board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 5th April 2007

A busy night in the shop this week (it helped that no one had to work the next day!) ... but most of the games took place upstairs, which means I don't know much about them, other than the scores, as I was downstairs all night!

Players:

Andy, Bridey, James, Jen, Jon, Mark L, Mike, Neil, Nick, Richard, Roj, Russ, Stewart, Sue, Tim

Games Played:

Pillars of the Earth

Nick:    51
Richard:    50
Sue:    43
Roj:    40

This was the first appearance of this excellent new game at the Shire Gamers. No doubt, we will be seeing a lot of this one! It was a first game for Richard and Roj, whereas Sue and I had played before. Richard seemed never to come "out of the bag" as early as he liked, although this did mean that he was fairly well off for most of the game. I grabbed the win by a single point, possibly more by luck than judgment, as I had exactly 18 cash to convert into 6 points in the final round!

Buccaneer

Mark L:    117
Jon:    110
James:    100

The next three through the door grabbed this quickie, which looks like it was a pretty tightly fought contest! Mark keeps up his pretty impressive record with this one.

Space Dealer

The next three through the door decided to grab this fun real-time game, as they had been assured it would take them exactly half an hour (after spending some time learning the game, of course)

Stewart:    25
Andy:    20
Neil:    19

A comfortable win for Stewart in this one, with Andy and Neil fighting hard not to be "in the red" in third place!

Dino Hunt

Another four arrivals and the upstairs groups were all shuffled around a little.

Jen:    50
Neil:    33
Mike:    30
Bridey:    26

A solid victory for Jen in this evolutionary little game. 

Colosseum (1)

All of a sudden, two simultaneous games of this new Days of Wonder release broke out! This was the upstairs one:

Russ:    75
Stewart:    74
James:    72
Andy:    71
Jon:    56

Wow! This one looks like it was pretty close, with Russ grabbing the win by a single spectator from Stewart. I do know that James' 72 was earned in the third round, which is pretty impressive!

Coloretto    

A four-player game of this excellent little filler:

Neil:    38
Jen:    32
Mike:    24
Bridey:    24

A good win for Neil in this ever-popular little card game - always fun, this one.

Colosseum (2)

The downstairs game of Colosseum finished at about this time ...

Roj:    89
Sue:    81
Mark:    78
Richard:    72
Nick:    64

This was a good game of this fun new one. I felt like I was never in it, having great trouble finding any good mixes of tiles for my shows. Mark put on the most expensive show in the final round, but had made too many sacrifices to get to that point, and didn't get enough extra points from bonuses earned during the game. Richard and I would have both performed a lot better, had Sue not greedily bid loads in the final round for a set of tiles we were both after! All in all, a good win for Roj.

Boomtown

Meanwhile Tim arrived ... the groups upstairs were shuffled slightly again, and this was the choice of five people:

(Mines + Cash + Mayors)

Mike:    (38 + 48 + 5)    91
Tim:    (30 + 36 + 10)    76
Bridey:    (39 + 27 + 5)    71
Jen:    (28 + 32 + 5)    65
Neil:    (39 + 20 + 0)    59

A good win for Mike in this one, who was (almost) leading in both of the major scoring categories at the end ... not an easy thing to achieve!

Cloud 9

And those same five players went from mining to ballooning ...

Mike:    69
Tim:    61
Neil:    60
Jen:    57
Bridey:    39

This looks like it was an interesting game, with no less than four players passing the game-ending 50 points during the same flight! A second consecutive win for Mike ....

Bang!

James finally got his wish and - four hours after he first started asking for it - a game of Bang broke out!

Russ:    (Sheriff)    Last man standing
Andy: (Renegade)    Last to die
Neil:    (Deputy)    4th to die
Jon:    (Outlaw)    3rd to die
Jen:    (Outlaw)    2nd to die
James:    (Outlaw)    1st to die!

After spending several hours desperately trying to get a game of Bang going, the other players decided it would be really funny if James was first to die, which is extremely mean of them, if you ask me! Quite funny though ....
This one looks like it came down to a one-on-one fight between the Sheriff and the Renegade, with the good guy coming out on top!

Notre Dame

And for the final game of the evening, the latest arrival! This is the new game in the Alea series and was the first game for all of us ....

Richard:    48
Mark:    45
Nick:    44
Sue:    41

This was an excellent game, which we all enjoyed immensely. A very close finish as well, which is always good! I am very much looking forward to another game of this one, as there were so many agonizing decisions to be made!

And that was that for a busy pre-Easter games night. I hope everyone has a great holiday and we'll see you after the holidays, next Thursday.