Roll For The Galaxy - 25th January

First play of Roll for the Galaxy, one of David's Christmas presents. This clever alternative to the card game has your dice represent your citizens, and by rolling the dice your citizens 'tell' you what activities they want to do (such as Explore or Trade). You have some mechanisms at your disposal to get some of them doing what you want and then once you've set up your turn each player simultaneously works through the actions.

It's got great mechanics and looks fantastic. It could be viewed as everyone playing their own solitaire games, but if you do approach it that way you aren't taking advantage of what the other players are doing.

Final score: James 41 (wins tiebreaker), Stu 41, David 36.
Then Stu pointed out that he could have scored 44 on the last turn. Do we award him the win?

Phalanxx - 18 January 2017

First play of one of James' Christmas presents: Phalanxx, the new game from Bernd Eisenstein (of Peloponnes fame).  The game pits the players against each other as the successors to Alexander.  Starting with a city and an oasis each, players collect cards featuring different types of soldiers, leaders and equipment, and explore and attack new areas.

Taking actions is controlled by a cunning dice mechanism.  Players have three home dice and in their turn, roll the three "travelling dice", and carry out different actions depending on how those dice compare.  The dice come in three different colours and playing particular cards might require a player to have two of the same colour for example, so the dice get changed, including stealing from other players.

Quite a lot to think about in the first game but it was a lot of fun, and very close.  In the final scoring, extra points are scored for all sorts of things, including the sets of infantry/archers/cavalry you've collected, and only then the players scores started to spread out,

Final scores: James 55, David 54, Stuart 48 and Andy 42.

Classical DBA - 11 January

An evening of DBA last week at Adrian's, using armies from the 'Alexander 334BC' campaign list from DBA version 2.1: Andy as as Alexander the Great of Macedon, Adrian as Whatshisface of the Skythians, David as King Porus (Classical Indians) and David as Darius, Persian King of Kings.

The armies were all nicely asymmetrical - the Skythians' multiple light horse and a couple of knights (shock cavalry) quick killing Indian elephants and Macedonian pikemen but with low combat factors; the Indian elephants and bow very hostile to cavalry and knights, and the Macedonian pike good against most troop types.

The games were fun and entertaining (!) with the usual egregious series of 6 - 1 upsets and some post-match interpretation of rules around elephants.  And I was chuffed to get the Persians and Indians on the games table for the first time. 

The results were: Adrian 9 points (beat James and David lost to Andy); David 9 points (beat James and Andy, lost to Adrian); Andy 8 points (beat Adrian and James, lost to David) and James (lost to David, Andy and Adrian).

King Porus and his elephants break through the Persian line

The Skythians (at bottom) invade Macedon

The Skythians later invade India, trying to get around Porus' right flank

Elephants!

Alexander's pike phalanx closes on Indian bowmen

Imperial Settlers - 4 January 2017

First games night of the New Year and the first play of Imperial Settlers - Adrian's Christmas present to James.  This is an empire-building game with resource production and card purchases which provide lots of opportunity for chaining.  It has the Agricola/Eurogame feel of developing and managing your own economy, but with interaction between the players when attacking each others' territories.  It's another very well produced game with some nice pieces although some of the text on the cards could be a bit larger.

James' Romans earned points from sculptures but he never got the economy going enough to make the most of it.  David's Japanese did well from trading ("doing deals") and Adrian's Barbarians earned lots of victory points from destroying things.  Adrian collected a number of cards that gave extra victory points for "razing" other cards (the "Dark Chapel" was particularly killer), and he just pulled away.  Definitely one to play again whilst we remember it!

FInal scores: Adrian 87, David 50 and James 41.

Takenoko - 21 December 2016

First play of David's new game from Adrian called Takenoko - a game of tile-placing, bamboo-growing and panda-teleporting!  With beautiful tiles featuring blossoming trees and detailed miniatures of the panda and gardener, this is a very nice-looking game - and indeed its Golden Geek award was for Best Artwork/Presentation - but it delivers on its promise because there is a very clever game underneath, with clever mechanisms and challenging choices to make each turn.

I hope I'm not being too biased by the results ;-) but even in the second game where I was struggling to score anything for a while, a long-term strategy appeared and I started collecting irrigation channels so that I could score several of my terrain objectives in the final round instead.

First game: James 29, Andy 26, David 25, Adrian 18
Second game: James 35, Adrian 29, Andy 25, David 25

Cargo Noir - 14 December

Another outing of Cargo Noir which is becoming more and more a favourite, but this time with guest gamer Otto and guest observer Betty (who drew all the family into the kitchen for dog therapy, giving the evening an additional social boost)...

David and Stu played for early expansionism, being able to buy extra fleets and syndicates early and then going for a spread betting tactic of putting fleets out with one coin only, hoping to get bumped for extra cash.  Adrian, Andy and Otto were thus confined to the more mixed economies of 4 fleets and earlier warehouses.  Perhaps inspired by Betty though, Otto and Andy engaged in a dogged (geddit?) struggle for supremacy in Rotterdam, with several turns of outbidding.  The Battle of Rotterdam ended with victory for Andy, and a higher placing because of its key cargo.  David capped his evening of good fortune on the tiles by drawing a wildcard on his last pick of the game from the bag, allowing him to buy the top 81/90 card.  (He then reported that on his journey home all the traffic lights turned green for him, so we're now expecting that he has only another 20 years to live before his soul is due in...).

Scores: David 160; Stu 155; Andy 95; Adrian 90; Otto 45

Peloponnes & Ra - 7 December 2016

Another cracking double feature of Peloponnes & Ra.  James got a huge early population growth followed by a similarly huge population slump in the final few rounds.  Adrian collected lots of prestige with extra points for his stack of money with the 2:1 card.  Andy got a better result but David won with an almost perfect balance.  Final scores: David 24/25 population/prestige, Andy 30/21, Adrian 18/40, James 12/26.

After Adrian headed off for an early night, we had a game of Ra.  Final scores: David 36, Andy 35 and James 33.  However, Andy had scored loads of points in all three epochs, ending up with "der längste Fluss" of 11 tiles of Nile, and there is a very very slim possibility that he picked up tokens representing 5 when scoring instead of 10, so should have scored something like 55 points.  Steward's enquiry generously awarded Andy the win.