Hamburgum - 24 September 2014

Actually "Londinium" since we played with the English language version on the other side of the board.  Adrian took an early lead from a fleet of ships trading goods but was eventually overtaken as the game progressed.

Final scores: David 73, James 53, Adrian 51, Andy 36, Kieron 33

However, Kieron spotted a Rule 23 - when putting up buildings, players are only allowed to build one Special building at a time.  Both David and James earned double points in the same turn when building two Specials, but I suspect David would be in first place either way.

The Castles of Burgundy - 17 September 2014

Second play for this new game.  Lots of different strategies to follow.  Only real improvement we'd like to see is board and tiles 50% bigger (do they not playtest new games with middle-aged players?!).

David's chicken strategy paid off big time and he won with 232 points, followed by James on 210, Kieron 199 and Andy 195.

Downfall of Pompeii & Tzolk'in - 10 September 2014

We started with Stuart's Downfall of Pompeii (which I half-remember playing at Adrian's many years ago).  A bit of strategy, a fair bit of luck, but a lot of fun in particular in the second half of the game as you direct lava over your opponent's pieces!  Nicely self-levelling too as one tends to direct the lava over the colour with the most pieces, and it did end up very close.  Final scores Stuart 9, David 8, James 8 (third place because of more people taken out by the lava), and Kieron 7.

Plenty of time to then play Tzolk'in with its rotating cogs.  Stuart went for skulls, David a bit of everything, James went for gods, and Kieron seemed to always be short of food.  Final scores James 76 (jumping ahead thanks to a card that rewarded the god strategy), Stuart 61, David 48 and Kieron 31.

Power Grid-Factory Manager - 4th September 2014

Round at Kieron's for a rare outing of a game that should be better than it is. Rules and setup took an hour! Kieron lost the will to complete reading the rules due to overexcited rivals not listening, so the most important rule of the scores being doubled in the last round was omitted! James noticed this as we entered the final round thereby making the final round redundant and we were left feeling empty, but still willing to give it a go again at some point........not before 2018 though!
Final scores were Stuart 165, James 150, David 132, Andy 129 and Kieron 85.

Village & Alea Iacta Est - 28 August 2014

A small but select gathering for games this week.  We first played Village without the beer & inn expansion.  Andy majored on the market, James went travelling, and Kieron joined the council, enabling him to later produce lots of free goods to sell in the market to compete with Andy.  Final scores Kieron 68, James 53, Andy 42.

Then Alea Iacta Est which plays without the Temple/Fortuna elements with only three players.  A very close result with Andy on 47 and Kieron on 48, but James' useful set of Senate cards gave him the win with 59.

Trajan - 21 August

First 4-player go at Trajan, Adrian's Xmas present from Orhan.  After the success of Castles of Burgundy recently it was good to play another Stefan Feld game and this one was another winner.  Trajan is a reasonably complex Eurogame - in that there are a number of moving elements to keep in mind each turn, central to which is the 'mandala' concept, a rondel-type arrangement for determining the main action for each player each turn, but with the added element of extra actions being won by the positioning of coloured tokens around the rondel.  Very cunning.  Each round players opt to seek victory points by deploying meeples as legionaries in the provinces or builders in Rome, by shipping commodities, by seeking political office, or by acquiring power up tiles of various flavours.  The elements all fit together very harmoniously.  There is a fair bit of luck involved, but not so much that it detracts from the planning.  We all broadly adopted different strategies, with James specialising in shipping sets of goods, Andy dominating the military field, Kieron doing lots of building, and Adrian going for the political track.  In the end though being able to score points across the different disciplines seemed to be key.  Kieron's early lead was cut down to size to see the final scores being Adrian 119, Kieron 111, James 102 and Andy 58.  A good game.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102680/trajan

Peloponnes & Darjeeling - 7 August 2014

A welcome return to old favourite Peloponnes.  We haven't played this for a while and had only previously played it with the maximum 5 (or 6 with the expansion).  With fewer players, the bidding is quite different.  Tiles are placed to match the number of players (3 in our case) and then made up to 5 by placing further tiles alongside a "Conquest Tile".  Players can bid on the 3 initial tiles in the same way, or can buy outright (with no risk of being displaced) any tile alongside the Conquest Tile at a cost of the value on the tile plus a further 3 coins.  This adds an interesting twist to the game.

Final scores (population/prestige) were James (39/35), David (36/29) and Andy (18/23) who had an unlucky start with an early earthquake taking out his first (expensive) building.

Plenty of time left for a second try of Darjeeling.  With David acting as scorer and James as tile placer for everybody, the game ran much more smoothly.  David and James pulled away from Andy early on, and then James inched ahead of David.  Still a strange game with the scoring at the beginning of each player's turn and it does feel hard to catch up with someone once they establish a lead.  But we think it will play even more balanced with 5 players.  Final scores were James 99, David 90ish, Andy 50ish.