David & Goliath (2nd)
Earthquake (16th)
Flusspiraten (2nd)
Grab (2nd)
ITC (16th)
Keydom (16th)
Krieg & Frieden (9th)
Liars' Dice (16th)
Lost Cities (9th)
Löwendynastie (23rd)
Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper (30th)
Nicht die Bohne (23rd)
Ra (30th)
Robin Hood (30th)
Tikal (9th)
Torres (2nd)
Twitch (9th)
Vegas (9th)
Seven today. Chris was a bit late but he turned up with a copy of Grab for me, so that was enough of an excuse.
I arrived to find Garry showing Mick and Ben how to play Grab. As there were soon six of us, we all restarted. I wasn't really in an active enough mood to play a reaction game like Grab, and it showed in the results. Jonathan, on the other, hand demonstrated his mastery of the game by winning for the second time in succession. By the way, the box says that it's for up to five players, but we have found it plays well with six too. Result: JO, MH, SO, GL, BH, TC.
Chris had brought in his new copy of Torres, the new game from the creators of Tikal. I tend to think of it as 'Tikal Light' as it plays somewhat more quickly than that game and there seems to be more planning you can do before your turn comes around. I had played/bought this at Furrycon and was looking forward to playing at the club. It turned out that it was not to be, though, as both members who had brought children along dumped them on me and took all the available spaces. Oh well. Result: GL, SO, MH, CD.
My reward was a game of Flusspiraten with Ben and Jonathan. This is a game which may work better with more players, but with three it becomes an endless round of the second and third players ganging up on the leader until he/she has to go back to the start, creating a new leader, who is then ganged up on in turn, with no prospect of ending until someone wears out or dies. Guess who wore out - there's no way I can keep up with Ben's ability to talk the hind legs off a donkey. Result: BH, JO, TC.
While we were still playing, the others finished their game of Torres and went on to David and Goliath. Result: MH, GL, CD, SO.
Six again, with no children at all - meaning that we should all get games with adults. One of the six was Karl, who we hadn't seen in a while due to his current work location. Mind you he said he had only come over tonight because there was an accident on the A1 and the traffic was very bad.
We split into two groups of three. I introduced Chris and Garry to Krieg & Frieden (War & Peace), which Chris had been keen to play for a while. This again proved a bit of a hit despite the problem of too much of the scoring being decided on the last turn. I think that, next time, we'll vary the scoring method slightly. Result: TC, CD, GL.
Meanwhile, the others played Karl's first game of Tikal. I didn't get to find out whether he liked it but it seems that the experience of the other two helped them to victory. Result: MH, SO, KB.
Karl left at this point, figuring the traffic would have died down, and the others continued with Vegas and Lost Cities, with both results being the same [although it later turned out that they were playing Lost Cities wrong - TC]. Results: SO, MH
Once the rest of us had finished with Krieg & Frieden, we went onto the altogether more light-hearted Twitch. This is a card game where reaction speed is important and it was obviously a day when Chris wasn't in a very active state as he was challenged time and time again, ending up with most of the pack. He wasn't enamoured of the game, to say the least. Result: TC, GL, CD.
And so there, you have it. Sorry if some of these entries have been a bit short, but I've been trying to catch up with time itself...
Six seems to be our magic number at the moment as that's how many turned up again.
Chris was keen to play the copy of ITC he had brought and, as this is for up to five players, we split into two groups of three again. ITC is a business game from Essen last year, in which you have to transport various types (colours) of produce to one of various markets and to then sell it. Players can play transport cards to initiate a journey for the produce shown on the card via one of four methods of transport, the slower ones having lower overheads and paying out more at journey's end. They can then choose to move transports forward toward the end of that particular transport track.
Once a transport arrives at the end of the track, there is a quick check to see if the Mafia steal any of it for the 'Grey Market' and the player receives a payout for the rest and then decides in which of six continents the goods will be sold (after it arrives?...). Players can place salespeople into these continents as well, and as long as there are enough of them, sell goods from any continent for extra money, regardless of who delivered it there. Any goods that go missing for any reason end up in the Grey Market, which is controlled by one of the players, and they can be sold only by that player - although other players can make take-over bids.
There are three dice in the game, one allows points to spend on initiating and moving transport, one allows points to spend on placing salespeople and selling goods, and the last allows a combination. You roll any two of these dice and then choose one of them to use. This obviously reduces some of the luck element, but we were still amazed by the regularity with which Mick could roll 8s, enabling him to maintain a healthy sales presence whilst keeping the Grey Market reinforced against take-over. This also combined with us making some mistakes in the rules, causing us to overpay the Grey Market owner, helped Mick secure the victory despite both other players trying to rein him in - this would obviously have been easier with more players.
Ultimately though, this is yet another business game, with nothing much to make it any better or worse than any other business game (except Tycoon). I would play it again, and probably get more out of it now that I know what to do, but I am unlikely to suggest it or to buy a copy. Like most business games it also goes on for too long - and we only played to half the recommended winning score! Result: MH, CD, TC.
During this time the others were playing Keydom, another game that takes a long time, but which is excellent nonetheless. The game ended in a bit of a rule dispute as to whether Soggy was allowed to use a Regeneration spell to remove one of his pieces from the board and reposition it elsewhere during the resolution stage. As it would allow him to perform the winning move, it was of some moment. In the interests of peace and to save the time needed for a full rules dissertation, the others allowed him the move and the win. Result: SO, GL, GC.
