Stats Review 2019

This is the 2019 review of games played at the club, corresponding articles for 2008 - 2018 are linked from the "Previously" box to the left, usually under January of the following year, but sometimes under December of the year in question. As last year I include a comparison with the previous year. Full details are on the Stats Pages on the website. There is also a geeklist of all the games played here. I also tweeted the top 10 @halesowenBG.

This year, being the end of the decade I've also surveyed the games played over that time period and there's another article here.

The decade 2010-2019 at HBG

I have been writing an annual short review of what we've played since 2010. We're now at the end of 2019 and as I've got a full decade of data, I thought I'd write an article looking at the 10 years just passed. This is very much me typing whatever comes to mind so if I should repeat myself don't be surprised.

First of the year - 2 Jan 2019

Yesterday was the first meet of the year and I thought I'd see about getting some action here, seeing how dormant it's got. Can't say if I'll keep it up and even if I do it'll probably be just a listing of the games and results with maybe some pictures.

Brass Birmingham - My best score of 164

Anyway 11 of us gathered at the Stag and played 5 games, the main games being Grand Austria Hotel, Brass:Birmingham and Carpe Diem.

Results for the evening

02/01/2019
Carpe Diem - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Rachael	99
2	Lee	85
3	Rob L	80
4	Steve W	77
Crypt - 20 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Rob L	55
2	Steve W	33
Crypt - 20 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Rob L	51
2	Steve W	30
Grand Austria Hotel - 150 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark R	167
2	Steve H	157
3	Scott	152
4	Charlotte	124
Brass: Birmingham - 150 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	164
2	Phil G	158
3	Mark W	139

Stats Review 2018

This is the 2018 review of games played at the club, corresponding articles for 2008 - 2017 are linked from the "Previously" box to the left, usually under January of the following year, but sometimes under December of the year in question. As last year I include a comparison with the previous year. Full details are on the Stats Pages on the website. There is also a geeklist of all the games played here. I also tweeted the top 10 @halesowenBG.

Games Played - 30 May 2018

Whilst over on the other table 2 of our most-played games at the Club, Power Grid and San Juan, got another airing, on my table (with Phil, Mark and Steve W) we tried 3 games which haven't been played here before.  Fortunately none of them were overly complex, so learning 3 sets of rules in a night didn't seem too onerous or time-consuming, although we did have a few minutes' play of the first one before we quickly realised we had the rules wrong but it was easy to start again..

There's a lot of games where you start with a few dice and then achieve goals to gain more dice, well Dice Forge adds a twist to that idea because you don't get more dice, you only ever have 2 but 'pimp' them with better faces which give you more of what you need.  How?  Well each die has easily removable clip-in plastic faces, and if you get enough 'gold' (which some of the basic and pimped die faces give you) you can buy new faces - click the old one out, press the new one in ready for the next roll.  Some faces just give VPs, some give 'lightning' with which you can buy cards to give abilities and extra VPs or extra turns, some give 'magic' with which you can buy cards, weapons and the ability to store extra gold/lighning/magic between turns, as anything the dice give over your tableau limit is wasted.  There's plenty of options, game length is about right, and there's a reasonable amount of replayability.

The theme to Barker's Row immediately grabbed us : collecting various freaks and curios to put together fairground carnival attractions to gain more customers ('rubes') and win the game.  Basically there are 4 suits of cards plus jokers, you have a hand of attractions (basically tells you the suit you need, and when you've completed that attraction it gives you extra abilities).  Every turn you draw at least one card into a central 'midway' of cards, and then if you can get enough suit+joker cards from there to complete an attraction, gatehr up all of those cards to claim your rubes, but every time you do so you need more cards to fulfil the next attraction.  The theme is great, and compensates a little for the rather repetitive nature of your turns, but we found a serious, but hopefully rare, glitch.  Because I, throughout the game, had attractions in only 2 colours, so it was more difficult to get large enough sets in the midway to pick up.  Other players kept beating me to them, so in a game of probably 15-16 turns my last 10(!) turns consisted of just drawing a card!  If this game gets regular play and it happens again the rules may need a tweak.

Finally Mutant Crops is not as funny as the name suggests, you're collecting cards with pictures of fruit with faces on them, but a competent enough worker placement /  commodity collection / task fulfilment game.  Nothing bad about it but not particularly distinctive as a 20-30 minute filler.

Stats Review 2017

This is the 2017 review of games played at the club, corresponding articles for 2008 - 2016 are linked from the "Previously" box to the left, usually under January of the following year, but sometimes under December of the year in question. As last year I include a comparison with the previous year. Full details are on the Stats Pages on the website. There is also a geeklist of all the games played here. I also tweeted the top 10 @halesowenBG.

Games at Halesowen Library 4 November

On 4th November Steve H & I will be at Halesowen Library from about 1 - 3pm with a selection of games that we play. These will be a mixture of longer games that are really just for show and shorter games that we hope to be able to demonstrate to passers by who maybe interested in these sorts of games.

This is part of International Games Week with events taking place in libraries across the world.