Session Summary - 7 November 2007

Steve Cox was with us again this week and we introduced him and Steve H to

Race for the Galaxy 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	42
Steve C	2	38
Steve H	3	33
Mike	4	24

Mike agreed to play again and it was again a rather longer game than I expected, I think due to new players getting the hang of the game. I'm not going to go into any details, but I tend to agree that this length of game is too long, although to me it was still an enjoyable way to occupy the time. I was of the opinion that once we got a group of players who knew the game the time would fall a lot. The key being for players to perform actions simultaneously and being quicker in selecting actions. This seems to be borne out by a couple of games I played with Dave & Ben at Midcon, both of which came in easily within an hour. I'm not sure how much more play we'll get on Wednesday's however as Mike has no desire to try a third time.

Clans 50 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve C	1=	44
Mike	1=	44
Dave D	3	33
Steve H	4	32

Steve C brought this one along. A game of shoving coloured pieces representing tribes around a board until there are no other tribes adjacent to them. The isolated tribes then form a village and points are scored by the colours according to the total number of tribes present. Before the scoring, the tribe(s) with the lowest representation are eliminated in a way reminiscent of Attila if all the colours are present. The key to the game is to have your colour tribe involved in as many villages as possible and have the fewest huts you can get away with in each village, while trying to maneuver your opponents huts into less advantageous positions. This is complicated by the fact that you do not know what colours your opponents are playing in a way similar to Heimlich and Co. and like that game there may be colours on the board that do not represent players.

It's an interesting game, but I can't say it did much for me as it seems to be one of those where there is increasing loss of control with number of players due to the number of things that happen between your turns. May be I'd enjoy it more with fewer players or it's quite possible that I'm missing something, based on the fact that Mike and Steve C did appreciably better than the other 2 of us.