board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 6th March 2008
Almost a dozen gamers in the shop this week ....
Players:
Darren, Dave C, Dave F, Jo, Mark P, Mel, Nick, Paul, Phil, Rachel, Richard
Games Played:
The first five through the door were quickly into one of our regular openers ...
Mel:
10
Mark:
9
Nick: 9
Dave F: 7
Phil:
2
Guess who decided to go a different way through the dungeon to everyone else, just as the coin tiles started to come out? After a pretty cagey start, where tiles were being rotated and destroyed faster than we could add them to the map, the coins eventually started to appear at the side of the map that Mel and I were exploring. Before you could say "magic door", everyone (bar Phil) had decided to join us, and then it became a race to the finish, with coins being taken almost every round. It took Mel five coins to get to ten, at which point Mark and then me were about to win on our very next turns!
We were now up to nine players. This was suggested and very rapidly filled with five volunteers.
Nick:
39
Mark:
37
Dave F: 26
Mel: 22
Rachel:
20
One of my all time favourites, but not one I win very often! I had the Pharaoh lead for the first couple of rounds (sacrificing the points both times for not having a civilization tile), but slowly built up a really nice collection of monuments, which gave me 15 points at the end of the game. Mark was fighting me for the Pharaohs, but it wasn't quite enough to grab the win. Mel had a pretty good collection of Monuments as well, but suffered in earlier rounds. And Rachel passed way too often, although half the time we didn't know she had!
And this was the choice of the other four players ....
Darren:
102 (13)
Phil:
102 (11)
Richard: 94
Dave
C: 88
I haven't had the chance to play this game yet, and it took place upstairs, so sadly I haven't the faintest idea what those numbers mean. There's even a tie-breaker, so it looks like it was a pretty close game, but I don't know what the tie-breaker was. Let's assume it was cash. So .... Darren won because he had a couple of quid more than Phil.
The
five Ra players were now seven, and so we split again. This was my choice, and I
soon found three victims players to join me:
Nick:
Ratsherr (€2,000)
Jo:
Oldermann (€3,300)
Paul: Oldermann (€2,500)
Mel: Patrizier
(€2,400)
I always enjoy this one, and we really should play it more often. I think my win here was down to me having a truck to myself at one point, after I tried to charge Jo and Paul to load some goods, and they refused to pay (not that it was an extortionate amount or anything). Thinking back, I would say that you can't afford not to load goods when given the opportunity ... which probably means that we're not charging enough when we win the auction to be Wagon Master. Which then means that we'd end up bidding more for that privilege. Which means we'd still all be fairly skint. Hmm ... tricky. Anyhow - back to this particular game - There was a little confusion at the end of the game, as everyone apart from me forgot that you could only promote yourself by two levels, and Jo had the cash to move up by three. Although, it wouldn't have affected the result - It would have given me the win by cash tie-breaker instead.
And that left three other gamers, who went on a bit of a gaming rampage, and played three games in a row, none of which I have the faintest idea about what happened:
Game number one.
Dave
F: Dispatcher
Mark: Operations Expert
Rachel:
Researcher:
All won
This game was played at "medium" difficulty (5 Epidemic cards), and was a pretty tight win by all accounts - Interestingly missing what a lot of people consider to be the two most powerful roles: The Medic and the Scientist.
Game number two.
Dave
F: 9 (1 in volcano)
Mark: 9 (6 in volcano)
Rachel: 7
How does anyone play this game and only get one guy thrown in the volcano? I wouldn't have thought that was possible .....
Game number 3.
Dave
F: 162
Mark:
147
Rachel: 113
A fair spread of scores in this one, and a nice win for Dave.
We were down to six players for the next 30 minutes or so, and we decided to have a bit of (random) fun with this one, which several people - surprisingly hadn't played before!
Dave
F: (14 + 18 + 0 + 0) 32
Nick:
(0 + 4 + 25 + 12) 41
Rachel: (11 + 12 + 15 + 16) 54
Richard: (14 + 19 + 11 + 16) 60
Phil: (21 + 17 + 25 + 7) 70
Darren: (17 + 16 + 21 +
28) 82
This was a load of fun, and fairly unpredictable (as you would expect). I got off to a fantastic start, but Dave finished with two straight zero round to beat me fairly comfortably. Darren, on the other hand, scored one of the highest recorded scores in the game (the game ends when someone passes 66 .... reaching 82 is quite an achievement).
We dropped to five for the last game of the night. We decided it wasn't enough for Saboteur, and opted for this fun relative of Bohnanza ...
Darren:
36
Rachel:
27
Richard: 26
Dave F: 19
Nick: 17
Hmmm .... when the person sitting to your right wins this game, it kind of reflects badly on you! Although my score also helps to reflect badly on me as well. This game confuses me for some reason. Every time I see the person two to my left pass cards to the person on my left, I think it's my turn, even though the people on my right haven't played yet! Told you it was confusing. Anyway .... a good win for Darren, closely followed by Rachel and Richard, while Dave and I were just making up the numbers.
And that was it for another week. Sue is back next week, so we'll have to behave again.
