. The game rocketed off as per usual with mass build ups of military forces and expansionism all round. It wasn’t long before there were clashes in the Balkans, North Africa, and the Low Countries. We tried a new house rule in this game - providing anyone without a country with 1 million each time an Investor phase came round to ensure that no one would be kept completely out of the game. As it turned out, Deej, Stu and Kieron found themselves the victims (or possibly beneficiaries) of being taken out and buying back in. Those who retained their original countries ended up with fewer bonds and generally less money. We couldn’t quite work out whether this was a flaw to the game. At any rate it was a fun evening with lots of involvement and a timely finish. The final scores were: Deej 126; Stu 106; Kieron 96; James 85; Orhan 75 and Adrian 60.

Mare Nostrum - May 19th

It felt like a reunion once again this week with 5 making it to Adrian's (Deej lurgified again and Stuart lost in space). Mare Nostrum, a game we hadn't dusted down for a long time was the choice this evening, even though we had some recollections slight failings in the game from a couple of years back. The trading round in this game is clever and rapid with no option for James to squeeze out a good deal ;-) Kieron and Andy were nicely positioned in the wings with plenty of resources. James occupied Egpyt , Adrian Italy and Orhan was in Greece. James and Kieron decided upon a truce from the first round allowing Kieron to have an early dig at Orhan in a fight for one of the only two gold resource regions. However, they soon realised that fighting is for losers in this game and concentrated on expansion. Adrian was quietly building a Roman empire with nobody prepared to take him on and Andy and James decided to spend the evening flexing their muscles and posturing along the north African coast. James enjoyed playing a Kieron/Stuart game style with no hope of a victory. So, it was left to Adrian, Orhan and Kieron to fight it out for the first to gain the pyramids. In the punultimate round, Orhan played a blinder and attacked Alexandria to gain a temporary rise in income allowing him to gain a hero. In the final round, he moved his target to Andy and was bout to claim victory when Kieron launched an attack on the heart of the Greek empire to gain an income of 12 and the pyramids. A fun game, but we've really outgrown these now. Another lucky win for Kieron ;-)

21st April - Ra

Malcolm could not stand the thought of another hour having his shoelaces pulled by the dog so he decided to have an early night. The three remaining rivals pulled out Ra (the newer, slightly smaller version) and as ever, a quick, fun game ensued. Kieron got lucky again and managed to collect a massive number of temples and win.

21st April - Ticket to Ride

With only 3 rivals available this week, we invited along guest gamer Malcolm who works with Kieron. Starting off with Ticket to Ride, Orhan decided to spend the first few rounds collecting destination cards. 3 of us ended up fighting in one region of the board, but by the time all was done, Kieron came out on top with just the right (lucky) collection of destination cards.

Colonia - 6 May 2010

A good turn-out of six Rivals this evening to play Adrian's game Colonia. A beautifully-produced game with some neat mechanisms. Unusually though, there is no indication of who's winning whilst you're playing the game. There's a fair bit of luck involved so probably better suited to a smaller number of players to allow the time for a second game in an evening, but good fun nevertheless. Final scores: David 18, Kieron 16, Andy and Adrian both 13, Stu 12 and James just getting into double figures with 10.

Colonia, 14 April 2010

A first try for another of Adrian’s presents from Orhan, and, given the small number of Rivals and the Easter holidays, we invited 2 guest gamers to join in - Fred and Felix. Colonia is a beautifully produced game where you deploy your workers, Puerto Rico style, to acquire power in the Council, acquire resources, turn these into goods, ship the goods, and use money (in four currencies) to buy relics which provide victory points. The game has some very clever mechanisms and some really nice ideas. I particularly liked the town council edicts which are voted on by the players to amend (or not) the rules in a given phase. There is a fair amount of luck in the game - especially in the ship departures and the relics which come up, and there was a feeling that this meant that the game was somewhat more reactive and less predictable than we would have liked. We considered that displaying which relics and ships were going to come up might fix this to some extent. Looking on boardgamegeek (where it scores 6.9) the mood was for more interaction - eg by allowing trading of goods and resources between players - and for giving more stability to allow players to see what is coming up (as we felt). At any rate though this game played well, finished promptly (we were done by 10.30pm including learning the rules), and was fun. For our game common strategies were employed - 3 players had a run on relics from Bergen; Felix tried to corner the Novgorod market (foiled by Orhan) and Adrian was fortunate (or skilful???) to get the Belgian top relic and shrine (which doubled its VP value). Orhan upped the drama stakes by declaring his vote on edicts last (whether or not he actually got a vote!). And Felix bizarrely named the ‘footwear’ goods as ‘Geoffreys” (coz they looked like Court Jesters’ shoes and he got the name confused). So Geoffreys it is then. Final scores: Adrian 17; Deej 16; Fred 12; Orhan 12; Felix 10. Good fun.

Ticket to Ride Europe and Ra, 7 April 2010

[Orhan writes] Time this week for two short games so out came two old favourites: Ticket to Ride (Europe) and Ra. Ticket to ride was the first game of the evening and was played in the usual vaguely anarchic style with everyone apparently wanting to go through Paris simultaneously. Almost everyone pulled a small number of routes at the beginning picking up more later on. I went for my usual strategy of grabbing a large set of routes at the start of the game and made almost all of them but threw caution to the wind in the last round and had an unlucky pull dropping me down into third place only a single point ahead of Andy. The fight for the longest route was very strongly contested with all four players being within five points of each other but in the end Adrian won it which also won him the game pipping David to the post. Adrian (121), David (110), Orhan (101), Andy (100).

Ra was as usual very enjoyable with some fun brinksmanship going on between David and Adrian. Andy was Mr. Nile and unlike Kieron in another game we could mention, seemed largely impervious to the crocodiles. After his earlier victory in Ticket to Ride Adrian was feeling bullish taking a number of risks on the RA pulls but unfortunately the luck of the Gods seemed to have departed him with David winning most of their tussles. At the end of the evening the scores were David (50), Andy (47), Orhan (35) and Adrian (24).