6 Nimmt! (15th)
Al Cabohne (15th)
Arbos (22nd)
Attila (8th & 15th)
Café International Card Game (22nd)
Canyon (15th)
Corsairs (8th)
Dragon Delta (22nd)
German Whist (22nd)
Hamster Rolle (15th)
Hat Trick (8th)
Klunker (8th)
Knatsch / Knights (22nd)
Magic The Gathering (22nd)
Money (8th)
Ra (1st)
Set (22nd)
The Big Idea (1st)
Twilight (8th)
Tycoon (22nd)
Und Tschuss (1st)
A new face today - welcome to Chris Allington. Chris wasn't too happy about diving in with games he didn't know and, apart from Und Tschuss which they had played before I arrived, contented himself with watching us play and joining in with the social aspects - which is, after all, why many of us play. Mind you, Und Tschuss isn't the gentlest of games on newcomers... - although it is a lot of fun.
I got there in time to join a game of Ra - one of my favourite Knizia titles and one I often do well at. Well, I maintained the enjoyment this time, but not the record of success. I had probably my worst result ever. Result: SG, MH, GL+GC, TC.
Then I introduced them to The Big Idea, another very cheap game from Cheapass, and the follow-up to the excellent The Big Cheese. In this one, each player takes the part of a venture capitalist and has a few noun and adjective cards which they combine to produce new products to invest in - such as edible cars and frozen hats. There is a lot of chance in the game although you can improve your chances by putting your eggs in different baskets and by investing where others have done so - for example, we soon realised that no-one liked to invest in Steve's products after he put a few lame ideas on the market... The great fun of the game comes in announcing your new product and in describing the target market and uses of that product. This is a game whose only limitation is in the number of cards - let's have an expansion please, with another hundred cards or so. Result: GL, TC, SG, GC, MH.
Garry says:
First session of the new year for me, as I’d spent 3 weeks of January on holiday in Australia. Geoff was also back in action, after several weeks doing the things accountants do in the run-up to 31 January. We also had a newcomer, Chris Allington, who was sporting a beard so that we could distinguish him from the other Chris – er, who also has a beard.
As a gentle introduction for Chris, we took him through Und Tschuss, a great card game for up to 8 players. In fact, it works better with more players. I think Chris failed to pick up on one or two of the key rules and got lumbered, particularly as the rest of us have played this many times [no wonder he didn't want to join in the other games - TC]. I think Geoff kept his wits about him best of all to win.
By this time, Trev had arrived so we decided to try something a bit more challenging. Before Christmas, Geoff had mentioned that he’d never played RA so I’d purposely brought it along to rectify this. Once we’d been through the rules, Chris decided to watch rather than take part in this game, so the 5 of us ploughed straight in. RA tiles kept coming up early in the game, leaving 2 players without a third auction win. Trev, in particular, suffered with a negative score in the first round. The second round wasn’t much better for him and I had built up a nice collection of Nile tiles at the beginning, but then proceeded to fail in getting a Flood tile in both rounds 2 and 3. Steve didn’t suffer the same fate and also managed to grasp and hold onto the most Pharaohs. Geoff was playing the long term game, with an excellent collection of monuments for a big score in the final round. However, he’d failed to amass sufficient points in the earlier rounds to challenge Steve, who ended up the convincing winner. Result: SG, MH, GC+GL, TC
Trev then introduced us to another in the Cheapass range of games, The Big Idea, and I have to say I quite liked this one. Not because I won, but the fun in thinking up and listening to the sales pitches for the latest Big Ideas.
Players hold a selection of cards which are of two types: Object and Description cards. Each game turn you combine one card of each type to launch a new product: your latest Big Idea. You then describe your product in the hope of attracting further investors beside yourself. The more amusing or outrageous the description, the better chance you have of getting people to back you. At the end of each round, you roll a die for each product to test whether the market is ready for your latest masterpiece. If the die roll is less than or equal to the amount invested in the product, you have a success and the investors are rewarded with twice the die roll for each investment made.
There is nothing terribly brain-taxing about the game – that’s not the point. Just enjoy creating wacky new ideas and promoting it to your fellow investors. So if you think you can sell Evil Clocks or Dangerous Cheese, this could be the game for you. Not one to play too regularly and it could definitely do with a bigger range of cards, but good fun in small doses. Result: GL, TC, SG, GC, MH
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I turned up late to find five of them just finishing a game of Money. We followed up with a six player game of Hat Trick. This trick-taking card game has three suits and up to two tricks of a single suit at a time. The idea is to win cards of a single colour as you can count cards of one suit as positive and the other two are negative. The difficulty is mostly in getting rid of your high cards in suits you do not want. The fun is in getting other players to win tricks in suits they do not want. Result after two hands: GC, SO, MH, GL, TC, SG.
