Devil Bunny Needs a Ham (20th)
Evergreen (6th)
Katzenjammer Blues (27th)
Klunker (6th)
Kontor (13th)
Krieg und Frieden (20th)
Mamma Mia (6th)
Money (13th)
Mush (13th)
Sherlock Holmes Card Game (27th)
Six Day Race (27th)
I don't know... I miss the club for one week and Garry manages to get the attendance down to three... You just can't get the staff... There were four this week, but now the massed ranks know I am back on the scene, we should see a dramatic increase next week... ;-)
Garry brought in a stack of the new releases from Nuremburg and, as I was due to go and do some buying the following day, I relished the chance to get a taste of what was worth getting my hands on.
First up was Evergreen, which claims to be based on the music/record industry, although that theme feels very loose. The game includes a set of six 'records' in different colours, each with a pointer that displays values from 5 to 12. Players have three cards each in front of them, face up. These cards are in the same colours as the records and have a numeric 'influence' value on them. Each record is placed in front of the player with the most influence on it. Each turn, players can play up to three cards on top of existing cards - their own or other players' - changing the ownership of the records. Each time a record moves to a new owner, its pointer is moved, increasing its value until it reaches 12 - at which point it falls to 5 to start the cycle again. Three times during the game and a fourth time at the end, a player can call a concert, scoring the value of the records in front of him/her. Added to this are the fact that one of the three concerts can be a 'gala' concert, which scores double points, and that there is a seventh 'record' which doubles the value on one of the others. This could all lead to a lot of pondering over moves, so a 50-second hourglass is also included to keep things moving. This works quite well although it is annoying if someone finishes their move with half the sand remaining, as you have to let it run out before you can start timing the next player. Quite a good game, but probably not a great one. Result: GL, TC, MH, SO.
Next we had a couple of games of Mamma Mia, which Garry described last week. Despite his comments there, I liked the sound of the game as soon as it was described to me - reminding me somewhat of Schnäppchen Jagd by the same author, one of my favourites. To demonstrate that I was good at this kind of thing, I proceeded to comfortably win the first game. And to demostrate that I wasn't as good as I thought, I went on to lose the second game dismally... Result 1: TC, GL, MH+SO. Result 2: SO, GL, MH, TC.
Our last game for the evening was Klunker, another game from Uwe Rosenberg - the author of Mamma Mia. The cards show various types of jewellery that players collect in sets of four to exchange for cash, more cash being available when fewer different types of jewellery are being collected at the same time. In order to help your collection, you must offer at least one card for sale to the other players and are also able to buy from them. Before buying, players add cards to their collections one at a time from their hands. The first player to stop doing so, gets first choice at buying, the second gets second choice, and so on - causing a bit of a dilemma. Any cards bought are also added to the collections, with sets of four being sold as they arise, before hands are restocked and the next round begins. So, does this lead to a good game? You know, I thought I'd be able to work that out with a little time to mull it over, but I'm still not sure. Further playing may show it to have excellent depth or to be tedious - it could go either way. Result: SO, TC, GL, MH.
Mick and Steve headed off home as Garry showed me his copy of Kontor and explained the rules to me. The gameplay seems closest to a simplified El Caballero and although the pictures of the parts had seemed very attractive, they weren't quite that good close up. All in all it was one that I took off my list of games to buy the next day, whereas Mamma Mia was one that I added to that list.
I was remarkably late this week for some reason that seems to have totally escaped me now. My arrival brought the numbers up to six, a more reasonable number than last week.
When I turned up, the others were just finishing a game of Money. Although I quite liked this the first time I played it, I'm not really sure now whether there is anything behind the game that makes it special - and I wonder how limited its appeal is. Anyway it does generally seem to be popular. Result: SO, MH, CD, GL, BH.
Next up, I had a game of Kontor with Chris. Now, when Garry showed and described the game to me last week, I had decided not to buy it, but after playing it I think I may reverse that decision. There certainly seems to be enough depth to the gameplay, without undue complexity, to make it much more interesting than you expect it to be. Basically, the game involves you laying tiles/cards to form islands in a harbour and the cards you lay determine who controls which area. Once an island cannot be added to any more (i.e. it is surrounded by water or the edge of the playing area) it becomes fixed and the player with the most power in that area gets to place one of their markers on it. The player with the most markers in play at the end wins the game. However, only the five largest islands count or, if tied, the ones closest to the centre of the playing area. This shaped my game somewhat as, forgetting the rule about the largest five islands, I thought I was being the sly old fox by winning myself a one-tile island near the beginning. I then spent the rest of the game trying to make sure that the rest of the playing area was filled with large islands (reducing the number) or one-tile islands further from the centre. As it turned out, I succeeded and won the game 3 - 2, but it was too close to call for most of the game. Result : TC, CD.
While we were playing this, the others had a game of Mush and, other than it being written by Alan Moon, I know nothing about it. So you'll just have to make do with the result until I play it. Result: GL, MH, SO, BH.
