board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 1st February 2007

A baker's dozen in again tonight .....

Players:

Alex, Andy, Darren, Gordon, Jen, Mark L, Mike, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Russ, Sue, Tim R

(I just spent 5 minutes double-checking the scores against the names to see who I'd missed off because there were only 12 names above .... it was me!)

Games Played:

Lost Cities

Sue was in early this week, so the two of us kicked things off before anyone else arrived ...

Sue:    (20 + 41 + 29 + 66 + 59)    215

Nick:    (90 - 4 + 39 + 18 - 19)      124

As per usual, I pushed my luck too far and despite a good first round, came out on the losing side in what used to be our traditional opener to every games night at home!

Clans

Mark had joined us by this point, and so the three of us went village-forming in ... actually, I'm not sure it has a location!

Mark:    47
Nick:    46
Sue:    45

A very close game, where I had fairly unsuccessfully guessed which colour everyone was. Sue had founded the most villages, but the bonus points weren't quite enough to boost her past the two guys.

Mission: Red Planet

By now we had nine players, and so we split into two groups, with the five tackling this excellent area majority game from the two Brunos:

Mark:    40 + 8 + 8 = 56
Gordon:    24 + 6 = 30
Mike:    22 + 8 = 30
Andy:    14 + 9 + 3 = 26
Nick:    21 + 0 = 21

I got well and truly beaten up in this one. In fact, we all did apart from Mark, who managed to avoid a single dead astronaut as we all went about killing each other instead. Not a smart tactic from the rest of us!

Yspahan

Meanwhile, the group of four went upstairs to buy some camels ....

Darren:    83
Rachel:    71
Alex:    65
Sue:     64

This game sounds like it was a big building game, with Darren and Sue managing to build the lot, while Alex and Rachel had five of them built. Alex went card-collecting, but obviously didn't pick up all the ones she needed to pip catch Darren ....

Peregrinatio

Tim had once more brought along his prototype game for the group to try, which the four latecomers got stuck into ...

Jen:    24 + 4 = 28
Russ:    23
Tim:    19
Neil:    16

El Grande

Meanwhile the other two games were done, and so the groups shuffled themselves slightly and grabbed a couple more games. Five played this one ...

Nick:    98
Sue:    89
Mike:    88
Gordon:    85
Darren:    74

Not a game I usually win, I benefitted from Gordon's choice of card at one point where he was forced to score my high-scoring region if he wanted to score all of his. This gave me the nudge which kept me in front for the rest of the game. A good game though, enjoyed by all (I think).

Hacienda

Meanwhile, the groups of four went off to Argentina to herd some animals ...

Mark:    181
Alex:    165
Andy:    142
Rachel:    131

I know very little about this one, although it looks like all of Mark's practising online has finally paid off!

Take Stock

Tim's game had come to an end, and so the same group started a game of this fun little stock-trading card game

Neil:    (181 + 12 + 68 + 20)    281
Russ:   (61 + 25 + 174 + 14)    274
Tim:    (92 + 12 + 69 + 0)        173
Jen:    (108 + 0 + 42 + 13)    163

I know very little about this one as well, even though it was on the adjacent table. I was busy planning my victory in Spain!

Santiago

The games all ended at something close to the same time. A few people left us, and those left once again split into two groups. This was the choice of the group of 5 ....

Nick:    75
Darren:    74
Mark:    67
Andy:    65
Sue:    53

This was a close one. To be honest, I didn't think I was in with a shout at all, and I did score a lot less than Darren and Mark in the plantations; however my fistful of cash helped swing the score my way once we'd all been paid!

Hey! That's my Fish!

Meanwhile the remaining group of three had a few games of this fun little filler:

Game 1

    Russ:    43
    Rachel:    30
    Jen:    24

Game 2

    Rachel:    44
    Russ:    32
    Jen:    22

Game 3

    Jen:    41
    Russ:    29
    Rachel:    24

Overall:

    Russ:    104
    Rachel:    98
    Jen:    87

Saboteur

And finally we were down to six players  .....  what else could it possibly be ?

Jen:    7
Sue:    7
Nick:    5
Russ:    4
Mark:    0
Andy:    0

A comfortable win for the girls, as they schemed against the guys to great success. We seem to get a lot of ties in this game at the end of the nights ... maybe we should be playing four rounds ?

And that was all for another week. Thanks everyone for coming along once again.