Recent Sessions

27th August 2010 ... Endeavor
Nige and Mark W were both back from holiday this week so we decided to have another try at Endeavor, a game we all rated very highly first time we played it. This time, I wasn't quite so enamoured with it as I felt it took a bit too long. I also made a couple of mistakes early on which really put paid to my chances. The same seemed to be true of Mark K, although we both clawed our way back as the game progressed. Mark K especially did well to score an impressive 44 points on the status track. Nige, however, took an early lead and never really looked back. It did make him a bit of a target and if Mark W had managed to banish slavery, it may have made a bit of a difference. However, the carefully conceived surprise attack was dealt a fatal blow when Mark K pointed it out to everyone and Nige was able to make sure he could retaliate and prevent that event from happening. Still, Mark W did put on a good late burst and ended up as Nige's closest contender but still Nige was not to be denied and secured a comfortable win.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Nige		64	1
Mark W	7	60	2
Mark K		55	3
Garry		52	4
Mark G		50	5
20th August 2010 ... Edison & Co
This week, we started off with a game I've had for about 15 years and never played. This made Mark K very nervous about what was in store but it turned out to be better than we expected. Everyone plays a card to move one of four prototype vehicles along a race-track... but it's NOT a race game as I was forced to keep pointing out. It's a game of trying to position the vehicles in the best spots by the time a scoring takes place. However, we were playing very cagily with lots of oil slicks forcing vehicles to go backwards. Eventually, our final cards were played and scores totted up revealing Guy to have best managed where his vehicles ended up. Not a bad game but not one that's going to see a lot of play. Who's up for a repeat play in another 15 years?
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Guy	5	40	1
Mark K	6	38	2
Steve	5	31	3
Garry	6	29	4
20th August 2010 ... World Without End
Our second game of the evening was World Without End, which only Steve and I had played before (although my game was only two-player). This is a game about trying to gain victory points through helping with building projects or curing villagers from the plague, while making sure that you are able to feed your workers, pay your taxes and lead a pious enough life. This is tricky enough but every round, you face events that tend to make life even harder. Mark K got hit badly in the first round through not having enough piety and it took him until about three quarters of the game to recover the victory points that he lost at the start. Steve seemed to be the one best able to dodge the bad events in the early rounds but suffered later on. We only had three building projects in the entire game but I did more building than anyone else, whereas others were gaining benefits from housing. And the final scoring couldn't have been closer with me ending up with a spare coin for the vital extra half point to claim the win. Good game but I agree that Guy and Mark were at a bit of a disadvantage not having played before. Maybe they'll get their revenge next time.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Garry	8	44	1
Steve	7	44	2
Guy	7	30	3
Mark K	7	26	4
13th August 2010 ... Colosseum
This week, Mark K suggested we try Colosseum again, which I've not played since it first came out and what a close finish it ended up being. Mark K put on his opening show three times during the game, partly because the medium event tile he was working towards in round 4 was pinched by Mark G from under his nose. However, he still managed to attract lots of season ticket holders (obviously unable to believe that the same show could be put on yet again). Guy suffered from a lack of VIPs turning up to his events and Mark G seemed prepared to keep putting on medium sized shows, which I thought would have left him right out of it. However, through good use of the rest of his resources, he ended up within three of the winning score. I took a gamble on round 4 by buying my large event tile a round earlier than I had originally planned. However, it made sense as I was able to capture three star performers and two VIPs - who I didn't think would be in my vicinity on the final round. Hence my last turn was more about trying to protect my lead, so I bought the large event I thought Mark K was working towards (even though he wasn't as he was one coin short of being able to put on that show). In hindsight, I should have bought a season ticket instead as my repeat performance ended up scoring exactly the same 84 points I had gathered in the previous round, whereas I thought I would have lost more points through pilfering of my resources and disappearing VIPs. As it was, Mark K's final performance ended up 2 points shy of my total, although had he not been forced to use one of his emperor tokens for cash, the extra spectators would have been enough. Phew! Great game but just a little long for what it is to play regularly.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Garry		84	1