When they finished that,. they went on to six quick games of Liars' Dice. Soggy won three and came second once, Garry won two and came second four times, and Geoff won one and came second once.
We, on the other hand, finished off with with another short, simple game I had picked up cheap at GenCon - Earthquake. This is a very simple card game for three or four players. Basically, there are five suits of twelve cards each - all cards in a suit being equal valued. On your turn you make two plays and each play consists of laying one or more cards of the same suit in front of you, where they will remain until the start of your next turn. The score for each play is the number of cards you have played times the total number of cards of that colour in front of all the players (including the cards just played). So, if I play three red cards and there are no other red cards on the table, I score 3 × 3 = 9. If, however, there had been two other red cards in front of other players, I would score 3 × 5 = 15. Apart from a few special cards, that's all there is to it - just right after a dry, brainy game. Simplicity is obviously good for me, in four games I finished with three wins and one second, Mick got one win and two seconds and Chris managed two seconds (one of them joint).
Guess how many players turned up this week. Yes, six, although Chris and myself were somewhat late. We all played as one group.
We spent much of the time playing Löwendynastie. This is a trick-taking card game with a few twists. You play with as many suits as there players, each suit containing cards from one (lion cub) to ten (adult lion). There are also net cards and mouse (wild) cards. Whoever has the lead, plays any card to start a trick. Proceeding left, players can either play a higher card in the same suit or pass (passing does not prevent you from playing later to the same trick). A net card can also be played on top of any lion and the only card that can be played onto a net is a lion cub ('one'). If your card is still on top of the trick by the time play comes round to you again, you win that trick and lead to the next. A further twist is introduced by 'marriage tricks'. The cards numbered seven to nine are marked 'male' or 'female' and if one of these is on top of the main stack, players have an extra choice. Instead of playing to the main trick, they may play a card of the same number and opposite sex to start the 'marriage trick' next to the main trick. Players can then play to either trick, the marriage trick being won by whoever's card is on top of it when the main trick is won.
Play proceeds like this in a number of rounds (of indeterminate length). The last round is the one in which someone reaches 'rank ten' having won nine tricks (they started at rank one). However, the winner is the last player to reach rank ten during that last round. This tends to result in one player after another reaching rank nine and then refusing to play to other tricks until they can end the round at the same time as taking the trick. This tends to give the other players (except me) a chance to catch up, but is felt as a weak and disappointing end to an otherwise interesting game. I think I need to play a few more times, though, to develop any fixes - if you have one, let me know.
Time for a bit of a quiz. Who was the perceptive player who gave the following answers to questions during the game (delivered in a slightly patronising tone no less)?
Q: What sex is that card? A: It's yellow.
Q: What colour is that? A: It's a five.
No, it wasn't Chris, it was me. No wonder I did so badly in the game! Result: GC, CD+MH+GL, SO, TC.We finished the evening off with a game of Nicht die Bohne - an excellent card game that I'm keen to introduce to as many people as possible. It is one that always goes down well with gamers. It went down particularly well with Chris today and he was keen to point out to everyone that he was leading after the first round - a situation I'm sure he felt was somewhat transitory. He needn't have worried, he was still leading after the second round and even after the third and last round. This was largely down to our failure to give him a large negative score in the second round to bring him back into line, so he scored well on two successive rounds. And then, in the third round, he played very conservatively, keeping his score low so that he couldn't be badly hurt by 'minus' cards. Drat! Everyone else's results were somewhat more up and down during the game. Results: CD, GC, TC, GL, SO, MH.
Things were looking a bit bad this week. Mick and I got half-way through a game of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper before Garry and Soggy turned up. Mick was leading at that point, but we left as a game to be finished later...
Interrupting that, we played one of my favourite games: Ra. This is one of those games that I just don't tire of. I don't know how I manage to do well in it, though, because I thought Soggy was doing better than me until we totted up the scores at the end. Result: TC, GL, MH, SO.
Then on to a game that we have played a number of times - almost every time with one or more rules wrong! Robin Hood. Tonight was no exception, but the rule was minor: preventing you from claiming a coin card if you rob a card from the Sheriff to secure a threesome. Soggy pointed out that, when securing a threesome, we tend to rob another player and the Sheriff at the same time, so we could just do it in the other order. I think the spirit of the rule should mean that it doesn't make a difference. I will have to go back to the original German rules to see if I can resolve it.
All that won't mean a thing if you don't know the game (although you could look back for previous descriptions of play. I do think, though, that it is another game that, although fairly simple, has grown on me somewhat and does have more depth than first appears. The number of rules errors we have made (all my fault, I'm afraid) haven't helped it to shine, but now that we have got it mostly sorted out, it is more appealing. Anyway, Soggy made up for his previous poor show by getting the same score as me - and then suddenly finding another four points after the tie was announced... Result: SO, TC, GL, MH.
By the way, I've shortened the stats page somewhat by only listing the winners of those games we have only played once. This should make it load a little more quickly. I am toying with other ways of reducing the list too. Perhaps I should just remove all those games that I don't win?... No, that would make it too short! :)