board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 4th May 2006

A beautiful day seemed to keep a few away this week, but we still had a fairly respectable 9 players in for the evening.

Players:

Darren, Jo, Mark H, Mark L, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Steve, Sue

Games Played:

Mykerinos

The opener of choice for the second week running, and a pretty similar result!

Mark L:    49
Steve:    39
Sue:    37
Nick:    31

I'm yet to get even remotely close to winning this one, although it's still a big favourite at the moment. An awful lot to think about in a pretty short space of time.

California

While we were still just four people, we took the opportunity to do some renovating to our Californian mansions in our second "opener" of the evening!

(rooms + gifts + bonuses)

Nick:    (9 + 4 + 8) = 21
Mark L:    (10 + 4 + 6) = 20
Steve:    (8 + 4 + 4) = 16
Sue:    (11 + 5 + 0) = 16

I seemed to set off really well in this one, grabbing some quick bonus cards. But then Mark managed to claw his way back in, and almost pipped me on day 12.

La Città

With the arrival of everybody else, we were now up to nine people, and so we split into two groups. The five stayed downstairs and went city-building in Italy.

(population + bonuses)

Nick:    (28 + 6) = 34
Sue:    (25 + 6) = 31
Darren:    (21 + 6) = 27
Neil:    (19 + 6) = 25
Rachel:    (19 + 3) = 22

As usual, everyone enjoyed the tricky decisions to be made in La Città. Neil tried to ride on the success of his previous attempt at this one, but sadly got on the wrong end of some emigrating, and had a city completely disappear off the map! Despite some food worries mid-game, we all managed to feed our people at the end of the 6th year.

Caylus

Meanwhile the other four players were upstairs building in the castle ...

Mark L:    67
Mark H:    58
Steve:    58
Jo:    49
Sue:    135

I know very little about this one, although Mark L said it was yet another really good game of Caylus. He won, so of course he would say that!

The Bucket King

Our game downstairs finished a fair bit before Caylus, and so we made a quick trip to the farmyard:

Sue:    The only one with buckets left
Nick:    2nd
Rachel:    3rd
Neil:    4th
Darren:    First to disappear

Darren got hit early with a small loss, and after a difficult decision about which bucket to lose, he realised that his whole pyramid was being held up by a green bucket, and he had no green in his hand. Oops. As we were just playing a single round, we played "to the death", and Sue survived quite comfortably.

Res Publica

And to end the night, we had time for this Roman trading game that Darren had brought with him.

(sets + pairs)

Nick:    (27 + 2) = 29
Darren:    (20 + 4) = 24
Sue:    (18 + 1) = 19
Rachel:    (11 + 0) = 11

This was a fun little game, although a little confusing at first, and a bit slow to get going, until everyone's hands had started to build up. Rachel seemed to get a bit stuck with some sets that were tricky to fill, while I managed to pull "just the right card" a couple of times from the deck.

And that was that for another week. Thanks to everyone for coming, especially to Steve who managed the hour's drive for the first time (despite the mess on the A500) and hopefully we haven't put him off returning in a few weeks!

And "Happy Birthday" to Mark L for this Saturday!