Mark K	7	82	2
Mark G	7	81	3
Guy	8	69	4
11th August 2010 ... Age of Renaissance
A mid-week session saw a full game of Age of Renaissance take place and it took them, with a couple of food breaks, 10 hours to play. Wow! Steve clearly was not impressed as he felt the need to write about it on Boardgamegeek, complaining that there was too much luck involved for such a long game. Apparently, he did suffer a fair number of unlucky die rolls but you would normally expect these to even out over the course of the game. Anyway, Guy was clearly the luckiest player as he emerged victorious.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Guy	8	1842	1
Mark K	7	1216	2
Nige	7	1146	3
Tom	7	494	4
Steve	4	402	5
11th August 2010 ... Notre Dame
The mid-week session continued, even after 10 hours of Age of Renaissance, with Notre Dame, which everyone bar Tom had played before. No details on how this one played but surprisingly it ended with a two-way tie between Steve and Mark K, which couldn't be broken by the tie-breaking rules. I say it was very careless play by the others to allow this to happen.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark K		63	1
Steve		63	1
Guy		56	3
Tom	8	52	4
Nige		42	5
6th August 2010 ... Space Dealer
This week, we started with a game that's a few years old that I still hadn't played. Space Dealer is a simultaneous-play game, where you carry out actions by placing a 30 second-timer on the item and once the sands of time have run through, you produce the resource, build the technology or land your spaceship at its destination. Players are seeking to improve their planets' capabilities, produce resources and deliver them to planets where there is a demand for those resources, thereby gaining victory points. After exactly thirty minutes, the game ends (a CD soundtrack acts as a countdown timer). Furthest along the VP track wins. The game seemed quite frantic, even though you only have two actions you can be working on at any time and each action takes 30 seconds. None of us really knew what the best strategy was, although improving technology level early on seemed obvious. Mark K then built a megacity or two which attracted his neighbours, while I on the other side of the universe could only look on while the spaceships with all the precious resources on them headed away from me. Steve pushed Mark quite hard but didn't quite catch him as, after the 30 minutes was up, Mark K was a couple of VP spaces ahead. We all thought the game ok and it was certainly playable but nothimg really stood out to make it memorable. The sand timers were a fairly innovative feature but the rest of the package didn't really offer anything special. And setting the game up and going through the rules took longer than the game itself.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark K	5	27	1
Steve	6	25	2
Mark G	5	15	3
Garry	5	14	4
6th August 2010 ... Seeland
Our second game was Seeland, a Gunther Burkhardt and Wolfgang Kramer game that I had played earlier in the week and really enjoyed. This is a clever tactical placement game where you are collecting crop and mill cards and placing them on a map to encircle the mills with high scoring crops. Very easy to explain and play but it uses a double rondel with one determining what tile you can take and place while the other limits your flexibility in choosing tiles. If you jump ahead one turn to grab a valuable tile, your ability to do so is limited until other players catch you up - and if they choose not to jump ahead, your choice of tile can be forced upon you by the player to your right. Quite tricky and unfogiving at times, as Steve found out. The three newbies concentrated early in the game on getting all their mills on the board whereas I spent most of the game with just one or two mills in play but scoring them pretty regularly. This seemed to pay off, particularly as I was also trying to ensure they were surrounded by all three crop types to gain bonus points. It was also intersting that the extra turn markers that Mark K kept picking up didn't give him s much of an advantage as I had expected, so the trade-off of losing points through uncovering farms against gaining an extra turn seems quite well balanced. Very good game in my opinion and a refreshing change from lots of the recent games that seem overloaded with lots of mechanics. Oh, and I won.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Garry	8	166	1
