board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 29th June 2006

The numbers went back up to normal this week, despite the heat (and Sue slacking off again to go to the pub).

Players:

Derek, James, Jo, Jon, Kev, Mark H, Mark L, Mitch, Nick, Philippa, Rachel, Sam, Steve, Tim

Games Played:

Aquädukt

Four of us were in early, and jumped into a game of this new one before anyone else came in and messed the numbers up!

Mark:    29
Steve:    27
Mitch:    26
Nick:    15

Mark went for a house-building strategy and let us do all the hard work with the canals. This seemed to pay off pretty well, although he didn't win by quite as much as we all thought he was going to. I did manage to lose by as many as we thought I was going to, but I blame the dice (and some nasty canal-building when I wasn't looking).

Ticket to Ride: Märklin

Keeping the theme of "games with umlauts in the titles", a five player game of the latest Ticket to Ride broke out upstairs ...

Steve:    165
Sam:    147
Mark L:    141
Jon:    84
Philippa:    68 

I know nothing about this one at all, although it looks like a pretty good three-way fight between Steve, Sam and Mark. 

Bootleggers

Meanwhile downstairs, we had another five guys all willing to learn something new, and attracted by the alcoholic theme of the game.

Kev:    $113,000
Mitch:    $99,000
Tim:    $67,000
Nick:    $63,000
James:    $36,000

This was a fun game, although Kev jumped into an early lead and we didn't make enough effort to stop him, allowing him to win in the 10th round of the scheduled 12. Mitch ran him very close, but the police put a stop his whisky-making enterprise just when he was about to claim the win. In round four, we found out how everyone was doing, and James was in a pretty close second. For some odd reason, we all decided to pick on him instead, and he hardly advanced from that point on. You could say it was a little mean, but we were just trying to stay in the "gangster" theme. Honest.

Bohnanza

Also at the same time, we had a four-player game of Bohnanza going on upstairs.

Mark H:    22
Jo:    21
Derek:    17
Rachel:    16

Again, not much is known about this one. It was Derek's Shire Gamers debut, and he was up against three experienced bean traders, which must have been a tough christening. A close-fought battle between Mark and Jo ended in a narrow victory for Mark.

Shadows over Camelot

With the upstairs games finishing, and Bootleggers still in full swing downstairs, a trip to the mystical land of Camelot was called for ...

Philippa:    King Arthur
Mark L:    Sir Kay
Sam:    Sir Gawain
Jon:    Sir Gallahad
Steve:    Sir Tristan

It turns out that the traitor was not amongst them, and a comfortable completion of the quests saw an easy victory for our group of loyal knights.

Cloud 9

And finally, the remaining five players decided to hang around for a "quick" upward race in a hot air balloon, piloted (quite appallingly) by everyone.

Tim:    73
Nick:    67
Kev:    67
Steve:    51
Mark L:    29

A nice win for Tim, finishing with only 1 point less than the maximum possible, by piloting his way up to cloud 9 in the last flight. A surprising number of flights failed to get off the ground, as all players seemed to be lacking one particular colour of card at some point. Lots of laughs and a great way to end the night.

And that was it yet again. Thanks to everyone for coming. Don't forget that there is no Shire Gamers next week, but we'll be back to normal by the 13th July.