Acquire (18th)
Claim (25th)
Liar's Dice (18th)
Pool Position (18th)
Space Beans (25th)
Zero (18th & 25th)
I arrived late to find two Steves and a Mick near the end of a game of Acquire. Result: SG, MH, SK.
Next, I introduced them to Pool Position, the game of getting your towels on the sun-loungers closest to the swimming pool and chucking everyone else's in the water. As a way of reducing some of the chance element, we played such that each player maintained a hand of three cards instead of just playing the top one from their pile each time. I'm not sure how much this helped, but at least you felt partly responsible for those times that your card play came out unlucky. During the game, the others seemed to think my prior experience made me a threat and I fell victim to many wet towels. Result: SG, SK, MH, TC.
Next we played Zero. This is another of Knizia's simple card games. In this one you have a hand of cards which each have a number and a colour, and each turn you can exchange one of them for one of the five cards laid out on the table. If you get five the same colour or five with the same number they score zero points. Other cards score the face value once for each different number you hold. The idea is to score as low as possible and each hand ends as soon as a player gets a zero-point hand or one round after the second 'knock'. Easy to play, but lots of interest and tactical play. Result after four hands: SG, MH, TC, SK.
Steve King had to leave at this point, so the rest of us rounded off with a couple of games of Liars' Dice, the second of which finally broke Steve's winning streak of the night. Result 1: SG, TC, MH; result 2: TC, MH, SG.
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Five of us today - including three Steves. Chris arrived a bit late and we had a game of Claim before he turned up. This game from Alex Randolph was also released as Die Wikinger Kommen!. In Claim, the box art theme is of Napoleonic battles, whereas in Wikinger, it is of Vikings. The theme doesn't get as far as the rules, though, and this is an abstract game of movement and capture that bears some resemblance to the Hnefatafl / The Viking Game - so supporting that particular theme. The board can be assembled a number of different ways and consists of a grid of spaces, divided into regions, on which the players' pieces are placed. Pieces move in an attempt to surround and capture opponents' pieces and to be alone in a region. Once there is only one colour of pieces in a region, a castle of the same colour can be placed in that region - this counts much like any other piece except that it cannot move. The first player to place three castles, wins. Four players play as two partnerships, with five castles necessary for the partnership to win. It's a good game and didn't descend to the level of overanalysis that I thought it might. Result: TC+SO, SG+SK.
Next up was one of our favourites - Space Beans. Chris narrowly scored the victory over Soggy, with Steve K and me fighting just as intensely for last place. Result: CD, SO, SG, SK, TC.
We finished off with another game of Zero (see last week). We had enough time for three hands - not quite enough time for me to lose my early game lead as usually happens. Result after three hands: TC+SG, SO, CD.
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