Mark K	6	129	2
Steve	8	116	3
Mark G	6	88	4
6th August 2010 ... Raceway 57
We still had time for a third game and decided to try Raceway 57 that Mark K had brought along. This is an old design that was republished by Front Porch Classics in 2005 and is very nicely produced. The game also has a bit more going on than we had expected. Movement is dictated by dice roll or play of one of your limited three cards, although the cards permitted to be played are also restricted according to your position in the race. You also have to manage your fuel, suspension, tyres and chassis with more wear being suffered the further you move and different elements being affected by where you end up on the track. We played a three lap race and we were surprised at how quickly our cars were degrading. Pit stops are essential as the penalty for blowing one of your components is severe - you only ever get to move two spaces until you get back to the pits. Mark G went into the pits twice and looked to have the race nicely sewn up with a healthy car but, in hindsight probably stayed in the pits for one turn too many. Amazingly, we all bunched up on the final lap and were in a line going into the final bend. And crossing the line, both Marks couldn't be separated so it came down to a photo finish - with a dice duel. And Mark K rolled his first good total of the entire game to take the win. Good fun, although at its heart, it's still a dice rolling race but there is enough extra going on to make it interesting.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark K	6		1
Mark G	6		2
Steve	8		3
Garry	6		4
30th July 2010 ... Breaking Away
This week, Mark K had dug out Breaking Away and, as there were six of us, this turned out to be an ideal choice. It's a long time since I last played this but I think only Mark K and I had any experience of the game. It's a nice game that evokes the feel of peloton racing really well and Steve, in particular, seemed to be enjoying it (not that his score would back this up). I sacrificed two of my riders going for the first set of sprint points and took first and second place, which gave me a good lead. However, Mark G was holding back a rider with some huge numbers. I took a risk by pressing a third rider ahead to take the second sprint but was forced to watch others creeping up on me as I staggered towards the finish line. However, although Mark G easily took his first rider across the line, I still got points with two of my riders whereas his others were a spent force at the back. Nige complained about the excessive glare from the laminated second edition board having put him off but the stewards were having none of it and I ended up with a clear 17 point advantage over my nearest rival. Good stuff.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Garry	7	49	1
Mark G	7	32	2
Mark K	7	24	3
Nige	6	20	4
Steve	9	18	5
Guy	8	13	6
30th July 2010 ... Cloud 9
Next up, we took to the skies in our hot air balloon for a game of Cloud 9. This is another fun game so Nige was bound to have grounds to claim that he was beaten by bad luck. However, unlike Breaking Away, first past the line doesn't necessarily win this one. Nige struck out to a comfortable lead but as he got closer to the finish he opted to become more conservative. Hence, as soon as he had the chance to jump out of the balloon with a score of over 50, he took it. The rest of us had more faith in our combined ability to steer the balloon higher, and especially in Mark G's top decking skills - to have drawn just the right card colour for his next dice challenge. And so it was, for the first time in the game, the balloon reached the top scoring level allowing four of us to overtake the sorry-looking Nige, just a speck on the ground far below. And Mark K is obviously the one of us most closely related to Montgolfier as he emerged the winner.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark K		61	1
Garry		58	2
Mark G		57	3
Guy		55	4
Nige		52	5
Steve		48	6
23rd July 2010 ... El Grande
I was still on holiday this week so Nige again recorded the scores. Disappointed to miss this one as El Grande is one of my favourite games and I haven't played it for ages. Mark K took the win.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark K	8	127	1
Nige	9	117	2
Steve	8	110	3
Guy	8	97	4
16th July 2010 ... Traders of Genoa, The
I was on holiday this week so Nige recorded the scores. Apparently, this was closer than the scores suggest with Guy getting loads of points at the end of the game but it wasn't quite enough to catch Nige.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Nige	8	995	1
Guy	7	950	2
Mark G	8	895	3
