board games & card games for all ages

Monday 24th September 2007

Seven of us made the trek out to the pub this week .... 

Players:

David F-F, Faye, Gordon, Mark L, Nick, Rich, Sue

Games Played:

TransEuropa

Three of us were in nice and early, and so a quick trip round Europe was on the cards ...

This was pretty close after the first round, with all of us being near the end when I connected my route. The second was a little more one-sided as Mark finished pretty fast, costing me a few points and Sue a whole bunch. In the third round, Sue made amends by completing her route very quickly, knocking Mark down a few points, but knocking me all the way down to 0, thus ending the game. In that final round, I only managed to connect one of my cities .. and I started there!

Through the Desert

Rich:    65
Gordon:    57
Sue:    55
Mark:    49
Nick:    46

We did make one slight error in this one: We forgot to make the first two players have a reduced first turn. Obviously, if we'd remembered that rule, I'd have won by a street, instead of coming last!

Rich was off to a great start with some nice placements next to watering holes, and by the end of the game he'd collected loads of points from that and the oases. I forgot to enclose any areas, and managed to come a comfortable last despite having the longest train in two colours! It was Mark who missed out on a longest train token, so at least I managed to drag him down with me!

World Cup Game

Mark    (Wales)    3    1    (Brazil)    Rich

Gordon    (France)    4    1    (Paraguay)    Faye

David & Nick:    Out at Group Stage

A fantastic win for Wales, who were making their debut in our World Cup games. Brazil had put all their efforts into getting to the semi finals, but then stuttered a little at the death, only able to put together some ineffective attacks. I was one of the two players in charge of three countries, but still managed to miss out on qualification for the knockout stages, despite having two teams in the same group! Yes ... they came 3rd and 4th in the group, although I blame the dice!

Citadels

David:    (30 + 4 + 3)    37
Gordon:    (28 + 3)    31
Faye:    (25 + 2)    27
Rich:    26
Nick:    16
Sue:    16
Mark:    11

A very good win for David in this one, who made excellent use of the Magician to keep a hand of useful cards. Faye was a little bit of a warmonger, building a load of military buildings and choosing the Warlord wherever possible. Only Gordon and David managed to get buildings of all colours, while Mark and I just kept getting killed or robbed, quite often killing and robbing each other just to make sure we both did badly! Sue was a surprise, as for the longest time she had the most buildings, but they were only small ones and tended to fall down whenever she wasn't the Bishop!

Saboteur

Nick:    8
David:    7
Sue:    7
Faye:    6
Mark:    4
Rich:    2

A rare win for me in this one! Luckily, pretty much every hand I was dealt had a few "fix equipment" cards in it, which meant I could retaliate to being singled out for broken stuff (as usual). The only time the saboteurs won it, Sue and I were the culprits and - despite Sue picking on me during the round - we still managed to thwart the honest dwarves.

Dancing Dice

And just when I thought we'd avoided it, we had time for one more quickie ...

Faye:    3 Stamina left
Mark:    Last to drop
David:    3rd =
Sue:    3rd =
Rich:    5th
Nick:    First to drop (by quite some margin)

This was fun, as always, although my dancing shoes were even worse than they normally were, as I think I only avoided losing a point once in the whole time I was in the competition (which wasn't all that long, admittedly). Mark and Faye were comfortably ahead of the pack, thanks to a fair amount of rockin', and when the final dance-off started Mark was 5-4 ahead. However, a run of 4 straight defeats put him in deep trouble, and Faye comfortably outlasted him in the end.

And that was the lot for this week. See you all next Monday.