board games & card games for all ages

board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 7th December 2006

Another hectic day followed by a fun games night .... We were a round dozen this week.

Players:

Alex, Andy, Darren, Jen, Nick, Rachel, Roj, Russ, Simon, Stewart, Sue, Tim

Games Played:

Taluva

The first three in (and me) thought we'd give this soon-to-be-released game a run out:

Roj:    3 Temples, 1 Tower, 17 Huts
Nick:    3 Temples, 1 Tower, 16 Huts
Andy:    3 Temples, 1 Tower, 14 Huts
Alex:    2 Temples, 2 Towers, 14 Huts 

This one gives the impression that it's always going to be a close game. As it was, three of us went down to the second tie-breaker to decide the win, although we knew that Roj had got it as we played out our turns. A clever little game, and one that's tricky to place the tiles so that they help only you.

On the Underground

Anyone who arrived while we were already playing Taluva disappeared upstairs with Darren's newly acquired game to travel the tube ....

Simon:    38
Stewart:    36
Tim:    34
Rachel:    33
Darren:    26

I know very little about this one, although it does seem a bit cruel that Darren went to all the trouble of buying this one so they could all play it, and then he gets beaten into a comfortable last place!

Ave Caesar

As Taluva finished and two more had arrived, the downstairs group decided to go off to Rome for some chariot racing. A series of four races were run ...

Andy:    (4 + 9 + 6 + 3)    22
Russ:    (9 + 4 + 2 + 6)    21
Roj:    (1 + 6 + 3 + 9)    19
Nick:    (6 + 0 + 9 + 0)    15
Jen:    (3 + 3 + 4 + 2)    12
Alex:    (2 + 2 + 1 + 4)    9

This ended up being a really tight battle in the final race between Andy and Russ. Roj theoretically could have still won the game as the last race started, but needed to block a couple of guys, which proved too difficult. I managed to be the only person to get blocked from entering the Imperial Alley and stopped from paying tribute to Caesar, and I managed to have it happen twice! So I am actually quite proud of my fourth position, considering I only scored in two races! 

Experiment

The upstairs group now finished riding on the underground and went off for a quick chemistry lesson ...

Tim:    18
Stewart:    15
Simon:    14
Rachel:    13
Darren:    9  

A good win for Tim in this fun little card game. Yet again, Darren provided the entertainment and was beaten into last place by a bunch of ingrates.

Australia

Finally, the timing worked and the two above games finished at pretty much the same time. The numbers dropped by one as Alex had to leave, Sue replaced me for a while and another couple of games were started. This was the first one, kindly provided by Stewart:

Roj:    114
Stewart:    81
Darren:    79
Rachel:    69
Sue:    52

I know very little about this one, although I did overhear a great majority of it. There seems to be an awful lot of scoring in this game, as there were several different ways to score which were triggered by practically everybody every turn!

Maestro Leonardo

Meanwhile, the other group of five were off upstairs to invent something ...

(cash + bonuses)

Tim:    (36 + 0)    36
Russ:    (27 + 0)    27
Andy:    (23 + 0)    23
Jen:    (15 + 8)    23
Simon:    (12 + 8)    20

Again, very little is known about this game, although it looks like Tim had the whole thing under control. Interesting that the two guys who decided to not specialize and try inventing lots of different kinds of stuff came out worst ...

Downfall of Pompeii

After a couple more departed, we were down to four players downstairs, and so we thought we'd return to Italy and try and build up the little town of Pompeii before the volcano erupted and we all had to run for it!

Nick:    10
Roj:    9
Stewart:    9
Sue:    8

This one was a lot of fun, although Roj suffered slightly under Stewart's attempts to gain revenge for an early dead guy. Sue unwittingly let me get a couple more relatives into town that anyone else, which helped when it came time to run, as I had a few more bodies to sacrifice as I desperately tried to get my escapees into double figures. As usual, a close-scoring game which I was lucky to take by a single guy, as I had more dead blokes in the volcano than Roj in second.

And that was all for this week. Next week is the last one before the Christmas break, so come along if you don't mind trying to find some space amongst all the boxes! Thanks to all those who came along this week.