16th July 2010 ... Dominion
Nige also recorded the scores for this one in which Guy wiped the floor with the other two with an uncontested Garden strategy.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Guy		73	1
Nige		51	2
Mark G		36	3
9th July 2010 ... Amyitis
There were seven of us this week so we split into two groups. Nige was keen to play Amyitis so Guy and Steve joined him. Steve was the only one not to have played before so naturally he won.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Steve	8	56	1
Nige		54	2
Guy		39	3
9th July 2010 ... Siedler von Catan, Die: Deutschland Edition
Mark G suggested the rest of us play the Deutschland edition of Settlers so that's what we did as Mark K and Mark W had not played before. Mark W got off to a terrific start although he didn't make many friends with his aggressive tactics, cutting off first me and then Mark G - I think he now has more black marks in Mark G's notebook than any of the rest of us put together. My position, which looked absolutely dire at the start when I was only on 4 points at the same time as Mark W was taking his 8th, slowly improved and eventually I was able to grab the longest road. Although I briefly lost it to Mark K, I managed to grab it back and with an extra VP from one of my development cards was able to claim the win. Good stuff as always but I think I still prefer the original game as the board setup on the Deutschland version restricts the choices on how you can get to the target 10 VPs. You have a bit more freedom with the original.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Garry		10	1
Mark W	8	8	2
Mark K	7	7	3
Mark G		7	3
9th July 2010 ... Thurn und Taxis
The group of three opted to follow Amyitis with a game of Thurn und Taxis, which Steve has played several times before. I know nothing about how this one went, other than Steve won again - two good wins for the night.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Steve	8	22	1
Nige		16	2
Guy		15	3
9th July 2010 ... Atlantis
Having finished Settlers with about 30 minutes left, Mark K was keen to try Atlantis as he had missed out last time we played. However, everyone was determined (even those on the other table) that I wasn't going to win this time. They needn't have worried because, even though I was playing last and therefore started with more cards than everyone else, I always seemed to be lacking the right colour for the really big jumps. That said, towards the end I did manage to move one of my men all the way from Atlantis to the mainland in one go. Mark W was the first to get all his men home but everybody else was far enough advanced that the cost of reaching safety wasn't too big. And amazingly, when the treasure was totted up, three players (not including me) tied for the most, creating a three way tie for the win.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark W		9	1
Mark G	7	9	1
Mark K	8	9	1
Garry		2	4
2nd July 2010 ... Savannah Tails
We started off tonight with Savannah Tails, an ostrich racing game designed by the Lamont brothers that was released at Essen last year. Through the play of your cards, each of which shows a distance and the lane in which you need to end your move, you aim to navigate a course in the most efficient manner while avoiding various critters along the way. This was quite good fun, although we could probably have added in one or two more animal tiles to make it a trifle harder. Nige was doing pretty well until Guy managed to block his route, forcing him to slow right down. I was forced wide on the final bend due to the cards I was left with and this allowed Mark G just to pip me by a nose (or beak) at the line. That said, we were all very very close at the end.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Mark G	6		1
Garry	7		2
Nige	5		3
Guy	8		4
Mark W	6		5
2nd July 2010 ... Aladdin's Dragons Card Game
We then attempted Aladdin's Dragons Card Game, the card game version of the board game where the cards form the board. Confused? Now Nige tends to poo poo card games but he admitted afterwards that there was more to this one than he expected. It's basically a worker placement game where you are trying to gain gems that can then be traded in for artefacts - the aim being to collect the most of the fifteen artefacts available in the game. Now Guy and Mark G were the only ones to compete for the magic spells and this proved critical as Guy was able to use one of these to grab a critical second Aladdin's Lamp artefact, which act as tie breakers in the event of an equal number of artefacts at game-end. As it turned out, three of us ended up with four artefacts but Guy had the most lamps to claim victory.
	Rating	Score	Position	Winner
Guy	9	4	1
Nige	7	4	2
Garry	7	4	3
Mark G	7	2	4
Mark W	4	1	5