board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 15th January 2009
A nice, clean and tidy shop (let's see how long that lasts ...) and another eleven people in (seems to be a popular number this year) ....
Players:
Darren, Dave F, David H, Mark H, Mark P, Mike, Nick, Rachel, Simone, Steve P, Sue
Games Played:
After a couple of false starts, we eventually settled on this one, which was lucky as we had eight people in by then ...
Nick:
19
Mike:
17
Rachel: 16
Darren: 14
Dave F: 11
David H: 6
Simone:
0
Steve: 0
This was a pretty low-scoring affair. The second mine blew up before anyone had even got in it, and the only mine paying out was the last one: I think there were only three people with gems before that last one started, and then suddenly (Mike and I having ducked out early like a couple of leading cowards) everyone started earning double-figures and my lead was looking pretty shaky! But luckily, they all died from gas poisoning, giving me the win.
We decided that eleven was all we were getting, and split into three groups ....
Dave
F: 86
Steve:
77
Mike:
69
This one hadn't been played for a little while (not face to face, anyway, but a few of us have been playing this a lot on Yucata). I think it was a first game for mike, but those scores look pretty close.
Game 1
Simone:
43
Mark H: 33
David
H: 14
Rachel:
13
Game 2
Simone:
34
Rachel: 23
David
H: 22
Mark
H: 6
Two games played with a random deck, and two wins for Simone. The second game was quite a long one, by all accounts.
Steve:
17
Dave
F: 16
Mike:
13
I think this was new to all three of them, and it ended up being very close indeed!
Meanwhile downstairs .....
(Buildings & Ships + Cash + Bonus points)
Darren:
(90 + 31 + 14) 135
Nick:
(108 + 17 + 7) 132
Mark P: (112 + 2 + 5) 119
Sue:
(72 + 18 + 0) 90
It was great to get another game of this one played, and it didn't seem to take too long (although looking at the score sheet, a lot of other games were played upstairs at the same time!). This was really interesting, as no one seemed to think they were doing very well. Mark shot off to a big start and looked miles ahead, but then seemed to stumble a little. Sue and Darren seemed to think they were always a little behind. And I got into big financial trouble about half way through, taking two loans to sort myself out, which I assumed had knocked me out of the running. So we were all quite surprised when we saw the final scores!
Back upstairs ......
Simone:
66
Rachel:
53
Mark H: 50
David
H: 41
David had been trying to play this for a couple of games nights, and he eventually got his wish. And then came last.
Dave
F: 13
Mike:
7
Steve:
6
This looks like they just played a single race, possibly waiting until the other games were all finished.
Simone:
77
Rachel:
88
David H: 92
Mark
H: 111
Another win for Simone, although this is pretty close scoring. I'm not sure we've seen a game of this where the winner got so many flies.
And finally, we were able to mix up the groups for the last games, as a few people left.
Rachel:
66
Mark
H: 61
Darren: 49
Dave
F: 37
This is quite a spread score-wise, although it was pretty close between the top two. Rachel was pretty pleased to finally win something tonight!
Saint Petersburg & Saint Petersburg Expansion
Simone:
83
David H: 82
Sue: 65
Steve: 58
Nick:
47
This was the first time most of us had played with the expansion (and with five players, for that matter), and it changes the game quite considerably! David and I went all-out for cash early on with our observatories and then both regretted it later, although David recovered much better than I did thanks to getting himself up to seven Aristocrats in the last two rounds. Simone relied heavily on points from buildings, only getting a couple of Aristocrats, and just managed to hang on by a single point. Steve was pretty much screwed from the start, but still managed to beat me, as I had far too many cards in hand for a game which doesn't give you that much cash to spend on them!
And that took us to the end of another fun night. Thanks all for coming along.
