Session Summary – 16 April 2008

Five of us this week with Steve and Paul down from Telford. First game was Vinci.
After a short explanation because Paul hadn't played before, I started with Mountaineering/Rebirth. Steve H I recall had barbarians/messages one of those armies with loads of men which he likes so much, Paul also had mountaineering, I think with Field General.
This wasn't one of the most exciting games of Vinci that we'd ever played, I started by moving down the mountains in the North east corner, fearing that Paul would come on in the same place and do me severe damage with his general, but he actually started down in the opposite corner. All was pretty close in the early stages. I scored steadily until someone chopped my empire in two, at which point I removed the half that was sitting in the mountains spreading the tokens over lower ground where they would continue to score and declined at the end of the turn using rebirth.
Waiting to be picked was specialised mining, which would score 4 points for every pick axe, the mining would not continue after decline, so I had 11 units. For the rest of the game, it seemed that everyone was telling everyone else how they needed to attack me, but apart from token attempts from Paul and Mike nobody did. I spent time telling people that they did not need to attack me as I was sure to have to decline before the end at which point my large scores would evaporate. This would of course have been true in the face of a concerted attack, but that didn't materialise and the final score looks very one sided.

Vinci 100 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	107
Steve Pe	2	89
Mike	3	86
Steve H	4	82
Paul	5	74

We finished up with a game of Nottingham, the first time I had played outside of Midcon, where I have played the last 2 years. I thought that I was doing pretty well having grabbed 2 of the big assignments, but Steve had been going along steadily gathering in a good number of commodity sets and finished ahead.

Nottingham 40 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve Pe	1	71
Dave D	2	67
Steve H	3	61
Mike	4	55
Paul	5	49

That's a somewhat shorter report than many; I wasn't particularly inspired to write a lot. The next meeting has already come and gone, report to follow soon, including my thoughts on Hamburgum.

Session Summary – 9 April 2008

5 people and another game of Power Grid, this one played on the Italian board with the large plant deck (the original deck with the plants from 46 upwards added from the new deck). This also meant that we were playing on a board with 40 cities (so we eliminated Catania and Siracusa on Sicily) and looking at an 18 city end game target.
In Italy, Oil and Coal start off less common, while there is more trash available, so I, having first choice of a plant to bid on, had a try at the number 6 trash plant. Steve outbid me, so I went for the number 4 coal which I bought. This was to set my pattern for the rest of the game as I never used any other type of fuel. When it came to building cities, Mike (having bought the number 3 plant) went first and set up in the North, I set to the east of him, while Matt and Jonathan set up to our south. This left Steve on the West coast about half way down the country.
As turns went on Matt expanded north along the west coast and I went North and East, boxing Mike in. Jonathan went North and South towards me on one side and Steve on the other. This left Steve to spread south and east, effectively blocking off the south for the rest of us. I thought things were going quite well until Mike decided to jump across into what I thought was my area, before he was completely locked out in the west. I declined to build after that in the knowledge that it would be better to build first in the following turn when I would have more money. This worked but unfortunately, things stalemated at this point with North Italy divided 7 each to Matt & I, 6 each to Mike and Jonathan. Only Steve was able to trigger step 2 cheaply (8 cities required) and he was in no hurry. Adding to the problem was the price of coal, which made it uneconomic to power more than 5 of my 7 cities (using plant 25, I also had plant 20 and my initial 4) and the fact that when step 2 came, Jonathan and Mike would build before me and maybe grab all the 15 spots.
As things happened Matt decided to jump across Steve and trigger step 2 a turn or so earlier than Steve would have liked, this also probably meant that Mike and Jon didn't have enough money to cut me out of all the 15 spots and I was able to nip across to the west coast and build south limiting myself to 12 cities to give me an early build the following turn.
Going into that turn I had 16 capacity having bought the 31 plant to replace the 4 and calculated that I could end the game, unfortunately Jon also had 16 capacity and building after me would only need to build 2 cities to make a tie and I was sure he would have most money. That said I was sure that step 3 was imminent and I did not like my position then because of the reduced coal supply it would bring. As it turned out I was so wrapped up in my own calculation that I failed to notice that Jon had not fuelled all his plants.
So I won, but I think that Jonathan will not make that mistake again. For the price of 2 trash, he could have won and instead ended up last. I think that he had not quite cottoned on to the fact that you do not need to power all your cities at the end, but just to power more than anyone else, he is still quite new to the game but, having played 3 games in the last few weeks, is learning fast.

Power Grid 130 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	16
Steve H	2	13+
Matt	3	13
Mike	4	12+
Jonathan	5	12

Until the next meeting of what maybe should be called the Halesowen Power Grid club.