And now to a request spot, if you can cast your mind back to Kontor for a moment. Chris was very keen for it to be known that: despite the fact that this game has only ever been played once at the club; and despite the fact that he lost that game and is therefore second out of two in the stats - this is in no way the same thing as being last. Being last out of two would mean that all the other players had beaten him, whereas being second out of two meant that only one player had beaten him. I hope this satisfies Chris that his case has been put most forcefully. And I hope it satisfies everyone else that there isn't a shred of evidence to show that those members who have never played the game have done any better than Chris did.
There were only four of us again this week, and as I was fresh back from Beer 'n' Pretzels the previous weekend, we tried out a couple of the games I had picked up there.
In the hope of more people turning up, we kicked off with Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, surely the cheapest of the Cheapass games. This was the first time I had played it with four players and there was definitely a problem of crowding and missed moves because of other players' climbers in the way. We all had a good time with this one, Steve pipping me at the post because his first and fourth places (climbers to the top) scored one point more than my second and third. Result: SG, TC, SO, MH.
So, we followed up a very cheap (but good) game with an expensive and pretty (but good) game - Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace). This is the general production version of a game that was going around Essen last year in a very expensive all wooden set called Charlemagne. This set has wooden huts and six wooden building blocks hat make up the cathedral. It also has a very nice round board and even the box has been made to look like a large, leather-bound book. Despite the name, the game doesn't have epic proportions of the book and plays along reasonably quickly. The game is played out over about fourteen 'years' and each player takes the part of a noble trying to curry favour with the king. Each spring a 'problem' arises and the players bid using their supplies of the four available resource types to solve it. The winner gets a favour from the king or the right to add a piece to the cathedral - both give victory points. Next, players can use their remaining resources to add huts to their farmsteads, allocate serfs to cathedral building, attack their opponents (euphemistically called 'foraging') or defend themselves from other attacks. One by-product of spending a lot of resources in the auction is that you are open to a lot of attacks in this round. Finally, new resources are dished out ready for the next 'year'. The balance of the game seems ok and it is possible to come from quite a way behind because the available points tend to increase in later years. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing: it means that you can, as Steve did, come from some way behind to win in the last round, but it also means that this last round can have so much importance than anything else that wining the earlier auctions counts for nothing. We'll see. Result: SO, TC, MH, SG.
We did start another game of Devil Bunny Needs a Ham, but had to abandon it quite early as it became clear that time was running out.
It's half-term at school and Steve had brought along his son Jonathan to boost the numbers to five.
Starting lightly again, we had a game of Katzenjammer Blues. This is another of those simple little card games that is quite fun to play and soon over if you are doing badly. The cards are very attractive with a number of different pictures on them, but essentially are just valued from 1 to 5 with no suits. Rather like Money, by the same author, you bid with cards from your hand to gain other cards for your hand, hopefully trading in cards that are less use to you for ones that allow you to collect sets of four. You can then hand in sets of four like-numbered cards to collect a number of mice counters. Generally the mice soon run out while everyone is still collecting sets, so you know that you need to balance the collecting with the 'going for it'. This game was strange in that the cards ran out before the mice did, which I don't recall happening before. This was largely due to Jonathan's habit of bidding to win every set of cards that came up, but never getting a set to collect mice with - this meant that most of the cards cycled through his hand onto the discard pile and remained unused. It did rather stifle the game a bit, and certainly hurt Jonathan more than anyone else. Result: GC, SO, CD, TC, JO.
Next was my first experience of Six Day Race. This is a cycling race game where each player progresses around the track using an identical set of numbered cards. The twist is that you don't have enough cards to get around on your own, so you simulate slipstreaming the other riders by 'bouncing' if you land on someone else. If you play a card and move forward the requisite number of spaces to land on one other rider, you move forward by the number of spaces on the card again (doubling the move), if you land on a space with two other riders you move forward again by double the number on the card (trebling the move), etc. This generally means that if there is only one space that you can reach with other riders on it, you should move there - and here seems to lie the weakness of the game. I don't think I was the only one to feel that, not only was there only one (or less) realistic card to play each turn, but that there was no way to catch those riders that had broken away at the front. I was definitely less than impressed. Steve and Geoff, who had often played before, felt that it was an untypical example of the game and Steve insisted that the result was due to me and Chris playing our cards badly (though was unable to say how he could have played them better). They felt that the game really came into its own with eight players - and I certainly see how that could improve matters. I am also aware that the game does have generally good press, so I'm willing to give it another go should the opportunity arise with enough players - otherwise I'm happy enough to leave it alone. Result: GC, SO, CD, TC, JO.
We ended with a few hands of Sherlock Holmes. It had been a little while since I had played but it is such a breath of fresh air with its mix of bluffing your way out of danger and then trying to catch someone else red-handed. Result : CD, TC, SO, GC, JO.