board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 17th July 2008
Nine of us in the shop this week .....
Players:
Darren,
Jonathan, Mark P, Mel, Nick, Rachel, Rich, Roj, Sue
Games Played:
There were seven of us in pretty quickly, so went off to Nottingham while waiting for any others ....
Rachel:
50
Nick: 46
Darren: 43
Jonathan: 25
Mel: 25
Roj: 25
Sue: 11
This was an odd - and pretty quick - game of this one, as a lot of ambush cards came out very early, making trying to get points a bit of a minefield. So what happened was everyone waited a little, built up a hand, and went for the special scores. So they ran out with the sheriff not even half way through the woods. Rachel and I had both scored a couple of specials, but Rachel's were both worth 25, giving her the win over my two smaller ones, even though they were backed up by a small set!
Two more arrived while we were doing that, and they just had time for one hand of this ...
Rich:
35
Mark:
20
Difficult to judge after a single hand, so let's just say that Rich wiped the floor with Mark.
We decided to go for two longer games ...
Rachel:
163
Jonathan:
157
Rich: 135
Sue: 131
I know very little about this one, as it was taking place upstairs while I was busy downstairs .... but there was a fair amount of noise drifting down, which we can only assume was Rachel and Jonathan stealing routes from Sue and Rich!
One of my favourite games for 5 players .....
Nick:
101
Mark:
99
Roj: 99
Darren: 94
Mel: 72
As always with this game when you've got the full five players, this was a load of fun. It was a wildly fluctuating game, with Darren sprinting into an early lead thanks to spending his "13" card to grab a very handy scoring card, and we all had to hang on as best we could. After the first scoring Darren was off in front with me in close attendance, but Mark was a mile behind, having only been able to put a total of three or four guys on the board. As Darren and I became targets through the game, Mark's and Roj's provinces started to get stronger and stronger, tightening things up a lot (if you don't count Mel) as the final scoring approached. As we did that final scoring, we all became convinced that someone else had won it, but surprisingly I just managed to hang on by a couple of points. Great stuff .... I love this game.
The upstairs crowd had time to squeeze this one in while waiting for us to finish ....
(Colour + Bonus + Tiles)
Jonathan:
(12 + 12 + 18) 42
Rachel:
(12 + 12 + 14) 38
Rich: (12 + 7 + 12) 31
Sue: (8 + 10 + 12)
30
Another one I know very little about, although I did see some of the final scoring. Rachel managed to get the most Metro tokens with the bonus that carries, but also ended up with the most Archaeology penalties. Jonathan had picked up a few of the trendier areas, as well as getting the "standard" three bonuses from his different regions.
And now the downstairs group had to find something to do while the upstairs group finished!
(Cheques + Cash)
Darren:
(61 + 1) 62
Mel:
(53 + 0) 53
Nick: (48 + 2) 50
Mark P: (36 + 8) 44
Roj: (42 + 2) 44
Another game which is always a lot of fun. Easy to explain, quick to play. The cheques came out in a very strange order, meaning that some pretty poor properties sold for a lot, while towards the end, some expensive ones went very cheaply. Mark managed to pick up a cheque for $0 with his "23" property at one point!
We dropped down to six players, which meant we could finally get a game of this in ....
(Board points + Card points)
Rachel:
(35 + 11) 46
Sue:
(22 + 12) 34
Nick: (27 + 0) 27
Rich: (8 + 16) 24
Roj: (16 + 8) 24
Darren: (17 + 5) 22
This was a fun auction game, although it had been quite a while since we last played, so we were all (apart from Roj) a bit rusty. We let Rachel get all three ships on James Cook's 35-point track, which was in retrospect a very bad idea, as she was guaranteed the whole lot for very little cash. I had a couple of Magellans, but it cost me too many cards and left me pretty skint for most of the game. Sue was spread out quite nicely, which seemed to do her well when it came to scoring. In the first round, we all managed three ships on the board, but at the end of round 2 I had only one ship standing while Rich had three; but Rich's ships were all about grabbing cards, and he suffered a little from not reserving any points.
And finally .... a party game!
Roj:
14
Rachel:
12
Darren: 10
Nick: 10
Rich: 8
Sue: 7
This was a fun ending, although I think the game will work even better with people you know (or think you know) very well! It was surprisingly difficult to come up with answers to some of the questions, and - when on turn - it was actually quite tricky to decide which answer you wanted to go with. A fun game which I can see getting a fair bit of use at our house!
And that was it for another week. Thanks to those who came along, and we'll see you all next week.
