Peloponnes & The Mind - 26 September 2019

A full house this evening for another great game of Peloponnes where David, yet again, drew the population growth civilisation.  There was a lot of money floating around in this game but with a famine and an earthquake before the last feed, food stocks were hit and some populations took a dive.  Final scores were Adrian 27 population and 30 prestige, James 33/21, Stuart 18/20, David 15/29 and Andy 12/16.

We then tried out a new game called The Mind.  This was a nominee for the 2018 Spiel des Jahres and won the critic's prize.  Essentially very simple: from a deck of cards labelled 1 to 100, players receive a hand of 1 card (then 2, 3 etc in following rounds) and, without communicating, they have to empty their hands in numerical order.  Get it wrong, lose a life.  With four players, try to complete Level 8 before losing four lives.  There are also shuriken cards which can be used to enable each player to discard their lowest numbered card, but we didn't quite work out how to use that to best effect.

We got as far as Level 6 a couple of times and were steadily improving how we played, learning what how long to wait for particular gaps between cards.  The group thinking does synchronise as you play.  Similarly, when it goes wrong, it tends to go wrong again quickly.  But when it runs really smoothly, it does feel rather good.  A fun little game for the end of an evening.

David - your potential exploit about discarding 100 is discussed here.  I guess it's probably better to play out and hope not to lose life, rather than definitely throwing one away...

St Petersburg - 19 September 2019

Over to Andy's for another game of firm favourite St Petersburg.  David and James both achieved 79 points but David took the win with five roubles remaining to James' two, and Andy scored 54.

Peloponnes & Medici - 5 September 2018

Two incredibly close games this evening.  The first was Peloponnes where, unusually, none of the disasters or final feeds had a really devastating effect on anyone.  David won with 29 prestige and 30 population, then Andy with 33 and 28, and finally James with 35 and 27.

We next played Medici - the old Spiel des Jahres winner from Reiner Knizia with a great bidding mechanism and opportunities for brinkmanship.  We haven't played this for almost two years but it's a cracking game.  Final scores were James 142, Andy 140 and David 139.

Airlines Europe - 22 August 2018

First play of Airlines Europe, the revised version (21 years later) of Airlines, which we played a few weeks back.

I'm pleased to say this lived up to expectations.  Same essential gameplay as Airlines but much clearer and less fiddly to play, and with vastly improved production values including the lovely little aeroplanes.

It's quite a short game (just over an hour with the three of us) and the first scoring round arrived much more quickly than we were expecting.  Good fun to play, some judgement in when to declare your interests in airlines, and some interaction in either grabbing the coat tails of other players' successful airlines or trying to take them over.

And in a further indicator of a well-designed game, the scores were incredibly close: Stuart 74, James 73 and David 71.

Russian Railroads - 2 August 2018

James brought his new birthday game - Russian Railroads over first a first play. This is definitely one of those games where the playing of the game is easier than the rule reading would suggest.

Players are building 3 Russian railways through placing different types of track, obtaining trains, developing engineering, building factories and recruiting engineers. As you develop the railway track, bonuses and opportunities are opened. For some bonuses the power of the trains is important. Recruiting engineers gives some in-game advantages and the most engineers earns an end-game bonus.

The game uses worker placement to decide actions, so awareness of what others want to do is needed to make sure you don't get blocked out.

In some ways the game reminded me of Tzolk'in where a number of different tracks offer many different ways of scoring points. In the same way as with that game, working out which of the many options to pursue is critical. Some options score early, some build for big points later.

David bought a lot of engineers and used them early to score bonus points and get an early lead.

James went all out on the Kiev line, helped by an early acquisition of a level 9 train. This line earns massive bonus points and for a while looked like an unbeatable combination as he caught up with David and then took the lead.

For this first game, Andy and James both balanced track building with industry and factories. This was a bit limited as the factories only really started appearing towards the end of the game, earning Andy some big points in the last couple of rounds.

At the end, David completed the Vladivostok line and was able to bring the high scoring white track into play with some double score markers. This combined with the most engineers bonus let him overtake James and win the game.

Scores: David 291, James 255, Andy 195.

Airlines - 26 July 2018

This is a classic from Alan R Moon, inventor of dozens of games including the Spiel des Jahres winner, and occasional Rivals game, Ticket To Ride.  James got it in a swap for Porto Nigra, a rather nice looking game but one that was always going to get overlooked in favour of others in the collection.

In Airlines, players are competing to become majority stockholders in several companies with the player owning the most valuable portfolio at the end being the winner.  Each turn, a player chooses between expanding an airline or playing stock from his hand. Expanding an airline adds to its routes on the board and increases its value but exposing your stock cards too early means that other players may not also expand that airline.  Scoring happens three times during the game and again at the end, but only stock played out counts, not what you are still holding in your hand, so timing your investments is key.  Clever game mechanism and pretty good player interaction as you keep an eye on the others' stock and try to takeover "their" companies.

This game was published in Germany in 1990.  And it has not aged well.  The artwork and production values of modern games is brilliant, and unsurprisingly Airlines really looks drab in comparison.

More significantly, keeping on top of which airline can expand routes in which region of the board is a bit of a challenge.  This is frustrating because otherwise it is a really good game.

Fortunately, the game was reimplemented as Airlines: Europe in 2011 and reading the rules, it looks (as one would hope) to have kept all the good bits of Airlines and got rid of the fiddly complicated bits.  And the counters are replaced by lovely little aeroplanes!  So I've bought a copy.

We had a full house for our game which was great.  Andy got a bit stuck with his initial cards and, after helping Stu earn plenty of points for his monopoly airline, only really got a good set of points in the final scoring.  Throughout the game, first place switched from James to David to Stuart in the three scoring rounds, but the gaps got a little wider at the very end.  Final scores: Stuart 84, David 79, James 69, Adrian 51, Andy 27.

The Castles of Burgundy - 18 July 2018

Another outing for The Castles of Burgundy - the third this year.  David established an early and strong lead but James reeled him in and overtook in the last few turns of the game.  Final scores: James 237, David 217, Andy 161.