Ghostbusters Ecto-1

This is my first day not at work for the Christmas holidays so I settled down this afternoon with my present from Kieron and David - the Lego model of the Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance from Ghostbusters aka ECTO-1.

First thing to do was to get a suitable movie playing in the background...

Six packets of Lego plus the instructions book...

...makes a big pile of Lego:

Sorted into colours (I know this looks OCD but even the instruction booklet recommends this!):

And the Ghostbusters themselves were put together just as the ECTO-1 first appeared on screen (well, the first time sprayed up in the right livery).

The chassis:

Starting to look a bit more recognisable:

Marshmallow Man toasted!  Just the (very detailed) roof to complete:

Finally finished.  Ingenious kit, great fun to put together, and a real nostalgia trip.  Thanks chaps!

Notre Dame - 17 December 2014

A welcome return to Notre Dame - one of James' bargains from the UK Games Expo Bring & Buy a couple of years ago.  Despite blog evidence to the contrary, Kieron had no recollection of having played it before but it had been a while for everyone so we ran through the rules in full.  They seem complex but the game isn't complicated.  There are a lot of different actions and special cards in the game but the choice at any one time is fairly restricted, so it plays fairly quickly and we completed the game in a couple of hours, leaving time for an extended set of anecdote rounds.

It looked at one point like Kieron was going to run away with it, since he had 8 or 9 influence markers on the Earn Prestige Points region of his borough.  But the cards to make the most of that position thinned out, and other bonus cards appeared which favoured others.  Final scores: James 57, David 47, Andy 47 (but behind David on remaining coins and influence markers - and probably a little further behind had we spotted earlier he was collecting all the red messages rather than one of each colour first!), then Kieron on 46 and Stuart 42.

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers ;-)

Forbidden Island and St Petersburg - 10th December 2014

A first play for Forbidden Island, David's birthday present from James. It's a well produced co-operative game where the players are adventurers attempting to find and collect a set of artefacts from a sinking island. Tension mounts as parts of the island become flooded and are eventually destroyed, requiring a balance between "shoring up" (repairing the flooded zone) and the hunt. Andy and James made good use of their special abilities (diagonal movement and two shore-ups for one action respectively) where as David never found an opportunity to use his "Diver" ability to swim across lost zones.

The game gradually progressed from us moving around easily to us defending critical areas and routes as the waters rose, although we never felt under a huge amount of pressure and completed the game. It was a fun and quick little game, but let down by a critical problem. As we all have identical goals (including keeping everyone alive) there was often an obvious right move at each step. In the end it felt that the three of us were jointly playing a one player game. A rummage on the BGG forums suggests that this is a common complaint, but short of forbidding or restricting conversation during the game it seems a difficult thing to fix.

We followed this up with another game of St Petersburg. Ever had one of those games where one player completely dominates? James built up a huge income and managed to get to a full 10 aristocrats - something we very rarely see. By the end of the game he had so much money that he was buying stuff he didn't want just to set up the next round the way he wanted it. How did this happen? One thing was James picked up the Observatory at the beginning of the game - something that can be a huge help for the aristocrat collection strategy. Also Andy and David made a mistake early on and both overspent leaving them without much money for workers. If one of them had done that it probably wouldn't have had much of an effect, but with both out in the same round, James picked up enough workers to set himself up with a large income. With James concentrating on aristocrats, David was able to switch to a building heavy strategy, building up an in-game lead, although he was unable to stop the aristo-geddon at game end. It's a great game.

Final score: James 134, David 120, Andy 97.

St Petersburg - 3rd December 2014

A trip over to Andy's resulted in us unwrapping a pristine version of St Petersburg. This is a great little game and once again offered several different strategic options. Kieron went building and VP heavy and built up an impressive lead. At the other extreme Andy didn't buy any buildings at all, going for an endgame killing with the aristocrat bonus. David and James went for more balanced play, but crucially David managed to keep fairly close to Kieron during the game and Andy in aristocrats by purchasing the VP earning aristo upgrades. Final score David 76, Kieron 68, James and Andy 62.

Given Kieron's point haul each turn if the game had lasted another turn he would probably have won.

Caylus Magna Carta - 27th November 2014

Only 3 rivals arrived after a sick note from Stu so we dug out a game which works well with 2 or 3.  Kieron sat on the rules to prevent James reading them, as he knew all of them by heart!
This is a great little game which might win the prize for most fun per cubic cm!
Andy's strategy was to collect resources and go for buildings. James and Kieron fought for victory tokens from the castle. Kieron pipped James due to slightly earlier castle visits which lead to him collecting better tokens.  K:36, J:35, A:30ish

20th Century - 19th November 2014

5 rivals assembled at Kieron's for another go at this clever game which has many favourite elements in it. James decided to be the hare and raced off to a huge early lead which he kept right to the death. He amassed a VP income of 23, but as a result he was bereft of science and covered in garbage!  Andy went for an eco tactic which almost worked. Stuart went for a frugal game by only buying 1 tile per turn. Deej and Kieron tried a more balanced approach with Kieron focussing on trying to keep the garbage low and science income enough to avoid disasters.  This proved just enough to pip James at the very end. Final scores

Kieron 112, James 108, David 106, Andy 102, Stu 91

Peloponnes & Medici - 15 November 2014

Following the Dads' Army game we had a five-player game of Peloponnes, which David triumphed even more spectacularly than last Wednesday, winning with 36 population and 34 prestige points.  James just beat Kieron into second place 24/31 vs Kieron's 24/25.  Stuart got 16/31 and Andy 15/14.

After some pretty fiery (but tasty) curries at one of the local curry houses, we returned back to mine for a six-player game of Medici.  Plenty of opportunities for Derren-ing, and Kieron won with 116 points, followed by both Adrian and David on 105, James on 88, Andy on 74 and Stuart on 66.

A great afternoon and evening, combining a figures game, board games and a social.  Looking forward to part 2 in a few weeks.