Session Summary – 2 April 2008

We had a great attendance this week, with the appearance of Gordon, Steve Paget, Simon and Toby together with Matt who hasn't been around for a few weeks. This meant we could run 2 adult tables together with a third where Dave ran a game of Paranoia for the youngsters. When Dave briefly tried to introduce this to me back in the days when we used to role play regularly, I have to say it was not an enjoyable experience and it seemed to me that you definitely needed to have a certain mindset to get into it. The session tonight seemed to go down well, if the sound was anything to go by. I notice that Dave has posted a report already and this is here.
As for the rest of us, we split 5 & 4, with Steve P introducing Container to Mike with Simon & Toby (I am not sure whether they had played before) The game seemed to go down well and Gordon commented after that he thought that I would enjoy it because he thought it had similarities to Industrial Waste which I like a lot. The scores are below.

Container 140 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve P	1	90
Simon	2	78
Mike	3	59
Toby	4	47

On the final table, Gordon joined Steve, Matt, Jonathan & I for Power Grid. It's nice to play this with him again as we always seem to have good games. In this case, the board was the USA, with Power Plant deck 2. The North East region was eliminated.
After the initial purchase of power plants, I ended up second in the revised player order (hence fourth in the forthcoming purchases) having bought the number 6 plant, which seems a much better choice than in the original deck powering 2 cities as opposed to the original 1, particularly in the 5 player game, where the initial refresh rate of 3 will bring the price of trash down quickly. Having bought fuel Gordon placed on the east coast with Jonathan in the Duluth/Minneapolis area and Steve, I think somewhere around Kansas City. There seemed to be enough action in the east so I set up in Billings and Cheyenne expecting that Matt, going last having picked up plant 7 would take a place somewhere south of me. Instead he set up between Gordon and Steve making things very crowded in that part of the board.
Moving on some 4 capacity plants came on the market and I was able to pick up number 30 after dropping out of bit of a battle with Jon for plant 27, I was a bit reluctant to give up my trash monopoly, but 27 still only used 1, so hopefully the price would still drift down and I didn't really expect to be using number 6 for that long a time.
It was at this point that things started to wobble a bit. I was able to build down to Denver and Santa Fe, creating a North South wall with everyone else on one side needing to pay large connection costs to get to the other side with me, I also picked up Seattle and Boise to give me 6, while on the other side of the wall Gordon also had 6 but was hemmed in on the east coast and the others had 5 each. This was good, but the bad thing is that I was always first to pick in the plant auction and for a couple of turns I was faced with nothing that would power more than 3 cities and ended up passing. Plants were bought, however with Matt in particular who had missed out on a better plant earlier at one point sitting on 5 capacity in 3 plant perhaps thinking even 3 capacity was a good deal. The result of this was that Jon and Steve, going later in the order were able to capitalise when high value plants dropped at the end, leaving me with the crap again when I picked the following turn.
I have to admit that I was beginning to think that the game had got away from me when I was still sitting on 6 capacity and everyone else had gone past me. Jonathan was sitting on 14 with Steve on 11; also Steve had picked up no.21 and was starting to buy a lot of trash. Significantly though, I had only bought 2 plants, whereas others had bought 4, also I felt confident that I was managing to run more efficiently up to that point, so while the situation remained there was no incentive to trigger step 2.
Things eventually broke with Steve taking the plunge and breaking through the wall to bring his total to 6 and then triggering step 2 on the following turn. Coinciding with this, some good plants became available and I finally expanded my capacity to 11, quite cheaply after dropping out of an auction with Matt which had gone up to about 60. It was also at this point that the step 3 card appeared; meaning both the 15 & 20 sites would be available when we came to build. I settled with building to my 11 capacity and would have been in trouble at this stage if the game had ended, because my capacity was still one of the lowest, but Steve who was the only one to follow me did not have the cash.
The following turn the game ended. I picked up a 7 capacity plant and finally retired no.6 which had served me well since the beginning. Going into what was the final building, Matt had gone to 17 capacity, I had 16 with Gordon on 15 with Steve (who had not increased) Jonathan still sat on 14. I was able to build to 16 cities, while the others built to 15. I had underestimated how much extra cash I had made early on by running more efficiently and buying fewer plants than anyone else. Gordon won the second place tie break, while Steve took 3^rd by one elektro.

Power Grid 150 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	16
Gordon	2	15++
Steve H	3	15+
Matt	4	15
Jonathan	5	14

Until next week.

