board games & card games for all ages

Thursday 27th March 2008

Eleven of us in the shop this week.

Players:

Darren, James, Mark H, Mark P, Mel, Nick, Phil, Rachel, Roj, Susan, Tim

Games Played:

Haven't got round to this bit yet ...

The first four in were sat in front of this one and told to get on with it ......

Phil:    (4 + 4 + 3 + 1)    12
Mark P:    (4 + 4 + 2)    10
James:    (4 + 3)    7
Roj:    (3 + 0)    3

Four blokes. Four positive scores. 'Nuff said.

Coloretto

Meanwhile, the next four were off upstairs collecting animals as well ....

Mel:    38
Darren:    31
Rachel:    18
Mark H:    12

I know nothing about this one either. I wasn't really paying much attention to anything today, as will become apparent later when you see some of my performances ....

Gloria Mundi

We were now up to 11 players (in a way), and so we split into a six and a five .....

Phil:    Made it to Carthage
Susan:    14 steps back
Mel:    15 steps back
Mark P:    17 steps back
Roj:    18 steps back
Nick:    21 steps back.

This was a load of fun, as always. The first tributes were paid for quite a while, so when the first destruction started, it was pretty serious! From this point on, when we were all down to three or four buildings, the tributes started to get missed fairly regularly, and yours truly always seemed to be on the crappy end of these deals. In fact, I ended the game without any cards in front of me! Meanwhile Phil had got a pretty good "stepping" income going on the farming rounds, which proved very difficult to do anything about, as we all were being forced to play our green cards as he raced away.

Agricola

Meanwhile upstairs, five went off to the farm ....

(Fields, Meadows, Wheat, Veg, Sheep, Pigs, Cows, Unused Space, Stables, House, Family, Cards, Bonus Points)

James:    (-1 + 4 + 1 - 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 - 4 + 2 + 10 + 15 + 11 + 3)    45
Darren:    (4 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 2 - 1 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 3 + 9 + 6 + 3)    34
Rachel:    (1 + 5 + 1 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 2 - 3 + 2 + 3 + 9 + 1)    28
Mark H:    (1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 3 - 7 + 1 + 3 + 9 + 5 + 3)    25
Tim:    (1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 0 + 0 - 4 + 2 + 6 + 9 + 5 + 0)    25

Again, not much is known about this one. James had a 100% record going into this one, so we did send a spy up about half way through to make sure he was doing badly. The report we got was encouraging, as he had a four-room house but absolutely nothing else! So what happened between then and the end of the game, we may never know, but somehow he managed to get the points he needed. I blame the rest of them, really. Letting him get a five-room house made of stone, and then five family members to live in it .... inexcusable if you ask me. If I was playing, I'd have never let it happen, but of course I was too busy coming last in some other game.

Die Säulen von Venedig

After fleeing from Rome to Carthage (well ... one of us anyway), we decided to nip up to Venice instead.

Nick:    77
Phil:    76
Roj:    71
Mel:    69
Mark P:    65
Susan:    60

This was a great game, although it played out a little bit oddly. No one was willing to give anyone else any points so all we did was place columns for the first half of the game. This meant that the game was threatening to end with the highest score at about 11! But then all of a sudden, everyone was building and no one was planting columns, so the scores started to accelerate. A few times, people were in a winning position and able to end the game by placing the last few columns, but were worried about being overtaken before they got to build them. In the end, I got lucky as I was a single point in the lead when the start player card came my way, allowing me to end the game before I could be interfered with. Which is always a good thing.

Vikings

Meanwhile, the remaining farmers went off to Scandinavia ....

Rachel:    55
Mark H:    49
Darren:    44
James:    37

Rachel pulled off a pretty good win in this one by hogging the little blue fellas and gaining a whole heap of points for excess fish, while all the other players had to starve their poor little Vikings.

Pickomino

Our closer downstairs was this fun little dice game, with special grubby dice ....

Phil:    6
Roj:    4
Nick:    3
Susan:    1

And Phil managed to complete a pretty successful evening, despite spending the whole of this game looking like he was not only going to lose, but score absolutely nothing!

Felix - The Cat in the Sack

And upstairs, they ended with this fun little auction game.

(cats + mice)

Mark H:    (41 + 14)    55
James:    (39 + 6)    44 **
Darren:    (18 + 23)    41
Rachel:    (-2 + 21)    19

A solid win for Mark to end the evening upstairs.

** - Don't blame me. Blame the mathematically inept person that was doing the scores.

And that was all everyone had time for this week. Thanks all for coming, and we'll see you all again soon.