board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 11th May 2006

Another 9 players this week, and another lovely warm evening as well .... things don't get much better than that (unless - like me - you decide to lose practically everything you play!)

Players:

Jen, Kev, Mark L, Neil, Nick, Russ, Sam, Sue, Tim

Games Played:

Saint Petersburg

With three of us in early, we immediately jumped into a game of St Pete ...

Sue:    78
Nick:    76
Mark:    72

This was a great game as usual. Closer than usual, and I was just a little bit of cash short of catching Sue for the victory!

Blokus Duo

Jen and Russ arrived while St Pete was going on, and - after a rapid tutorial - played a couple of quick games of this one.

First Game:

Jen:    -19
Russ:    -30

Second Game:

Jen:    15
Russ:    -42

The first game saw a lot of blocking from both sides, resulting in some pretty high penalties! In the second game, Jen managed to block Russ off from half the board, and then casually played every piece she had left for a pretty comprehensive victory!

Boomtown

We were still five players, and opted for something not too long, just in case more people showed up.

(mines + mayors + cash)

Mark:    (40 + 10 + 50) = 100
Jen:    (32 + 5 + 39) = 76
Russ:    (34 + 5 + 22) = 61
Sue:    (29 + 5 + 8) = 42
Nick:    (38 + 0 + 0) = 38

An excellent victory for Mark in this one, who had an obscene amount of money in his hand at the end of the game. I declined a mine which produced on a roll of 6 with about five rounds to go, and a 6 was rolled for every turn after that! That's my excuse ... not bad tactics (like choosing a 2 over a 6), just bad luck. Honest.

Mag*Blast

While we were off in the wild west, Sam and Kev turned up and went into space for a quick battle

Sam:    Comfortable victory
Kev:    Lost pretty fast.

I don't know much about this one, but it was a much quicker game than its previous outing. Sam had the whole thing won before Kev got the chance to make the most of what looked like a pretty powerful hand!

Burn in Hell

With the arrival of Neil, we split into two group of four. The first group went upstairs to hell - if that's possible.

Kev:    331
Russ:    297
Sam:    248
Jen:    206

I know absolutely nothing about this one, although - judging by the advanced mathematics on the back of the score sheet - the scoring seems pretty challenging! Assuming that high score wins, Kev bounced back from his defeat in space to a nice victory in hell.

Goa

While downstairs, we were off to India to ship some spices and found some new colonies.

Mark:    41
Neil:    37
Sue:    37
Nick:    34

A good win for Mark here, although Neil made a bit of a surge near the end with some matching cards for extra points. I paid a fortune for three pink cards near the end of the game, and got three really duff ones, making me realise how much money I wasted!

Through the Desert

Burn in Hell was over and Tim arrived just in time for a trip to the desert.

Russ:    66
Sam:    53
Tim:    50
Kev:    45
Jen:    29

The rules to this seemed to cause some initial trouble, as no-one had played it before. However, it looks like Russ got to grips with them ahead of anyone else!

Mykerinos

Meanwhile downstairs ... we finished in India and popped over to Egypt for a later-than-usual appearance of our recent "opener" of choice.

Neil:    51
Sue:    47
Nick:    44
Mark:    43

This was an excellent game of Mykerinos, but a very odd one. A whole bunch of Sir Brown cards came out in the first round, which meant the museum was full by the final round. Another odd thing is that everyone seemed to get one big set of cards, rather than spreading them out. Neil pulled off a great victory by putting all his eggs in two baskets! Another good thing ... Mark lost his 100% record at Mykerinos!

Niagara

Sam and Kev had to disappear, but the three remaining players upstairs decided to try gem collecting a little too close to a rather large waterfall.

Jen:    6 gems (including 4 of one colour)
Russ:    5 gems
Tim:    4 gems

Circus Flohcati

Mykerinos was over pretty quickly, and so we looked for a short game to play while the camel were finished upstairs.

(sets + hand)

Nick:    66
Mark:   62
Sue:    61
Neil:    59

This was a really fun, short game. It took us about half a game to realise that a set of three high cards wasn't necessarily worth playing, but a set of zeroes was perfect. Tactics were then altered, and I managed to grab my first and only win of the night.

Saboteur

And finally, we all got together for a try of this new addition to my personal collection!

Sue:    10
Russ:    8
Nick:    4
Tim:    4
Jen:    3
Mark:    1
Neil:    0

This was a lot of fun. The first round was a bit odd, as the path was completed ridiculously quickly. However, the second round was a nightmare for the honest dwarves, as the saboteurs decided to make themselves pretty obvious and made an excellent job of spoiling the plans of the honest ones. Round three went the way of the honest dwarves, although several of us had broken tools, and therefore all of the gold was shared between Sue and Russ.

And that was it - a load of different games this week, and a lot of fun at the end with Saboteur.

Thanks to everyone for coming out again.