board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 15th November 2007
A lucky thirteen through the door again this week .....
Players:
Ben, Cal, Darren, Dave F, Mark L, Mark P, Mel, Mike, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Richard, Sue
Games Played:
The first five in the door plumped for one of our usual starters ....
Mark L: 11This was quite a long game, in Drakon terms, with Mark eventually getting the win with his sixth coin! This was possibly the first time that someone got to five coins and didn't win. Looking at the final scores, I would say someone was stealing from Ben ....
A semi-pre-arranged game of this one then began upstairs, and took most of the night!
Dave: 6
Cal: 4
Darren: 3
Mike: 3
Ben: 2
This game took over the upstairs and lasted pretty much the whole evening. I don't know much about it, although one of us would pop up every so often to make sure they were all still alive, and take them a biscuit. A good win for Dave, by the looks of it.
Meanwhile downstairs, all sorts of stuff got played:
Seven of us were waiting for Neil to arrive, so six of us went for a quick balloon ride ...
Richard: 53
Rachel: 31
Mel: 31
Mark P: 22
Nick: 20
Mark L: 12
This game is a great little filler. I think I managed to crash the balloon almost every time I was in charge, thanks to a hand of only two colours for most of the game! Richard made very good use of a couple of wild cards to get himself a good solo flight and a nice lead, and then spent the rest of the game jumping out for a handful of points, as we stayed in the crashing balloon in a desperate attempt to catch up. Rachel and Mel and a chance to overtake in the very last flight, if only I hadn't been the pilot!
We were now up to eight players, and a lot of them wanted to try this new one ... so we ended up with five on this game and three on the other ...
Rachel: 100
Nick: 89
Mark P: 82
Sue: 49
Mel: 47
This was a pretty tricky game with five players. Whether to ship small amounts to reduce others' income, or save up for a biggie and see how many points you can earn before you get bumped. Rachel was actually a fair amount of points behind everyone else at the beginning of the game, but then once she made one big shipment, her points just started ticking up and she slowly caught and overtook me (I went for lots of little shipments). Before we all knew it, the game was over as Rachel had reached the 100-point mark. I had spent a lot of points moving to where I needed to get to (although I had trouble getting close to the cities), while Rachel didn't spend a single point. We all did a good job of knocking here back enough to squeeze another round out of the game, but we were just delaying the inevitable!
And the other three went sheep farming ...
Richard: 28
Mark L: 25
Neil: 16
This looks like it was a two-way fight, which proves that it definitely helps to have played this game before! Neil suffered a little from not making good use of his land, while Mark and Richard were slaughtering animals almost as fast as they could buy them. Interestingly, it looks from the score as if no one upgraded to a stone house, with all three of them happy to live in huts with their children.
Mark had brought this kids game from Haba which he'd got in a trade .... and four of them went blowing magic carpets around the table ...
Mark
P: 5
Rachel: 4
Mel: 3
Mark L: 2
This looks like a really fun game for 5-6 year olds. Luckily, the mental ages for these four are all around that figure and they had a whale of a time.
Meanwhile, the grown ups were playing a proper game ...
Nick:
69
Neil: 62 (5)
Sue: 62 (5)
Richard: 62 (0)
As you can see from the scores, this one was pretty close. I had run away a little throughout the game by concentrating on collecting the most goods and not really caring about the guard (although I always made sure I had a horse or two). Neil was getting the guards and other nobles, as was Sue, while Richard went for goods like me, but made sure he nearly always had the largest team of horses at the same time. When the final scoring came round, I knew I would get caught a little, but luckily I had mode sure in the final round to get at lest 1 of each of the three nobles, and the few points I scored there kept me ahead. If Richard had discovered the power of the strongest horse team one round earlier, it may have been a different story!
After the flying carpet game, the four children decided to play this new card game from Essen ...
Mark
L: 5 (15)
Mel: 5 (14)
Mark P: 4
Rachel: 3
Everyone hated the game! Apparently there's a completely new rulebook on the web for this game, but I've also heard that it doesn't help a lot! The game was won by prestige (most buildings), and the tie-breaker was resources on the cards. All told, about an hour I think, which was by all accounts 59 minutes too long.
Having collected some taxes, the other four decided to go caravanning ...
Nick:
103
Sue: 72
Rich: 68
This is a very clever little game. It doesn't take long, it's very simple to play, and yet it keeps your interest very well. I managed to connect a large group of caravans with my last placement, which took the game beyond any doubt, although I think I may have been close to the win without connecting the group, thanks to concentrating on the ten-fish lake in both halves of the game.
And finally the game upstairs was done, and we all came together for a good old game of Saboteur ...
Richard: 6
Sue: 6
Dave: 5
Mark P: 5
Darren: 4
Mark L: 3
Nick: 3
Rachel: 2
Mel: 1
This was a pretty tight game, with the Saboteurs winning the first game, and the good guys winning the second. In the third round, Mark L and I were the only saboteurs, but sadly I thought that Dave was one of us as well, and fixed his broken lamp. He then managed to help the good guys connect to the gold, which was a little but embarrassing.
And that was that for another week. Thanks to all those who came along.
