board games & card games for all ages
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Monday 8th October 2007
A big jump in numbers from last week, with 12 of us in tonight ...
Players:
Andy, David F-F, Faye, Gordon, Haydn, Lesley, Mark L, Neil C, Nick, Rich, Sue, Tim
Games Played:
The first five in jumped straight into this rather odd little game ....
Nick: 29This game is always a bit weird, as sometimes the knock-on effects go on for quite a while! Especially in this case tonight, as nearly all the island tiles formed one big land mass, meaning there was a lot of sailing back & forth, re-arranging the boats on the beach, then setting off again! I had a big advantage in taking the last turn, as I could re-arrange my boats onto about four new islands, while killing a bunch of others! That was fun ...
After that, we were up to ten players, and split into two groups of five. Five of us wanted to play this one, and jumped straight in ...
(Cities + Citizens + Progress)
Gordon:
(14 + 11 + 3) 28
Rich: (13 + 4 + 3) 20
Neil: (10 + 5 + 3) 18
Sue: (9 + 6 + 0) 15
Nick: (8 + 6 + 0)
14
We hadn't played this one in a while (or at all, in Rich and Neil's case), and I really enjoyed it. Rich struggled early on, as his starting position got surrounded by Sue and Neil pretty quickly, and so he was a little stifled until Ships turned up. I was the opposite - I seemed to start very well, but got a bit run over once people started landing on my shores. Gordon on the other hand had a nice little peninsula to build on, and he'd got pretty strong by the time the ships came round, and no one could pluck up the courage to go after him! Neil beat me in a couple of battles that I really should have won, sealing my fate ....
The other five couldn't decide what to play ... and so went for this quickie so that the loser could choose the next game!
Mark:
4 Lives left
David: 2nd
Tim: 3rd
Faye: 4th
Andy: 1st to drop.
Another win for Mark at this fun dice game. Him and David - for some reason - both have a pretty good record at this dancing game.
Their plan didn't work, as two new players arrived and the group was now up to seven players ....
David:
25
Haydn: 9
Andy: 8
Lesley: 7
Tim: 7
Faye: 6
Mark: 3
There must have been some pretty terrible mines in this game. I understand that David was left in a mine by himself at one point, only to stumble across 17 gems on the floor. If that's the case, then the other four mines didn't amount to a whole lot ....
The gang of seven split into two smaller groups ....
Mark:
56 (1 cube left)
David:
56 (0 cubes left)
Andy: 40
I don't know a lot about this one, sadly, but that's the closest result we've seen in this game, I'm sure. I think they had to look up the tie-breaker, and once they found out it was the number of unused cubes each player had, a quick glance saw that Mark had beaten David by a single cube in his supply.
The other four players went off digging around Europe and Africa ....
(Artifacts + Exhibitions + Congress + Knowledge)
Haydn: (28 +
4 + 15 + 10) 57
Lesley: (36 + 4 + 0 +
10) 50
Faye: (37 + 9 + 0 + 3) 49
Tim: (39 + 4 + 1 +
3) 47
Those scores look a little on the low side, so I think we can assume there were some pretty poor results at the dig sites. A very close set of scores really, with Haydn's points from the Congress cards making the difference between first and last place!
The gang of three had time for another quickie while the other two groups were finishing up ....
Andy:
75
David: 74
Mark: 67
This looks like another very close game, with just 8 points separating first place from last.
Next up was this fun little race game, as we rearranged the ten remaining players into two new groups ...
Nick:
1st
Andy: 2nd
Neil: 3rd
Rich: 4th
This was a good race, and the way the tiles appeared certainly made a big difference and caused some real problems at times. Andy and I went racing off, ignoring the first few passengers, but eventually I decided to slow down and collect two ladies who were fairly close together, while Andy was still tearing ahead, finding the landing stages directly in his path, which was quite handy. In a desperate attempt to catch him, I burned all of my remaining fuel and sprinted along the inside of a tile, and - luckily for me - the finish tile appeared in the place I needed it to, giving me a much shorter route to the end than Andy had, as he was stranded on the opposite side of the river.
And the other six had a go at the "poo game":
Faye:
22
Mark: 16
Haydn: 13
David: 12
Lesley: 11
Sue: 2
A comfortable win for Faye in this one, with most of the others a little way behind. However .. all Sue could manage was a big, fat number two. Ha ha ha ! Oh dear .... * sigh *...
Diamant (2)
With seven of us left, we didn't have time for our usual Saboteur, and so it was back to the mines ...
Faye:
31
David: 29
Neil: 24
Mark: 21
Nick: 21
Sue: 20
Rich: 15
Another win for Faye, in what was a very close game (with much friendlier mines than earlier!). Faye and I were the only two left in the final mine, but I stayed for one turn too many, thinking that I didn't have enough gems (thanks to earlier cowardice). As it turns out, the gems in front of me would have just been enough to grab the win! Grrr.
And that took us to closing time. Thanks to everyone who came along .... it was nice to see so many people there on a Monday.
