board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 10th November 2005

A good number of Shire Gamers at the shop tonight, with most of the regulars in attendance. The weather was a little better tonight, and the prospect of a game or two gave us a total of nine for the night.

Players:

Anthony, Cat, Gordon, Kev, Mark, Mitch, Nick, Sam, Sue

Games Played:

Blokus

Mark and Nick kicked off proceeding once again, while waiting for everyone. 

Mark:    -5 + -8 = -13
Nick:    -8 + -15 = -33

A comfortable win for Mark, who played a pretty good aggressive game all the way through, and stopped me from getting anywhere with my colours.

Verflixxt!

Sue, Mark, Mitch and Nick started a game of Verflixxt!, but Gordon arrived shortly after (as he did on Tuesday), and so we abandoned it for Beowulf. However, everyone else arrived shortly after that and did pick up Verflixxt!:

Sam:    36
Cat:    8
Anthony:    8
Kev:    -8

A pretty comfortable win for Sam in that one!

Beowulf

This has made a few pretty successful outings at Shire Gamers, but Gordon and I had never managed to get in a game before, so we were anxious to give it a go.

Nick:    27
Gordon:    25
Mitch:    19
Sue:    18
Mark:    27-20 = 7

And the newbies take the first two positions! The others should be ashamed (especially Mark, who was unofficially dead).

Kreta

We'd been wanting to try this for a while, and we finally got to give it a try

Nick:    51
Mark:    50
Gordon:    47
Mitch:    36

It should be pointed out that Gordon had to leave us with about 5 regions still to be scored (obviously Aled Jones' lungs aren't what they used to be). We decided at this point to leave all his pieces on the board and score him points when they came up again.
It took Mark and I until the very final scoring round to overtake Gordon! (He had a pretty impressive lead when he left).
So, I guess if he had stayed, Gordon would have certainly won this very enjoyable game.
Mitch went for a "try and guess which cards are further along the row" strategy which didn't quite pay off, as when a favourable card did turn up, it was immediately replaced!

Fearsome Floors

While we were in Crete, the other five players went down into the dungeon. Bizarrely, they decided to try and escape from the safety of the outside into the deeper parts of the dungeon, but seemed to enjoy themselves just the same.

Sam:    3 out first
Cat:    3 out second
Kev:    2 out, 1 dead
Anthony:    1 out, 2 dead
Sue:    1 out, 2 dead

The monster seems to have given everyone a fairly easy ride here, as most guys escaped safely.

For Sale

Anthony and Sam had to leave us, so we were down to 6 players - the perfect number for a couple of quick closers..

Kev:    52
Mitch:    45
Sue:    43
Cat:    42
Nick:    42
Mark:    40

A very close game, with 12 points the difference between first and last place.

Diamant

Mitch was steering this one and making a pretty big mess of it - After three mines, we'd found a total of 7 gems (and lost those!). But ... things then picked up greatly as we realised that Mitch was just building up the tension for a huge fifth mine, where the brave were certainly rewarded as all of the gems appeared after one of each disaster card had already appeared.

Mark:    18
Sue:    14
Kev:    13
Nick:    13
Mitch:    11
Cat:    0

It's probably worth pointing out that Cat and Mark were together in the last mine, both with empty Treasure Chests. If Cat had left one turn before (when Mark did), she'd have been tied for the lead instead of coming last!

Boomtown

Due to the bus timetable, we were now down to four people. We probably should have gone home, but we had a taste for mining now, and wanted some gold to go with our rubies.

(Cash + Mines + Mayors)

Nick:    68 + 36 + 5 = 109
Mitch:    53 + 47 + 5 = 105
Mark:    40 + 51 + 10 = 101
Sue:    15 + 31 + 5 = 51

An extremely close game between the top three. I was the victim of a couple of explosion, and Mitch was coining money in (mainly from Sue) thanks to his Saloon and Saloon Girls, but I just managed to edge it thanks to a fair bit of income, a timely telegraph and becoming a mayor in the very last turn.

And that was the end of another Thursday night, although it was actually Friday morning!

Thanks to everyone for coming.