Chris had arrived by now, so we split into two groups. Our group of three played Attila, a new game for me, from last year's Essen crop. It's been criticised as being a stock market game in disguise, but I think it's more appealing this way. I think we had one or two rules wrong, but nothing major and we all enjoyed ourselves. I need to play it more often to see if I really like it, though. It was a pretty close game throughout and I'm surprised I won. Result: TC, GC+CD.
There wasn't a lot of time left, but we managed to get started on a game of Klunker, which we had to abandon before we finished it. This is definitely one of the overlooked games from the excellent Uwe Rosenberg and it's a shame we didn't get to finish. I must take it with me more often. Result when abandoned: TC, CD, GC.
Garry says:
First up tonight was Money, a game I’ve not played that often and not one that I’d be itching to play too regularly. It is OK and I usually like Bidding Games, but this one for some reason leaves me cold. Steve O went for the triplet strategy securing two of them, but wasn’t able to score highly in his sets. I managed 1 triplet and had one good scoring set, which just gave me the edge over Steve. However, Geoff showed us how the game should be played and managed a very good score. Result: GC, GL, SO, SG, MH
Trev was next to arrive and told us Chris was on his way, so we decided to play a few rounds of Hat Trick. This is one of my favourite card games, which I’ve described before. My first hand played like a dream: I had high cards in my longest suit and was able to make the most of it and discard the ones in my other suits at the right time. Second hand wasn’t so good. High cards in two suits and a single card in the third. Needless to say, I got stuffed. Steve G, however, seemed to get stuffed even more, while Geoff for the second game tonight managed to seal a victory.
When Chris arrived, we split into 2 groups and, while they got stuck into Attila, we plumped for Corsairs. As I’d played this once before, I attempted to guide the others through the rules. I managed to make a hash of a couple which we discovered later on, but we persevered nonetheless. Mick suffered most in this game and it took him most of the game to be able to claims his first ship. He maybe made too many 3 for 2 swaps early on, which meant he wasn’t playing cards on the ships. Hence he was playing catch-up to the rest of us. Fewer broadsides were fired in this game than in the last game I played and the die rolls were kinder to all of us. I managed to get some good high-scoring ships boarded and eventually came out the winner. We played with two-thirds of the recommended number of ships, which shortened the game to about the right length. However, this isn’t a game I’m keen to play that often. Result: GL, SO+SG, MH.
Twilight is a small card game that I picked up at Essen a couple of years back and have never played. Having recently read a couple of good reports about it, I decided it was time we tried it out. This is a partnership trick-taking game played with a special deck of just 28 cards. Half are light coloured and half dark. Each set of 14 is divided into further types of cards: Cleric cards, which are the standard cards used for taking tricks; Soul cards, which are the main point scoring cards; but only if you win a number of Sanctuary Cards, which multiply the number of point scoring cards by 1, 2 or 3. No Sanctuaries means a multiplier of zero – not good. The final card is a Purgatory Card, which is like a joker, and cancels the current trick, holding the cards over to be distributed to the winner of the next trick.
Nothing too difficult so far, but the cards are all shuffled together and your hand will contain a mixture of light and dark cards. However, you can only play cards of one “colour”, depending on which team you are on: light or dark. On a player’s turn they can either play a card of their colour (if they have one), or ask any other player to play a card of that colour on their behalf. The winner of the trick puts aside the cards of their colour for scoring at the end of the round and discards the opponents’ cards – they do not score.
The game involves a slightly different thought process to many other trick-taking games, trying to engineer your opponents to play good cards on your behalf into tricks you think you’ll win, while trying also to stop them doing the same. I thought it was a novel system and am keen to try it again. The others were less impressed, but it is probably one where the subtleties emerge the more you play. Result: MH/GL, SG/SO.
With time running out, we decided to play another few hands of Hat Trick. I scored very well on rounds 1 and 3, but crashed in round 2. Mick, however, scored well in all 3 rounds and took the win. Result: MH, GL, SO, SG.
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Last club night before I headed off to Ramsdencon the next day - I'll get a report done on that eventually (I hope). I was suffering from a bug that I'd been down with since the previous weekend and arrived late again to find a swarm of six adults and four kids playing 6 Nimmt! Must have been half-term at school I guess. Strangely enough, the top three finishers were children. Result: NC+CL, JO, SG, GC, GL, CA, SC, SO, CD.
