Auf Achse (21st)
Ave Caesar (21st)
Big Boss (14th)
Bongo (14th)
Carcassonne (14th)
Corsairs / Störtebeker (14th)
Derby (7th)
Flickwerk (7th)
Ricocher Robot (21st)
Traumfabrik (7th)
Trick 'r Treat (21st)
Zero (21st)
I'm in the middle of Christmas party season, so I couldn't make it tonight. So I'll hand over completely to Garry:
Torrential rain may have put a few people off coming tonight, but 3 of us braved the weather for our weekly gaming fix.
While passing the time to see if anyone else would turn up, I introduced Mick and Steve to Flickwerk, the new game from Friedemann Friese. After cannibals last year, Friedemann has produced a neat little competitive puzzle game, similar in feel to Ricochet Robot. Each player has an identical set of 12 tiles displaying part of a network of computer cables. A further set is shuffled and placed face down in the centre of a 3x3 grid, representing the nine rooms through which the cabling will flow. Four markers are placed around the edge of the grid and these represent the only points at which the cabling can leave the grid. The top card of the centre pile is turned over and players have to re-arrange their own tiles in front of them to form a valid network, using the same centre tile as displayed and connecting up the four “perimeter” markers. First one to complete a valid network wins the centre tile (1 VP). He then rearranges the perimeter markers if he wishes and turns over the next card to be played for. I sometimes regret bringing these types of game, because I am hopeless at them. Well, not hopeless but someone is always fractionally quicker than me at spotting the solution. Mick also seemed to suffer in this way allowing Steve to cruise to an unassailable lead. Result: SG, MH, GL
Traumfabrik. First time at this for Mick and Steve, about my 5th game. They proved, however, that experience is no guarantee of success. I bid boldly at the beginning, on the grounds that the money usually recirculates quite quickly, so you don’t stay short for too long. Steve had other ideas and managed by the end of the second year to have starved Mick and I of all our money. He had all but 4 of the contracts at one stage. This enabled him to pick up some valuable bits very cheaply and overtake us. The 4th year saw Mick and I concentrating our resources on one particular lot, the winner of which (me) lost a bucketload of money, while Mick missed out on completing a further film and lost one of the Best Genre Oscars. All in all, another great game from Reiner Knizia. Result: SG, MH, GL
The final game of the evening was Dirk Henn’s Derby. Not a game about Mick’s home town but the horse race, with players moving the horses so that they finish in the best order to maximise your bets. Each player has a betting card for each of the 9 horses, and this shows the finishing position above which the bet pays out. There is a card for each of the 9 positions, with the better positions paying out more if successful.
There is a central deck of movement cards, each card showing 6 horses and the distance each can move when that card is played. These are combined with cards laid by the players, which determine how many of the six horses actually move. This could be just 1, all 6, or something in between. As the race progresses, you get a feel for which of your bets could be unsuccessful and luckily you get to change them if you wish, but only if that horse doesn’t appear on the current movement card.
Once the race ends everyone tots up their winning bets and whoever has the highest total wins. This is a neat game but we felt it went on just a bit too long for what it was. It’s certainly worth playing and may work better with more than three. Scoring was very tight with all three of us claiming 8 out of 9 winning bets and total scores of 44, 43 and 41. My final move was crucial in stopping Steve’s 9th bet also being successful, which would have won him the game. As it was, I just pipped him by a single point. Result: GL, SG, MH.
