board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 7th August 2008
Still a warm night, but a bit busier in the shop this week ....
Players:
Andy
B, Barrie, Darren, Mark P, Mel, Nick, Rachel, Rich, Richard, Sue
Games Played:
No surprise that this was the opener .....
Nick:
(12 - 2) 10
Darren:
(9 - 5) 4
Barrie: (5 - 7) -2
Rachel: (5 - 9) -4
Sue: No score.
This is always a fun game, but it's getting really tough to keep writing things about it. We rolled some dice and grabbed some tiles! After a long debate with myself, I have decided to give Sue the last spot for not actually registering a score. A minus score is better than no score at all.
Four guys decided to get this one underway as soon as possible, in the hope of finishing it before the end of the evening!
Richard:
41
Darren:
32
Rich: 30
Barrie:
28
Sadly
I know almost nothing about this one. I did pop upstairs to see how it was going
at one point, and Rich seemed very underrepresented on the board (thanks to
Richard, I heard).
After all that worry about how long the game would take, it was actually much
quicker than we expected, finishing in enough time to give them something else
to play later on.
Meanwhile the other four of us were waiting for two more to arrive, so decided to try this quickie .....
Rachel:
62
Sue:
60
Nick: 59
Andy: 50
There's always a lot of game here for your 15 minutes (or so). I was a fair chunk behind at the end of the first half, but managed to get a pretty large group going in the second half. Andy got a little done over in the end, as the turn order meant that Sue, Rachel and I all got to add to our large groups with the last three turns of the game, and he missed out. A close-run thing in the end, as Rachel grabbed the win by a couple of points.
And we still had time for another of these .....
Nick:
(10 - 6) 4
Andy:
(10 - 8) 2
Sue: (6 - 4) 2
Rachel: (5 - 5) 0
This win was a total surprise. I was trying to continue the game by stealing off someone else (Sue probably), and was a bit miffed that I failed and had to take the final tile from the centre .... And then it turned out that I was in the lead. Woohoo!
Mark and Mel finally appeared, so the six of us were off to Austria .....
Sue:
(Garibaldi) Escaped on turn 14
Andy:
Mark:
Mel:
Nick:
Rachel:
(Austrians) Failed to catch him.
This was a bit of an embarrassment for the Austrians. Having played every other game of this one with Garibaldi starting at No. 1 (the furthest from the escape routes), Sue started this game at No. 5, which was the furthest to the West, and the nearest to safety. The Austrians immediately decided that we should keep one patrol in the Western half of the map, somewhere near Ravenna. This was a great idea, and would have been even better if one of us had actually bothered to stay back there, but we all kind of ended up wandering to the East, and - by the time we first found a trace of Garibaldi - we realised that he had already slipped past us. There then followed a panicky spell where we all jumped on horses and rode Westwards, while desperately trying to hold up Sue by playing any events we could find. I think in the end we almost caught back up and possibly got West-side of Sue before she managed to give us the slip again and escape via a route in the Northwest corner.
Shadows over Camelot & Merlin's Company
Time for another "all against one" game .....
Andy:
Mark:
Mel:
Nick:
Rachel:
Won with 9 white swords
Sue:
Defeated as the (undiscovered) traitor
This was a lot of fun, and the first time with the expansion for a few of us. Andy was taking copious notes throughout this one, so I shall probably cut& paste his session report when he gets round to writing it. That's how lazy I really am! Mark and I went for the Saxons and Picts, while Rachel took on Excalibur, Andy went for the Tournament and Mel went for the Grail. Actually, now I think about it, I can't remember what Sue was up to (which should have been a clue) apart from getting captured and moaning that no one would come and free her, while secretly hoping that no one would come and free her!
And here's a space for Andy (much more eloquent) write-up. No pressure.
Meanwhile, the Galactic Emperors had the chance to fit in this new one ....
Rich:
36
Richard: 29
Darren: 27
Barrie:
25
I think it's fair to say that the rulebook for this one is not the best. Now, while I don't know a whole lot about how this game went, I have since discovered a rule that we had wrong which may have inadvertently helped Rich to the win (you're not supposed to move Influence Markers to the guilds .... only to the Provinces or Ports .... and then, it can't be one on its "used" side. However ... they were all playing with the same rules, so I'm not taking anything away from Rich. Well, not much!
And - for the first time in what seems like ages - we managed to get our traditional closer in.
Andy:
10
Nick:
7
Rachel: 6
Rich: 6
Darren: 4
Sue: 3
This was a load of fun, and nice to see it back on the table. Darren was actually on the winning side for the first three rounds, but was suffering with broken equipment for a lot of that time. I collected three times, as did Andy, but Andy was the one who connected a couple of times and got a much better haul. I managed to boost my score by one in the final round by breaking Sue's tools just before we found the gold, which was quite amusing (to everyone apart from Sue .... But that's what you get for spending most of the evening playing against everyone else!).
And that was all we had time for this Thursday .... Thanks to all those who came along.
