board games & card games for all ages
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Thursday 25th June 2009
Another ten of us in a very warm shop this week. Well, eleven, but one left before he'd played anything !
Players:
Darren, Dave F, Jahaan, Mark H, Mark P, Mel, Mike, Neil C, Nick, Rachel
Games Played:
Here's a starter we hadn't played for a little while ....
Dave
F: 13
Darren: 8
Jahaan: 3
Nick: 1
Mike: 0
Rachel: 0
This was a bit of a whitewash actually. Not sure we've had a score that high before, although Darren's and Dave's stacks were actually the same height. It's just that Dave's was full of 2s and 3s, while Darren had a few cheaper tiles in his. I skillfully avoided a duck, keeping me out of the red and in the black, as Jim Bowen once said.
We then split into two groups, sending five people to a rather warm upstairs ....
Mel:
31
Mark
H: 30
Mike: 23
Jahaan: 12
Rachel:
11
This game was played with a random selection of 10 Intrigue cards, and took quite some time longer than a regular Dominion game. I know the Torturer and Masquerade were in it, as I heard reference to drawing curses and passing them on, but I don't know a lot else, to be honest.
Still on my Steam kick, I wanted to give this a go in the peace and quiet of a Thursday night, instead of after a couple of pints of beer ....
Nick:
45
Dave
F: 43
Mark P: 34
Darren: 33 (2)
Neil
C: 33 (1)
And looks what a difference sobriety makes! Woohoo! Actually, this was a very enjoyable game, with a lot of interaction and taking of actions that the next player was about to take. In the final round, we were all searching for that one remaining link that might get us an extra point, but luckily my "first to build" option got me the only one (but it took forever to find it!). In fact, it was links that won me the game really, as I had built 13 by the end of the game, while most other players were on 10 or so. At the start, I was left on my own in the North East, while the other guys were all connected in the lower half of the map. But I wasn't on my own for long, but luckily there were a few goods that had to use my tracks. Dave was the only one making 6-point deliveries, but luckily for me he had the fewest links, which kept me in front of him.
(Tiles + Fincas + Bonuses + Unused Actions)
Mark
H:
(31 + 10 + 6 + 4) 51
Rachel: (31 + 10 + 0 + 6)
47
Mel:
(26 + 0 + 7 + 6) 39
Jahaan: (27 + 5 + 0 +
6) 38
I think this as a first game for everyone apart from Rachel, but I could be wrong. Again, the points scored for fruit tiles were all pretty much the same, and the only difference was ho had managed to pick up the Finca bonuses and the "one of each" bonus. Enjoyed by all, I believe.
Dave
F:
41
Darren: 31
Neil
C: 28
Nick: 27
Mark P/ Rachel: 22
So now it was the turn of the downstairs lot to try this new game. We decided to go with the first "pre-set" set of cards in the rulebook, so we probably missed out on some of the more "interesting" cards. That Pawn card is very handy ... it took me far too long before I bought one of those. The most interesting thing about his game was how the strategy from the first set (if you have 6, buy gold, if you have 8, buy province) was almost universally ignored. There were a couple of the VP/Action and VP/Gold combos costing 6, and they proved much more popular! A very solid win for Dave, who was streets ahead of the rest of us.
And then two silly games to finish with .....
Dave
F:
347
Nick: 176
Rachel:
60
Neil C: 0
Darren: 0
Now either we're actually getting better at this game, or we've just been lucky in the last couple of games we have played. Dave won this one in about three rounds, although I seem to remember passing him that 176 ... and I think I gave him two dice, with which he managed to get a couple more rabbits and another hutch level. He marked down something over 200, passed the stuff to Darren who - as expected by pretty much everyone now - reset them. After that, Dave was just getting a few points each round to nudge him over the 333 mark.
And finally, an old favourite ....
Nick:
(33 + 31 + 36 + 26) 126
Darren:
(37 + 31 + 26 + 29) 123
Rachel: (34 + 29 + 32 + 23) 118
Dave
F: (27 + 24 + 24 + 30) 105
This was a lot of fun, and very close all of the way through. We all had a poor final round, just at the point where anyone (apart from Dave, that is) who had even a half-decent closing round would have taken the game!
And that took us to midnight and going home time. Which was quite a relief, because it was quite nice and cool outside!
