board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 1st May 2008
There were eleven of us in the shop this week, including the return of Mike who - it turns out - is not dead.
Players:
Barrie, Darren, Dave F, Mark P, Mel, Mike, Neil H, Nick, Phil, Rachel, Sue
Games Played:
The first six were once more off to the Caribbean for some racing and piracy ...
(Score + Gold +/- Treasure)
Phil:
(15 + 7 + 5) 27
Dave: (5 + 12 - 3) 14
Mike: (2 + 5 + 5) 12
Rachel: (5 + 0 - 1) 4
Darren: (-5 + 0 +
0) -5
Mel: (-5 + 0 + 0) -5
This was a longer game than usual of this one, which is a shame, as it's supposed to be a quick, fun race, and - thanks to some pretty awful dice rolling - became a bit of a tough, slow race! Phil finally managed to cross the finish line, a fair distance in front of everyone else!
Ticket to Ride: The Card Game (1)
There were three of us left over, and so we decided on this quickie ...
(Routes - Failed Routes + Bonus)
Mark:
(97 - 8 + 53) 142
Sue:
(95 - 31 + 35) 99
Nick: (56 - 38 +
24) 42
This was Sue's and my first attempt at playing the game with more than two players, and it's quite a bit different! I happily kept all of my starting tickets, expecting to complete loads of them during the course of the game, and then was very surprised when the deck started to run out before I was halfway there! Mark's experience shone through, as Sue and I both got caught with a handful of routes we couldn't finish.
The three of us upstairs were now joined by two more, and so we were off to Caylus ....
Nick:
73
Sue:
64
Mark: 53
Neil: 43
Barrie: 38
This is an interesting spread of scores, as during the game it looked pretty close. It has been a while since we've had a good game of Caylus, and I really enjoyed this one (although winning helps!). The game seemed to go very quickly, with all of us being surprised how fast the three different stages were getting completed. There was a fair amount of collusion and screwage, which is always fun. No one went for the bottom row of King's Favours, which meant the only way to get Residences and Prestige Buildings in play was via the lawyer and architect, both of whom only showed up at the end of the game. I had a residence for the last couple of turns, made sure I was going first in the final round to use the architect, and put a Statue up to earn favour from the King and move me a little ahead of the field. Sue had been hoarding gold and made an effort to catch up, but luckily I was far enough in front. It was Barrie's first game, but Neil kindly made all the stupid "beginner" mistakes on his behalf!
The downstairs group decided to stay as a six, and went off to Catan.
Rachel:
10
Dave: 7
Darren: 6
Mike: 5
Mel: 3
Phil: 3
You'd have thought this lot would have learned from their experience with the dice in Jamaica, but no .... off to another island where dice are just as important! Those scores are pretty spread out, so we'll have to assume that Rachel was raking in the resources while the others were suffering a little. Mel and Phil's scores are even more embarrassing when you remember that you start with 2 points each in this game!
We were down to 8 players now and one group needed a shorter game than the other, so this was suggested and it was off to save the World (again) ....
Barrie:
Medic
Dave: Ops Expert
Neil: Scientist
Rachel: Researcher
All win
This
was played on a "medium" difficulty level (five Epidemic cards), and
the team managed to save the cheerleader World with the red
death threatening to end their game prematurely: Despite the fact that the first
thing they did was cure this particular disease, they then decided to ignore the
threat it posed, which almost lost them the game before they finally found the
last cure.
The other four of us were off building Cathedrals. Well, one Cathedral, if you want to be completely accurate.
Nick:
49
Phil: 48
Sue: 40 (9 gold)
Darren: 40 (3 gold)
This was a very tight game. Phil was in lead for pretty much the whole of the game, but - thanks to the Market Warden and Prior Philip, I managed to just pip him to the post right at the end. Darren struggle a little for cash throughout the game, thanks to appearing very early out of the bag in the first round when there were a couple of cards that looked like they were worth the 13 gold it cost him. Sue managed to gain a few points from the Glassblower, but he had arrived a little too late to help her catch Phil and I.
Ticket to Ride - The Card Game (2)
And finally, the remaining pair from the Pandemic group gave this fun little game another play ...
(Routes + Bonus)
Rachel:
(153 + 53) 206
Dave:
(168 + 32) 200
This is the closest score that we've seen so far in this game. There are no scores for failed routes, as both Rachel and Dave played it a little conservatively and ended up with a few unused locomotives apiece!
And that was the last thing played this week. Thanks to all those who came along.