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Still at Christmas parties, so back to Garry:
First up tonight was Bongo, and this was the first try for all of us at this new dice rolling game from Bruno Faidutti. What did I say last week about regretting playing these quick reaction games. Will I never learn? The premise is simple. Roll the dice and shout out the name of one of the three animals displayed on the dice. Easy? Not so, as the one you are required to name is determined by the particular combination of 7 dice (in the standard game) or 9 dice (in the head-exploding version) rolled. If you are first to shout out and are correct, you get a marker of that animal type as a reward, and once you have 2 markers of each of the 3 animal types, you win. I started off pretty well, but over-confidence soon set in and I had to surrender markers due to incorrect calls. Did I mention that if you got it wrong you had to give your markers of that colour back? I didn’t? Probably because of the nightmares I’m having about it since playing. Steve proved yet again that he is the best of us at this type of game. Chris nearly regrets asking me to order this game for him. Result: SG, CD+MH+GL
By this time, seven of us had gathered and so we split into two groups. While the others got stuck into a game of Big Boss, three of us tried Corsairs for the first time. This is a fairly light game of plundering pirates and, yes, I felt obliged to use my best Long John Silver accent. The object of the game is to capture galleys (ships), which are worth varying amounts of treasure. To be able to attempt to board a galley, you need first to have laid down a specific combination of cards required for that galley and possibly some Corsairs to assist in the fighting. Each ship has a defence score which needs to be equalled or beaten by a 2x D6 die roll, combined with the value of any Corsairs played. If that is achieved, the ship is boarded and you might be able to get away with its treasure. Might, because other players who can also fulfil the card requirement have a chance to outroll you and steal the treasure. Once all the galley cards have been put into play, (you start with four and a new one is added as each galley is boarded), the next galley boarded ends the game and the player who has amassed the most treasure wins. This is quite a fun game, which is very luck driven, but goes on way too long. It took well over an hour with rules explanation, and was probably half an hour too long. Chris won (sceptics please take note!) but he will probably admit that this was because the die rolls went more in his favour than the rest of us. Probably quite good as a family game, but you need to play with probably two-thirds of the galleys detailed in the rules so that it doesn’t drag on too long. Result: CD, GL, SK
Carcassonne. Steve’s first game of this and I think he enjoyed it. We were pressed for time at the end and I wasn’t paying enough attention to the farmers Chris was laying down in the latter stages. Consequently, he scored big at the end, whereas Steve hardly scored any for farmers. He’ll know better next time. I’m not sure I can believe this but Chris won two games tonight. Then again, it is close to Christmas, we were probably going easy on him. Result: CD, GL, SK.
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Only two adults and two children when I arrived, I guess everyone else was just too keen on Christmas. So we had a game of Auf Achse. This is a game of truck haulage that won the Spiel des Jahres a few years ago, but that I had only just bought. I don't know if it's a characteristic of the game or just the way we were playing it, but it took all night to finish. Garry, who arrived a little later (with four more children!) played a whole bunch of shorter games waiting unsuccessfully for us to finish. Result: DH, SO, TC, JO.
Garry says:
The end of school term usually means that we have a smattering of kids in attendance at our games session. This time, however, they outnumbered us six to three. I was a bit late, as three of the four that came with me had been to their school disco beforehand. So, we arrived to find Trev, Steve O and two littl’uns just starting Auf Achse. We started with Ave Caesar, which is one of my favourite games. Catherine and Rebecca had played once before, and Nicki and Steph knew Ausgebremmst so we were soon whipping our horses around the track. Catherine managed to get blocked several times, which ruined her chances. Meanwhile Rebecca seemed to be cruising to victory until she got left with just a 6 card in her hand, 5 spaces short of the line. Luckily though, Steph couldn’t stop herself pulling into the lead, allowing Rebecca to play the 6 and snatch victory. Result: RL, SC, NC, GL, CL
As Auf Achse was still going strong, we then pulled out Zero, one of Reiner Knizia’s light card games. Steph and Nicki had not played before but soon got the hang of it. I managed to score zero on the first hand and Rebecca repeated the feat on the second. The third hand was a tighter affair with nobody able to engineer the right cards for a zero score. Steph cut her losses, however, knocked for a second time and managed the lowest score of the hand. Result: GL, CL, RL, SC, NC.
Auf Achse was still nowhere near ending, so Nicki and Steph introduced us to Trick 'r Treat. After the rules had been explained, Catherine decided she just wanted to watch this one. I should have made the same decision as it turned out to be my least favourite reaction game ever. The basic idea is that you have a hand of five or six cards. These display pumpkins with different shaped eyes, mouths and stalks. Several dice are rolled which also show pumpkins. Match your card with a die and pass card and die to the player next to you. Providing you have correctly matched the two, the recipient adds the card to their hand and rerolls the die. If not, both are returned to you together with an extra card from the checking player. Once a minute of this has passed, a player can declare the round over, and you gain or lose money depending on whether you have less or more cards than you started with. This same process is followed over several rounds of play.
The girls were very good at it, but I just could not make out the pumpkin shapes on the dice very easily at all. As soon as I had managed to work out a die that matched my card, I had already had three or four passed my way. Then, while I checked these and rerolled the dice, another few landed in my direction. Absolutely horrible. Result: RL, SC, NC, GL (surprise, surprise!)
The eternal struggle of Auf Achse was continuing, so we rounded off the evening with just over half a game of Ricochet Robot. Although this isn’t a game I would normally choose to play very often, I wanted to see how the girls managed it, and it seemed like heaven after the last game. This is a game where the longer and more you play the easier it becomes. As the others were all newcomers, it wasn’t surprising that I scored more than the girls, but they did all cope with it, and were all calling for just one more round at the end. They did all score one point as well. Result: GL, SC+NC+RL+CL.
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