After a major reorganisation into smaller groups, and in an attempt not to end up with children to play (I was feeling much too fragile), I ended up in a twosome with Geoff and we played Al Cabohne. This is a one and two player variant of the famous Bohnanza from Uwe Rosenberg - not my favourite of his games. In this one a 'third player' takes part in the form of the Bean-Mafia and players must beat not only each other, but also the Mafia. In order to beat them, the players must co-operate with each other to keep the beans away from the Mafia fields. In the few games I have played, however, the two players have competed so much with each other that the Bean-Mafia are just able to rake in the spoils. It's like some kind of organised crime! This will rarely be my first choice of two-player game, but that may be because I haven't yet experienced any of the co-operative aspects... Result: The Bean-Mafia, TC, GC.
The largest group were playing Attila, which I had played last week. Another great victory for the kids. Result: NC, JO, GL, SG, CD.
The only other games I noticed going on were Canyon and Hamster Rolle, although I didn't get any results.
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Another busy night - seven adults and four children. I arrived late, still a little under the weather from my illness to find games already in progress.
One table were playing my 1998 Game of the Year, Tycoon. Result: SO, MH, BH, JO. The others were playing Dragon Delta, the game of stones, planks and little islands. Result: SC, CD+GL+NC+SG+GC.
With Tycoon continuing, I joined this second group for a game of Arbos. This is a game I had picked up for Garry from Ramsdencon and is another of those manual dexterity and balance games that I'm generally not good at. This one is very attractive and consists of a base and tree trunk which can be set to varying degrees of wobbliness. Into the holes in the trunk are placed branches or leaves, the branches containing further holes. Any leaves or branches that drop off during your turn have to be taken by you and the winner is the first to get rid of their tree pieces. Instead of each player just placing a piece onto the tree, they draw a card during their turn. This card details the action to be performed by the player, which may be to place one or two pieces on the tree, or to swap pieces with the player on your left, or to nominate another player to place a piece in a hole you specify, or even (as in my case) to take pieces from the tree. Although the variety provided by the cards seems a good idea in principle, in practice it just makes the results totally random and I think it would be best to leave them out and just place one piece on the tree per person per turn. Still, we had a lot of fun playing - and that's the main thing. Result: GC, CD+GL+NC+SC+SG+TC.
Next up, we tried another of the games I had brought back from Ramsdencon, Knatsch (the English version is called Knights). This is a very chance driven game where you have to win castle cards, tournament cards and special cards either from the draw pile or from other players all by trying to roll up sets of identical numbers with three rolls on six dice. Any sixes rolled are removed and cannot be rerolled. It's not a game I'd want to play too often as it is difficult to have much control over the outcome. The main problem is that some of the special cards show dice symbols and these count for the player who wins them as an extra die that always has the value shown. These cards make the players who win them too strong - they are able to win other cards more easily and can likewise defend themselves too easily. Perhaps we should play instead that they fix one of the six existing dice rather than adding an extra one. Result: GL, CD+GC+NC+TC+SG.
We followed this up with yet another of the new games I had got, The Café International Card Game. This is based very strongly on the original Café International and plays much the same: table cards are played and laid out from a draw pile and players add guests to these tables from their hands, scoring points for the number of guests already added. Completed tables are removed and new, empty ones added. Steve and I spent much of the early game unable to play any guests as the tables we needed kept being removed before our turns. But as you draw cards as an option instead of playing, things balanced out somewhat. Result: CD, NC, GL, SG, TC.
Meantime, the others, having finished Tycoon, played yet another new game from Ramsdencon, Set. This game consists of 81 different cards containing shapes. The cards vary in four ways: there can be one, two or three symbols on each card; the shape can be rectangles, ovals or waves; the colour can be red, green or purple; and the shading can be empty, half-shaded or solid. Twelve cards are laid out and players compete to find sets of three. To qualify as a set, each of the four characteristics must be the same on each card or different on each card. For example, looking at just number, all three cards must have one symbol or two symbols or three symbols, or there must be one card with one, one with two and one with three. You cannot have two cards with two symbols and the other with one or three. The same constraints apply to the other three characteristics. It's one of those games where some people will be more suited to it than others and many will find it a brain-burner. Ben, for example, took a little while to get the idea, and then stormed the rest of the game, getting set after set. Result: BH, SO, MH, JO.
After that they split into pairs with the youngsters playing Magic the Gathering while the adults opted for German Whist. Result: MH, SO.
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