board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 16th March 2006

Six is becoming the "magic number" for Thursday nights. Never quite the same mix of people, but always the same total ... very odd. Although tonight we had seven! (I just realised this, and I can't be bother to re-write the opening sentence, although it has probably taken me longer write this one, explaining that fact). And that last one ....

Players:

Kev, Mark, Neil, Nick, Sam, Sue, Tim

Games Played:

Manhattan

This is a recent acquisition, and I was dying to try it out, thanks to it being a Spiel des Jahres winner way back in 1994.

Nick:    71
Mark:    70
Sue:    66

A very close game, although - due to the way it plays - it looks like games will always be pretty close. Very simple to play, and yet very interesting - Every time we figured out our best moves, a quick glance down at our hands told us we didn't have the right card!

Chinesische Mauer

Another new arrival (in what turned out to be a night of new games), Great Wall of China is an interesting card game which Sue and I had tried with two, but I suspected would be much better with five.

Mark:    25
Sam:    23
Nick:    19
Kev:    14
Neil:    11

This was a very interesting game .... quite tricky to get the best tactics, and quite a bit of a brain-burner for a little card game. I thought I was doing much better than it turned out I was!

Mauerbauer

We now split into two groups of three, with Sue, Sam and Kev staying upstairs and trying another new game to Thursdays. Mason (as it will be called when it comes out) is a great new game from Leo Colovini, all about grabbing your scoring chances while you can, whilst building city walls in the countryside.

Sue:    160
Sam:    132
Kev:    125

A pretty solid victory for Sue, who - at one point - was threatening to lap everyone else, although looking at the scores, Kev and Sam managed to rein her in a bit by the end of the game.

Thurn & Taxis

Meanwhile downstairs, another excellent new game appeared. This one seems to be called the same in English, but is a great route-building and connection game from the designer of Puerto Rico (and his wife!)

(Stagecoach + tiles - houses)

Mark:    (10 + 19 - 1)    28
Neil:    (7 + 21 - 5)    23
Nick:    (5 + 20 - 3)    22

A good win for Mark, who ended the game with his 7-Stagecoach, while placing a bunch of houses in Baiern. I seemed to be asking the Administrator for far too much help, as well as closing small routes in order to get bonus tiles, instead of making them longer for other bonuses. And Neil got so obsessed with one particular city, he decided to collect it twice before he was satisfied!

Ticket to Ride - Märklin

Sam, Kev and Neil had to depart due to early starts in the morning. Luckily, Tim had arrived, which gave us four people who knew how to play Ticket to Ride, but hadn't tried the new one.

Sue:    168
Tim:    165
Mark:    158
Nick:    124

We all felt that Sue was killing us, thanks to claiming a number of 7-routes, although the final score was much closer than we were expecting. Tim and Mark benefitted from the most completed tickets. I made a couple of major errors (including going for the same route twice, ignoring the one I was meant to be going for!). Having played this once before as a 2-player game, I was surprised and very pleased with how tense the four-player game was. The timing of building up a network, or setting the passenger off for a wander round to pick up tokens is crucial, and when Sue finally went, we all followed in the same turn!

And that was the last one of the night. Some great games tonight, and a lot of fun. Thanks to those who showed up.