4 rivals came tonight for the very last night at Kieron's before he moves out. This one game is one of Deej and Kieron's favourites and is the last game to be packed!
Kieron took an early lead as very few ships were sailed. Andy decided to go for the money grab to restrict options which worked early on. However, due to lucky minus money cards coming out, the costs of actions were not too prohibitive until the very last turn when, poised to slot his ship into the last vacant top row slot, Andy found himself having to pay to sail because a positive card finally appeared and he was one coin short! This left Kieron free to put a 3rd ship in the top row and he sailed to victory for an unprecedented 4th win in a row (although he is claiming a 5th due to a win for the French in Sunday's Napoleonics)
Final scores: Kieron 74, Deej 64, Adrian 56, Andy 42
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Sunday, 22 March 2015
St Petersburg - 18 March 2015
First play of David's present to Andy, the second edition of St Petersburg. This introduces an extra phase and a market, and allows a fifth player. Kieron went straight into the market and developed a healthy lead. Others joined the market later, and Andy and James pursued the original strategy of collecting nobles, slightly hampered by a lack of shuffling that left all the noble upgrade cards at the bottom of the pile, and consequently unplayed!
Final scores Kieron 73 (another win!), James 67, David 58, Stuart 55 and Andy 42.
Final scores Kieron 73 (another win!), James 67, David 58, Stuart 55 and Andy 42.
Saturday, 7 March 2015
Cleopatra and Ra - 4 March 2015
Egyptian night at Adrian's, starting with a game of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects, the Days of Wonder 3D crocodile-fest which Andy and David had never played. Cards representing building materials and special characters are collected and then exchanged for building extensions to Cleo's palace. Employing corrupt practices allows the players to build more and faster, but the most corrupt ends up being fed to the crocodiles. The philosophy of going all out to build was taken to heart by James who ended up on 62 points, but was the most corrupt by a significant margin so was consumed by the crocs. Kieron was thus the winner on 49, David on 41, Adrian on 37 and Andy on 36. A fun game, which we should play more regularly than the 5 or so years between this game and its last outing.
We then had the obligatory go at Ra, David triumphing on 41, followed by Kieron on 39, James on 36 and Andy and Adrian equal last on 32. Nefertititastic.
We then had the obligatory go at Ra, David triumphing on 41, followed by Kieron on 39, James on 36 and Andy and Adrian equal last on 32. Nefertititastic.
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Notre Dame and Ra - 25 February 2015
Another play of the ingenious Notre Dame which has some neat mechanics and a nice theme. A variety of strategies were employed and it was a high-scoring game across all players. David won after making big donations at Notre Dame in the final rounds of the game, reaching 67 points, then James on 55, Kieron 54, Andy 50 and Stuart on 46.
Plenty of time for a hilarious game of Ra, notable for being (we think) the first time that a player has ended all three epochs with a smaller score than the 10 we each started with. Another clear win with David on 44 with lots of buildings, James on 33, Andy 28, Stuart 23 and Kieron on 8 (no sniggering at the back please!).
Plenty of time for a hilarious game of Ra, notable for being (we think) the first time that a player has ended all three epochs with a smaller score than the 10 we each started with. Another clear win with David on 44 with lots of buildings, James on 33, Andy 28, Stuart 23 and Kieron on 8 (no sniggering at the back please!).
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Peloponnes - 12 February 2015
A full house and a short game, so lots of time to chat and catch up before and after. We played Peloponnes with just the expansion to allow six players and some of the additional (possibly too powerful...?) starting civilizations.
Mixed outcomes for the players: James struggled to get going but a handy sea purchase in the last round helped him jump ahead of Kieron who simultaneously had a major population crash; Adrian had the closest pair of scores but with David just ahead of him (balancing his blessing of being immune to disasters with the curse of losing population every turn); then Andy with a large flexible income from his civilization developing a huge score (and probably on another night, a game-winning one); but he was eclipsed by Stuart with the biggest score yet in this game (one point more than he won with back in October 2013).
Final scores: Stuart population/prestige 48/39, Andy 42/32, David 24/31, Adrian 24/22, James 21/18 and Kieron 6/38.
This remains the best value for money game I've got - £9 in the Bring & Buy back at the 2011 UK Games Expo!
Mixed outcomes for the players: James struggled to get going but a handy sea purchase in the last round helped him jump ahead of Kieron who simultaneously had a major population crash; Adrian had the closest pair of scores but with David just ahead of him (balancing his blessing of being immune to disasters with the curse of losing population every turn); then Andy with a large flexible income from his civilization developing a huge score (and probably on another night, a game-winning one); but he was eclipsed by Stuart with the biggest score yet in this game (one point more than he won with back in October 2013).
