board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 12th April 2007

A dozen people in this week ....

Players:

Darren, Dave F, Gordon, Julian, Kevin, Lesley, Mark L, Mike, Nick, Rachel, Steve, Susan

Games Played:

Zooloretto

A new arrival, so the first 5 jumped right in ....

(Enclosures + Stalls - Barn)

Mike:    (32 + 2 - 2)    32
Susan:    (22 + 4 - 2)    24
Dave:    (22 + 4 - 4)    22
Nick:    (19 + 6 - 4)    21
Mark:    (23 + 2 - 10)    15

This one was a lot of fun. The influence from Coloretto is huge, as a lot of the mechanics are identical. But the ability to buy tiles from each other and to move your animals about means that there is a lot more to this one when compared to the card game. I can see this being a big hit in the pub on Mondays.

Colosseum

There were another five people through the door pretty quickly, and this was a fairly popular choice ...

Rachel:    84
Steve:    82
Darren:    76
Kevin:        75
Gordon:    57

This was a pretty close contest in the final round between Rachel and Steve, with Rachel just edging it by a couple of spectators.

Nottingham

While Colosseum was still going strong, the downstairs crowd was now up to 7 players, which limits the choices somewhat. This was the first one that sprang to mind, as most had played it before. It was a first play for Lesley and Julian, who were here for the first time:

Mark:    60
Julian:    51
Susan:    50
Dave:    46
Nick:    46
Lesley:    35
Mike:    35

This was a lot of fun, with a lot of stealing, robbing and hold-ups (yes, they're all different things!). A surprising lack of ambushes though .....

Portobello Market

The twelve of us managed to coordinate things so we were all finished at the same time, and so we split into three groups of four players ...

Susan:    118
Rachel:    111
Lesley:    106
Julian:    101

Rachel's first time teaching the game seems to have been pretty successful, as I am pretty sure that is Susan's first win at Shire Gamers, and the scores are all pretty high as well! This went down well with everyone who played it ...

Notre Dame

This excellent new game from Stefan Feld appeared for the second week running, and I was more than happy to teach it once again ....

Steve:    46
Gordon:    41
Nick:    36
Kevin:    23

Steve went mad with his coach, collecting around 10 of the 16 messages on offer. This earned him so many points that - despite the rats that plagued him a little towards the end of the game - we had great trouble getting anywhere near him. Kevin had a little too much rat trouble, and had to give up points for about half the game!

Pillars of the Earth

The last big four player game was this excellent new one, which is seeing regular table-time:

Dave:    49
Darren:    43 (2 gold)
Mike:    43 (0 gold)
Mark:    38

I don't know much about this one, although it was enjoyed by all who played it. The only player to have played before came in last, so let's put that down to being a very good teacher of the game!

Wikinger

Another first playing, this was tried out by the remaining players from the first two four-player games above ...

Rachel:    46
Nick:    45
Kevin:    44
Steve:    28

This was a lot of fun, once we got the rules all sorted out! A very, very close final scoring, as the victory points swung heavily between three of us, with Rachel's excess fisherman giving her enough points to sneak past Kevin and me (who were a little short of fish) and claimed a second victory of the evening. We all really enjoyed this one, and I look forward to playing it a few more times before introducing the "advanced" bits!

Pickomino

And finally, the other four players that were still looking for something to do grabbed this quickie to end the night ...

Mark:    11
Susan:    7
Darren:    2
Dave:    1

What sounded like a really fun end to the night. This one caused the usual amount of shouting and groaning, as Mark and Susan battled it out. The other two never looked in it!

And that was that for another busy (and warm) Thursday. Thanks all for coming, and we'll see you all next week!