board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 3rd July 2008
A nice round ten of us in a rather warm shop this week ....
Players:
Darren,
Dave F, Mel, Mike, Nick, Rachel, Rich, Richard, Roj, Sue
Games Played:
I had already decided that the first three in were going to be dragged into a game of this one. Sadly, about six people all arrived at the same time, but we got it sorted .....
Darren:
118
Roj:
89
Nick: 88
Richard:
79
This is a nice new auction game. With several different market stalls to bid on, and a fairly limited supply of cash, it was quite interesting to see how it all worked out. I think Darren was the first to spot how powerful the "score these now" character was, grabbing the "+3" bloke and grabbing an early 56 points, which he never really looked back from. Roj and I both took a "+2" version of the same guy later in the game, but by then the damage had been done!
While the downstairs group were in Egypt, a quick motor race started (and soon stopped)
Rachel:
11 (1st & 6th)
Mel: 6 (2nd)
Dave: 2 (5th)
Mike:
0
Looking at the scores here, I'm not sure I've ever played this with less than 6 players; I can only assume that non-player-owned cars came in 3rd & 4th here, otherwise Mike's score of zero is even worse than it looks! This game was cut short after one race, as Rich arrived and they switched to ....
.... which is a nice little 5-player starter:
Mel:
12
Mike: 12
Rich:
11
Dave: 10
Rachel: 8
These are pretty close scores for this one! I have no idea if there is a tie-breaker in the rulebook, but there's no obvious indication on the score sheet, so we'll just have to say it was a tie.
We had a mix-round of the groups, and set off on a couple of longer games ....
Richard:
(44 + 42) 86
Darren: (48 + 27) 75
Roj: (40 + 31) 71
Mike: (48 + 5) 53
Nick: (44 +
7) 51
I was the only one who had played before, and got obviously lulled into thinking that this was going to be a very similar game (which it wasn't). This time, all players took a fair number of loans early in the game, which basically flooded the markets with cash and drove all the prices up. This meant that the banks which were so powerful in the "low-cost" game the other night were much less effective here, as earning $90 was less valuable than producing four resources of almost any kind! Richard set off with factories, ditching most of the capital from the game at the start. Darren was quickly self-sufficient, producing power and food in fairly equal measures. Roj was the farmer, I was the miner and Mike was producing the labour for us all. It is very interesting to see how different this game can be from one game to the next ... looking forward to my next play!
Shadows over Camelot & Merlin's Company
Meanwhile the upstairs group were off to Camelot ....
Sue:
Winner as the Traitor (9 black, 3 white, all knights deceased)
Dave:
Mel:
Rachel:
Rich: All dead losers.
From what Sue has said, the expansion makes this game a lot tougher for the knights who are trying to do good things! And when the numbers are only 4 against 1, they would have had a tough time of it without all the extra nastiness that the expansion brings! Sue managed to win in two different ways at the same time, as the last failed quest produced enough black swords on the table to give the game to the traitor, while at the same time - thanks to one of the new extra-nasty black cards - taking a life from everyone no matter where they are, killing all the knights except for the (unrevealed) traitor!
And to end the night for the upstairs crowd .....
Dave:
44
Sue:
17
Rich:
15
Rachel: 0
They just had time for two flights into space, with Dave coming out ever so slightly ahead of everyone else! I don't think this one was Rachel's cup of tea!
And - thanks to a couple of long games - this was all we had time for. Thanks to those who came out to play.
