board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 19th April 2007

Nine gamers in this evening ...

Players:

Andy, Darren, Gordon, Mike, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Roj, Sue

Games Played:

Wikinger

The first four through the door decided to get stuck in straight away:

Nick:    55
Mike:    53
Sue:    52
Andy:    41

A very close result once again for this excellent new game (soon to be appearing as Vikings! in English). A few fishermen were left in the bag, and so a couple of us were short some food. Mike was the only one who could feed more people than he had, and the fact that I hadn't used many sailors meant I had an almost full complement of Vikings to feed. However, my 7-point penalty just kept me ahead of Mike, with his +8 point bonus! Sue also took a penalty, but stayed close, while Andy suffered a little from poor options in the final round, and missed out on all of the final scoring for islands. I enjoy this one more each time I play, and we're looking forward to trying the "advanced" game some time soon.

Guatemala Café

Meanwhile, the next four through the door took this caffeinated game upstairs ...

Gordon:    30
Roj:    21
Darren:    17
Rachel:    16

I caught the last few turns of this game, and it looked like it was going to boil down (no pun intended) to who could block whose opportunity to score. When I got there, Roj's score had hardly got moving, as he had one large plantation which everyone else was more than happy to keep blocking. Eventually, he got it scored, and shot from last to second, but then Gordon managed to finally secure a win by scoring another type of coffee that had been blocked several times in the past, and no one could stop him grabbing the last few points he needed for the win.

Pillars of the Earth

We were now up to nine players, and so split into a four and a five. This was the four:

Roj:    50
Rachel:    47 (7 gold)
Sue:    47 (5 gold)
Neil:    43

A pretty tight game looking at the scores, with Roj grabbing a pretty impressive victory. All I know about this one is that Neil was busy grabbing points at every opportunity in the Priory, and then saw his lead disappear in the final round as everyone else was able to manufacture large amounts of points at the end of the game.

Fire & Axe

The group of five stayed downstairs to sample a newly bought game which none of us had tried before ...

(points + bloodied axe bonus + settlements + cards)

Darren:    (36 + 0 + 66 + 40)    142
Gordon:    (63 + 0 + 65 + 10)    138
Andy:    (82 + 21 + 0 + 30)    133
Mike:    (29 + 0 + 63 + 30)    122
Nick:    (46 + 0 + 45 + 30)    121

This was a fun game. Darren surprised us all by taking the top spot, as we'd all assumed that it was a battle between Gordon and Andy (or perhaps that's what Darren was successfully trying to convince us?). Andy had gone for an all-out raiding strategy, which was looking pretty good, but also made him look like a little of a target, as all of his points were on view, whereas others had some bonuses that were harder to calculate. Gordon made a good attempt to equal Andy's raiding feats, but got pipped at the post as Andy took the last couple of towns. Darren spent a lot of time trading and grabbing Saga cards, which was enough to grab him the win as he turned to settlements in the second half of the game.

Pueblo

As the Fire & Axe raged downstairs, the gang of four had time for a couple of quickies (which I know nothing about, other than the scores) ...

Rachel:    31
Neil:    40
Roj:    40
Sue:    57

Luckily, Sue wrote down the scores and mentioned that lowest score wins, otherwise I'd have written it upside-down. A good win for Rachel in this one.

Poison

And finally, a fun little card game to close the evening for the upstairs crowd:

Rachel:    (3 + 8 + 6 + 2)    19
Roj:    (4 + 2 + 8 + 6)    20
Neil:    (6 + 5 + 4 + 6)    21
Sue:    (17 + 10 + 9 + 10)    46

This looks like an incredibly close game, although the less said about Sue's score the better; it looks like she was without a majority in one colour for all four rounds! Another good close win for Rachel.

And that was all we managed this week. Thanks to all who came out.