Final scores: Stuart population/prestige 48/39, Andy 42/32, David 24/31, Adrian 24/22, James 21/18 and Kieron 6/38.
This remains the best value for money game I've got - £9 in the Bring & Buy back at the 2011 UK Games Expo!
Thursday, 29 January 2015
Sylla - 29th January 2015
Years ago we used to play a game called "Republic of Rome". It was a pretty typical Avalon Hill game with rules that read like a legal text with sections, subsections and exceptions. It featured a interesting mixture of competition for political supremacy and having to work together to defeat crisis after crisis.
Sylla has the same theme, but with a modern approach to the game mechanisms. First though you have to get your brain past the oddity that the game starts during the Roman Republic yet features Christians. Mmm. Let's just forget the title and move on.
The game features a selection of characters - senators, merchants, legionaries, slaves and vestals. Each provides the ability to buy buildings and most have a special ability too. The catch is that you only get to use the character once per turn - so you need to plan ahead, which characters will buy buildings and which will you save for later?
There are a number of tracks representing the state of Rome - a large part of the game is being seen to be working to keep things from getting too bad. In true cynical political simulation it's not what you've achieved it's what you appear to have done.
There are also a variety of events that need to be defeated and great works to build.
Given that this was our first game we probably didn't get our balance right. Famine fear (too much Tzolk'in?) lead us to bid high for famine reducing buildings, but it never got to the point that it made that much of a difference. Andy went heavily into merchants to boost his income. David went for senators to give him political clout and Kieron went for a more balanced selection. Early on, Andy and Kieron used a lot of their characters to buy buildings, where as David saved his to use later in the turn to counter events and gain bonuses. Andy saved his money to influence a couple of key votes in order to gain high victory points.
Towards the end of the game two of our tracks reached crisis state. This gave David a large boost as he had earned the most political tokens for countering disasters (even though this had clearly been totally ineffective).
For the last couple of turns we all realised just how important (and clever) the event defeating mechanism was and there was some delightful bluff and brute force to gain maximum benefit.
Final score was David 83, Kieron 79 and Andy 72. It will be interesting to play again with a better idea of how it all fits together.
Sylla has the same theme, but with a modern approach to the game mechanisms. First though you have to get your brain past the oddity that the game starts during the Roman Republic yet features Christians. Mmm. Let's just forget the title and move on.
The game features a selection of characters - senators, merchants, legionaries, slaves and vestals. Each provides the ability to buy buildings and most have a special ability too. The catch is that you only get to use the character once per turn - so you need to plan ahead, which characters will buy buildings and which will you save for later?
There are a number of tracks representing the state of Rome - a large part of the game is being seen to be working to keep things from getting too bad. In true cynical political simulation it's not what you've achieved it's what you appear to have done.
There are also a variety of events that need to be defeated and great works to build.
Given that this was our first game we probably didn't get our balance right. Famine fear (too much Tzolk'in?) lead us to bid high for famine reducing buildings, but it never got to the point that it made that much of a difference. Andy went heavily into merchants to boost his income. David went for senators to give him political clout and Kieron went for a more balanced selection. Early on, Andy and Kieron used a lot of their characters to buy buildings, where as David saved his to use later in the turn to counter events and gain bonuses. Andy saved his money to influence a couple of key votes in order to gain high victory points.
Towards the end of the game two of our tracks reached crisis state. This gave David a large boost as he had earned the most political tokens for countering disasters (even though this had clearly been totally ineffective).
For the last couple of turns we all realised just how important (and clever) the event defeating mechanism was and there was some delightful bluff and brute force to gain maximum benefit.
Final score was David 83, Kieron 79 and Andy 72. It will be interesting to play again with a better idea of how it all fits together.
Sunday, 18 January 2015
Village - 14 January 2015
Five of us played Village this week - using the Village Pub expansion to allow a fifth player but without the complications of the Pub and Brewery options. Andy played the market as usual and attempted to collect all the green resources to stop anyone else selling, but there were still some available and Kieron played the market as well. James went travelling, again as usual, David took holy orders, and Stuart a little bit of everything. Final scores saw David win with 42 points, Kieron close behind on 41, James probably 37 (after reaching 41 too but we may have awarded a chronicle bonus in error), then Andy just squeezing ahead of Stuart with 29 against 28.
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