board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 28th February 2008
After last week's quiet night, we had 13 of us playing games this week .....
Players:
Andy, Darren, Dave C, Dave F, James, Mark P, Mel, Mike, Nick, Phil, Rachel, Roj, Tim
Games Played:
As I had spent the best part of last week Englishifying the shop's copy of this excellent game, there was no way we weren't going to be playing it this week!
(Fields, Meadows, Wheat, Veg, Sheep, Pigs, Cows, Unused Space, Enclosed Stables, Rooms, Family, Cards)
James:
(2 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 - 2 + 1 + 8 + 12 + 10) 45
Nick:
(1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 - 4 + 1 + 4 + 15 +5) 28
Mark:
(4 + 3 + 1 + 3 + 1 + 2 - 1 + 0 + 1 + 0 + 9 + 1) 24
Phil: (1 + 3 + 0 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 2 - 2 + 0 + 3 + 9 +
2) 24
Roj: (2 + 3 + 1 - 1 - 1 + 1 - 1 - 1 + 1 + 9 + 9 +
2) 24
This was a great (and rather long) game, which was thoroughly enjoyed by all of us. We're not quite sure how we let James get so far ahead, though. He managed to get a couple of cards down early (the Private Forest and the Mushroom Picker), which gave him a pretty steady supply of food; and when the time came for him to start slaughtering some animals, he'd got a fair number of each type, and could take the losses. All in all, a nice little card combination that kept his family fed for the whole game. The rest of us ... well, it was a little messy. Despite my announcement, when going through the rules, that I try and play too many cards and forget to farm, I did the same again: Halfway through the game, I had one empty ploughed field and 6 cards played! Mark P got off to a flying start when we started totting up the scores, but suffered from still having a wooden hut and only one child. Roj was missing too many of the different scoring elements, causing him too many minus points to recover from - He did play a rather nasty card on those of us with kids (the Rat Catcher), forcing them to stay indoors for a couple of rounds! And Phil had managed to upgrade his house to clay, but had kept it (and his family) quite small, which allowed me to sneak past him.
A really fun game which took us - probably - about 2.5 hours to play, and another half an hour to pack away! Because of this, I haven't the faintest idea what else went on upstairs, so the rest of this will be scores only (unless I go and pilfer some session reports from Andy's website a bit later)
There were six left over at the start of the night, after the Agricola places were claimed, and this game does six rather well ....
Dave
F: 60
Andy: 57
Mel: 51
Mike: 48
Rachel: 44
Darren: 40
Looks like a pretty close fight, really, with only 20 points from last to first. I'm normally much more than 20 points behind the leader when I play this one!
They were up to seven players upstairs now, and the choices were a little limited this week for 7-player games:
Mike:
70
Dave C: 53
Rachel: 47
Darren: 45
Andy: 36
Mel: 35
Dave F: 29
Whereas this one looks pretty comfortable from Mike's point of view!
The group upstairs were now 8 strong, and split into a two groups. This was the choice of one group:
Dave
C: Medic
Dave F: Dispatcher
Mel: Researcher
Rachel: Operations Expert: All won!
I believe this game was the "standard" difficulty, with 5 Epidemic cards in the deck.
And the other four tried the new expansion for Railroad Tycoon.
Andy
Mike
Darren
Tim
Scores to follow .......
Dave C had to leave, but the remaining three went of to Pompeii ...
Dave
F: 10
Rachel: 7
Mel: 5
This is without doubt the largest spread of scores that we've ever seen for this game. Usually, everyone has 7, 8, or 9 people escape. I've only just noticed this - Otherwise I'd have asked Mel how she only managed to save five of her little dudes.
And finally .... there were 10 of us left over after everything else was finished to go mining:
Rachel:
10
Dave F: 8
Mark: 6
Phil: 6
Andy: 4
Mel: 4
Darren: 2
James: 1
Nick: 1
Roj: 1
This was a very odd game, with the honest dwarves winning three times in a row, and pretty quickly too! Each time, three of the Saboteurs were sat together and didn't like declaring themselves the first time round the table; by the time their turns came round again, the good guys had practically finished! Rachel connected to the gold a couple of times, giving her the lion's share a couple of times and enough for a good win.
And that's it for this week ... I'll update the missing bit(s) if I remember.
