board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 24th November 2005

A healthy number again for this week, as the temperature stays below freezing outside. At least we missed all the snow ...

Players:

Cat, James, Jon, Kev, Mitch, Nick, Philippa, Sam, Sue

Games Played:

Blokus

Nick and Sue kicked things off with a game of Blokus while waiting for people to stumble in from the cold.

Nick:    -11 + -8 = 19
Sue:    -18 + -17 = -35

I tried a bit more of a blocking tactic, and managed to exhaust Sue's options pretty quickly.

Citadels

I have decided that there's no such thing as a "quick game of Citadels". We were now up to six players with the arrival of Mitch, James, Philippa and Jon, and thought that we could squeeze this in while waiting for any more arrivals.

James:    27 + 3 + 4 = 34
Mitch:    27
Sue:    23 + 3 = 26
Jon:    19 + 3 = 22
Nick:    21
Philippa:    20

Another win for James .... no one is quite sure how he managed it, but there we go! Mitch spent the game getting assassinated, and when he avoided that, he was robbed!

Emerald

An old Shire Gamers favourite got a run out with three new players, as Cat, Sam and Kev had arrived and were looking for something quick to keep them occupied. Mitch managed to teach them the basics of the game while we were waiting for James to choose his character for the next round of Citadels!

Cat:    31
Kev:    31
Sam:    18

A joint victory for Cat and Kev, leaving Sam out on his own in third.

Boomtown

We then mixed the groups up a little, as Jon, James and Philippa could only stay for another quickie. Cat decided to join them in another game of Emerald, while the other five of us went mining in Boomtown (and surrounding districts)...

Sam:    85
Sue:    79
Mitch:    69
Kev:    67
Nick:    42

Sam seemed to get a huge leap on us at the start of the game, with his pair of "7" mines producing a couple of times, and after that he just had to make sure he took care of the dangerous action cards when they appeared. The surprising thing was he wasn't as far ahead as it seemed, as Sue gave him a pretty good run for his money. I, on the other hand, was the victim of an awful lot of dynamite and expropriation!

Emerald (2)

The second game of Emerald was underway ob the other table ...

Cat:    29
James:    25
Jon:    24
Philippa:    19

Another victory for Cat at this fun little game, this time not having to share the spoils with anyone else!

Ra

With three people having to leave us we were down to six players, and split into two groups of three in order to get a decent game in before it was time to go. Ra was the offering (geddit?) on one table ...

Sue:    54
Kev:    49
Sam:    34

Every time I looked across, Sam seemed to have an incredible number of monuments in his stack. I was quite surprised when I saw the final scores ... I guess he missed out on points in other areas, in what looks like a pretty good win for Sue, possibly claimed by the +5/-5 at the end of the game.

Ys

In an effort to speed things up at the end of the night, we played two games with short titles. With a three player Ra on one table,  the remaining three of us tackled Ys.

Nick:    105
Cat:    104
Mitch:    104

Well ... that's what you call a pretty close game! As Cat took the King's favour and I grabbed second place, the scoring markers just got closer and closer together. Yet again, I was way behind on black gems, but I had made good use of the 5-point Commercial card earlier (earning the full 20 points) and managed not to surrender my lead after that (but I did cut it a bit fine!). Mitch made an enormous comeback in round 4, as he claimed pretty much all of the ships and took the lead in three of the gems.

And that was it for another Thursday. Lots of fun, and thanks to all for coming out again.