board games & card games for all ages

Monday 17th March 2008

Eight of us in the pub this week, which divides up quite nicely.

Players:

Andy F, Darren, David F-F, Gordon, Neil, Nick, Rachel, Sue

Games Played:

Lascaux

Sadly, I left the score sheet at home, so this will have to wait until tomorrow!

Just to make this clear .... I didn't say that girls were bad at this game. What I said was that it was only girls that seemed able to score zero. And - luckily - Darren managed to back me up by at least tying one set of animals!

Hey! That's my Fish!

Meanwhile, Gordon and Neil had turned up, and had a quick 2-player game while they were waiting ...

Gordon:    53
Neil:    44

A good win for Gordon, who managed to lock in some nice little "islands".

Before the Wind

We were now up to seven players, and decided to split into two groups, for a couple of quick (we thought) games. This was the first ....

Darren:    50
David:    40
Nick:    28
Neil:    24

This is a very clever game, which Neil and I had only played once previously. It was new to Darren and David, but they soon got the hang of it! It' s actually quite tricky to figure out what we did wrong and what they did right, but I kind of felt that I was keeping pace with everyone else, but obviously wasn't! Neil had actually shipped a few times, but all onto small ships, which didn't help. A good win for Darren, hitting the exact trigger point with a total of 50! This takes a lot longer than it says on the box!

Thebes

And this was the choice of three, which we also thought would be over quicker than it was ...

(Artifacts + Exhibitions + Congress + Knowledge)

Gordon:    (45 + 13 + 6 + 18)    82
Rachel:    (58 + 9 + 1 + 5)    73
Sue:    (25 + 9 + 15 + 3)    52

Another good win for Gordon. From the noises coming from their table, it seemed that everyone was having trouble finding any artifacts (especially in Mesopotamia), although it looks as if Rachel (and Gordon, to a degree) got the hang of it by the end.

Vikings

Andy joined us, and so the Archaeologists all decided to go be Vikings instead .....

Andy:    55    (27 gold)
Gordon:    55    (18 gold)
Rachel:    39
Sue:    38

I don't know a lot about this one, although I think all apart from Andy had played before. It seems to have been a night for the first-timers. This one looked like a very close finish between the top two, only being separated by the tie-breaker.

Puerto Rico

Meanwhile, the other four of us decided to stay with a shipping theme ....

(VP Chips + Buildings + Bonuses)

Darren:    (23 + 15 + 0)    38
Neil:    (15 + 12 + 7)    34
Nick:    (23 + 9)    32
David:    (11 + 11)    22

This was a good win for Darren. The quarries were bought up really fast (Darren grabbed four of them!), which left me without one. I immediately had to abandon building for the option of shipping as much as I could as often as possible. Neil and Darren were building like crazy, although it was only Neil who managed to get a large building in place and grab some bonus points. David was struggling this time, and never really got anything going. Overall, another fun game and a good win for Darren.

Kingsburg

Gordon had to leave us, so the remaining three went off to Kingsburg ....

Rachel:    38
Sue:    35
Andy:    28

Sadly, I know nothing at all about this one. I was too busy getting screwed over in Puerto Rico to see what was happening at this table, although it looks like a pretty good win for Rachel, with Sue pushing her all the way.

High Society

The PR guys had time for a quickie while waiting for the others to catch up ....

Neil:    8    ($43,000,000)
Nick:    4.5    ($72,000,000)
David:    0    ($58,000,000)
Darren:    11    ($40,000,000)

Darren successfully managed to score the most luxury points in a very short game, but sadly just missed out on the "lowest cash dies immediately" rule by 3 million. This left Neil as the winner in a game which really ended before either David or I could spend all of our cash!

Saboteur

And finally .... our traditional closer

Neil:    12
Andy:    8
Darren:    6
David:    4
Rachel:    3
Sue:    2
Nick:    0

We played four rounds, and I was a good old honest dwarf on three occasions. The only time I was a Saboteur was the time that the good guys managed to find the gold, which doesn't seem to put me in a very good light. Neil was always my opponent, and fared an awful lot better than I did!

And that was all we had time for. A fair number of games played this week, and a lot of fun. There will be no meeting next Monday (24th March), as it is a Bank Holiday.