board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 11th January 2007

A dozen gamers made it out tonight ... 

Players:

Alex, Andy, Darren, Jen, Malc, Mark L, Mike, Mitch, Nick, Rachel, Richard, Tim 

Games Played:

Hey! That's my Fish!

The first four through the door tonight decided to play this game, as it was already set up and needed packing away!

Malc:    31
Mike:    26
Mark:    22
Nick:    16

This was a fun little start to the night, although Mark and I got in each other's way a little and blocked ourselves out of the reckoning. Malc and Mike continued for a few more turns, although Malc finally came out on top by reserving a whole line of ice pretty much to himself!

Downfall of Pompeii

All of a sudden we were up to eight players, and so four of us grabbed this excellent "game of two halves"

Andy:    10 rescued citizens
Darren:    8    (10 in volcano)
Rachel:    8    (11)
Nick:    8    (12)

This game rarely fails to be lots of fun, and we're beginning to wonder where the English version of it has got to! The more I play it, the more I think that you can get too many citizens into Pompeii, which means that you try and rescue the lot, spreading yourself too thin. That's my excuse, anyway.

Marvel Heroes

Meanwhile the other four players in at the time disappeared upstairs for an epic game of this new one. We didn't see them for quite a while after this.

Mitch:    17    (Avengers)
Mike:    11    (X-Men)
Mark:    7    (Fantastic 4)

I know nothing about this one, although - according to the score sheet - there was a special guest appearance by Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut: MVV (Most Valuable Villain)

Lost Cities

Tim & Richard arrived and played a couple of rounds of this quickie, while waiting for things to catch up ...

Richard:    69
Tim:    56

On the Underground

There were now seven players downstairs, so we split into a three and a four. This was the choice of the three ....

Nick:    63
Andy:    59
Darren:    55

This was a pretty tight game all the way. I spent most of the first half of the game at the back of the pack, but then I managed  to complete a slightly smaller version of the circle line, earning me eight points, and from that point on, I just managed to stay in the lead. 

Border Reivers

... and this was the choice of the four.

Rachel:    42
Jen:    28
Richard:    24
Tim:    16

Here's what I have for this one: Rachel went digging at the mine very early on in the game and no-one was able to move her until very near the end of the game. However, that proved to be too little too late, and they capitulated!

Gold Digger

Our trip on the London Underground finished first, and so we added a player (Alex, who finally managed to get away from work)  and went gold-digging in this quick little filler:

Darren:    14
Andy:    11
Alex:    9
Nick:    8

Andy managed to grab almost all of the large "gold" cards in this one, but towards the end of the game, Alex had the casting vote as she could choose to share a mine with either me or Darren. She chose to share my gold, letting Darren go digging all by himself, and unwittingly put Andy out of the reckoning, while at the same time dropping me into last place! Grrrr.

Cloud 9

Now, the eight downstairs players rearranged themselves into two groups of four once more.

Game One

Alex:    53
Rachel:    46
Jen:    44
Richard:    38

Game 2

Alex:    52
Jen:    47
Rachel:    45
Richard:    44

A quick pair of game, both looking fairly close, and both good wins for Alex! Richard obviously pushed his luck just a little too much!

Die Säulen von Venedig

Meanwhile the other four of us went off to build the city of Venice from scratch in this excellent new Goldsieber game, The Pillars of Venice.

Tim:    84 (passing the 80 spot)
Darren:    69
Nick:    57
Andy:    52

Tim did the smart thing and jumped on the Gondola right at the start of the game, and we all failed to dislodge him (although the ball was in Andy's court, so Darren and I are absolved from blame) until it was a little too late, and he proved uncatchable. I managed to grab a few points in the very last turn, just to boost me past Andy on the track!

Experiment

And finally, the Marvel Heroes guys reappeared and joined the Cloud Niners for a quick visit to the lab ...

Mark:    16
Jen:    14
Match:    13
Rachel:    12
Alex:    10
Richard:    8

This one seemed to go down well with everyone (as per usual). Alex managed to find a broken flask which dropped her down the reckoning slightly, but Richard spectacularly found two broken flasks and an explosion, which actually makes his 8 points quite impressive!

And that was the and of a pretty busy night here at Shire Gamers. Thanks all for coming, and see you next week.