board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 26th April 2007
Unlucky for some - 13 gamers in the shop this evening. The scores follow, now - thanks to Dave's suggestion - with added links to the games in the online shop (where appropriate) ....
Players:
Andy, Claire, Darren, Dave C, Gordon, Mark, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Richard, Simon, Sue, Tim
Games Played:
Mark and I were the first two in, and we amused ourselves with a couple of games while we were waiting. However ... extra people arrived before we finished this game, so I feel entirely justified in recording the score here!
Nick:
21
Mark:
19
We had played a game previous to this, but got the rules slightly wrong, so that one was null and void (I had lost that one). However .... This one was played properly, and so gets entered into the official scores! Mark seemed to suffer a lot from bad tile draws, as he was having great trouble getting the sets that I was getting. The upshot of that was that Mark was able to score a lot more than I was in the final scoring, as a lot of his green tiles were in the last few turned over. Luckily for me, it wasn't quite enough for him to catch me. This is another fun two player game from Michael Schacht.
All of a sudden we were up to six players, and so decided to try this game that Mark had picked up recently.
Gordon:
88
Mark: 87
Sue: 58
Dave: 51
Nick: 44
Tim: 39
Lots more people were arriving throughout this game, which made it go on a little longer than we all expected. This game is a lot deeper than the theme or initial rules reading suggested, and - shortly after the first scoring - it looked like it was going to be a two horse race between Gordon and Mark. It became exactly that, with Sue's snakes interfering with Gordon's Eagles and giving the "largest herd" bonus to Mark's bears. This was almost - but not quite enough for Mark to pip Gordon for the win, although a 2-point bonus for second most food brought him within a point.
Six more players installed themselves upstairs for a quick playing of this excellent auction game.
Richard:
95
Simon: 94
Rachel: 88
Claire: 84
Darren: 77
Andy: 64
I know nothing about this one, although Richard did mention how pleased he was to steal the win after a particularly poor start. However, this was bound to be enjoyed by all, as it really is an excellent game.
The non-Wildlife players were now up to seven, and so split into a three and a four to play a couple of the newer releases:
Richard:
50
Simon: 45
Claire: 44
I know absolutely nothing about this one. It has seen a lot of play recently (possibly appearing at 6 or 7 consecutive games nights) and is proving to be very popular with all who play it.
The group of four went off to Rome to put on some shows ....
Andy:
89
Darren: 74
Neil: 73
Rachel: 66
Another game I know absolutely nothing about. It looks like Andy put on a pretty spectacular show in the final round, as that is quite an impressive number of spectators to attract 9assuming it's 89,000 and not just 89). Another one that has been getting a lot of table time recently.
Formula Motor Racing
The Wildlife game finally came to an end, and so we played a quick couple of races while we waited for the two above games to end.
Sue:
(0 + 0 + 10 + 3) 13
Nick: (3 + 0 +
6 + 2) 11
Dave: (10 + 0 + 0 + 0) 10
Gordon: (6 + 2 + 0 + 0) 8
Mark: (0 + 1 + 4 + 1) 6
Tim:: (4 + 0 + 0 +
0) 4
This is a pretty old game, which I'd finally managed to get my hands on. Pretty simple gameplay, but a lot of fun nonetheless. Two races was all we had time for, as the upstairs crowd descended en masse shortly into the second race.
There was twelve of of left in the shop after Dave had to leave, and so we split into three group of four. This was the first game to get underway.
(Temples Towers Huts)
Andy:
3 1 16
Claire: 2 1 18
Rachel: 2 1 18
Neil: 1
2 15
Another game that was enjoyed by all who played, this is a gorgeous-looking almost-abstract game of building settlements using landscape tiles and three different buildings. Andy grabbed the win by getting all of his Temples in play.
The next group went back to prehistoric times, trying to get their little water-bound lizards onto land ...
Mark:
33
Tim: 24
Darren: 14
Sue: 8
The scores in this one can often be
quite spread out, but I've never seen that much spread from first to last
before! It looks like Mark made his usual lucky good guesses as
to which region was being scored next, while Sue suffered from the exact
opposite.
And the last group of four went off building in Arkadia. This is one of the newest games in the shop, and a very good one it is too ....
Nick:
107
Richard: 91
Gordon: 78
Simon: 64
This is an excellent game, although it may have helped that I had played a couple of times before and Richard had also played once (a long time ago). Getting the balance right between placing workers or buildings is crucial in this one, as both are in pretty short supply! Selling 12 seals half way through the game for a massive 48 coins seems to have swung the game in my favour, despite Richard's best efforts to catch up.
And finally - after the long-distance guys had to leave us - there were seven of us left to go mining for gold ...
Tim:
6
Darren: 6
Nick: 4
Rachel: 3
Mark: 3
Sue: 2
Andy: 2
Darren managed to be a Saboteur three times running. In the first round, Tim and I assisted him in successfully disrupting the plans of the honest dwarves, which in the second round Rachel and Mark turned bad, but the good guys prevailed and Tim discovered the treasure, helping himself to two cards as all the good guys had intact equipment. The exact same three saboteurs were in round 3, and this time they were extremely impressive in their efforts to interfere with the mining, as the mine actually progressed further in the wrong direction than it did in the correct one! So Darren (with two successful sabotage attempts) and Tim (one good one, one bad one) shared the victory with six pieces of gold each.
And that was the end of a very fun night in the shop .... Thanks to all who came along.