Paranoia

Paranoia

Following the fun we had playing Citadels and Munchkin the week before, and also following the chaos that most of the RPG’s I had run began to descend into; I decided to run a session of Paranoia. This was Second Ed. as my copy of the new Mongoose one hadn’t arrived. The players were Ben C, Charlotte H, James H and Richard ? (Matthew ? was on holiday; a pity as I think it would have been right up his street).
Paranoia, for those new to it, was the game that turned the basic concept of RPG’ing (teamwork, loyalty, explore and get the treasure etc.) on it’s head. Paranoia is set in an underground complex called Alpha Complex, controlled by a well-meaning but deranged Computer [Serve the Computer. The Computer is your Friend.] The Computer wants you to be happy and so employs teams of Troubleshooters to go out, find trouble, and shoot it. The main object is to survive; usually at the expense of others. Of course, they have the same goal. Imagine a film of 1984 made by the Marx Brothers and you’ll get something of the idea. I pregenned the Troubleshooters so I could arrange a secret mission for each one, gave them a brief overview of what they knew of their world (i.e.: basically nothing) and they started in a red-painted room with a button and a blank panel on the wall.
Of course, someone pressed the button and the panel lit up, counting down from 60….59….58….57… A search for doors proved futile so they cowered in the corner of the room. When the counter reached zero a slip of paper slid out of a slot beneath the screen. On it were instructions to report to the Equipment Room. A panel slid open, revealing a corridor. A conveyor belt took them through a series of chemical sprays that first dissolved all their clothing to sludge, then dissolved the sludge to another kind of sludge, then baked it hard with infrared lamps and finally sprayed them with jets of warm water., before depositing them in a room containing some red clearance jumpsuits, reflec armour and laser pistols with red barrels.
Richard used an unauthorised colour (blue, way above his security clearance) to write on his PID (Personal Information Document = Character sheet) and was questioned by his Friend, the Computer. Appearing to be deaf, he was restrained whilst the Personal Hygiene Auditory Exploratory Cleaning Module cleaned out his ears. He survived with only a few bubbles down the nose. The briefing screen ordered them to report to the Equipment Room to collect mission equipment; again Richard said he couldn’t hear properly. The PHAECM came into use again but this time….ah well, his head exploded.
Shortly after, his replacement clone arrived out of the corridor and, with Ben finally elected Team Leader they set off along another corridor; emerging onto a balcony part way up on the edge of a huge warehouse about five miles across by four miles deep. Some argu…. discussion ensued about what to do next; it was then they discovered they were standing on rail tracks, with a huge cargobot rumbling towards them. They ran off down the tracks; but Charlotte resolutely stood her ground; stating that she liked ‘bots (? – news to me!) The cargobot got to within a few feet, then with a “Warning! Warning! Activate anti-Vermin Removal System”, lasered her into little pieces, then carried on. (Memo: in Paranoia, if something looks like it might carry weapons; it probably does).
Further on, the others had reached a platform off the tracks and the ‘bot rumbled past. Charlottes replacement clone arrived by flybot carryall and they all examined the platform. A control panel with a dial, some levers and a large button. Some fiddling around led to the platform rapidly heading downwards at terminal velocity. Pressing the button applied the emergency brakes, resulting in them slamming into the floor of the platform. James tried to climb over the edge of it; when it began to move again he tried to climb back, landed on the control panel and yet again they were heading floorwards at high speed. This time, they got it to stop at the level of the Equipment Room, to be met by Muzz-Y-HED and fined for being late.
Whilst being outfitted (all carrying two backpacks each!), Ben asked if could write on the back of his PID as there wasn’t enough room on the front. Not a good idea. He was awarded some Treason Points for questioning the design of the PID which was done by CPU Service Group under Computer Directive B1123/24/678/B.2. Maybe Richard really was deaf, because shortly afterwards, he asked the same question, with the same results. They also got their Mission Briefing: - go to Room A – here and take item from it to Room B.
With the jackobot leading the way, they headed off to Room A. The ‘bot tried to take a shortcut through a Blue corridor; obviously they had all learnt by now as they all refused to follow and the ‘bot had to be ordered back. Going the long way, after about 10 miles they reached some food vats ( a long hall; they were on a catwalk with bubbling vats criss-crossed by pipes – a cross between Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and a sewage plant). Realising that the ‘bot could not cross the pipes; Ben ordered it to go back and meet them on the other side. Charlotte did not want to sent the ‘bot away; accusations of being a treasonous Commie ‘bot lover flew, and first Ben, then Richard shot her; she fell into the food vat, where she quickly dissolved, (quite amusing as Charlotte had made this up; it wasn’t in her pre-generated character).
Eventually getting across a slippery pipe to a balcony on the other side, they found a Cruncheetyme Algae Chip Dispenser and got some food ( the kids broke here to get some food and a drink; they ALL came back with ready salted crisps – a Red packet, cleared for their security level, and Mars bars, again red and black. Surely they didn’t think that their Friend the Computer would penalise them for eating Salt ‘n’ Vinegar (Green) or Cheese ‘n’ Onion (Blue))? Charlotte’s new clone met them and eventually they arrived at Room A, along with the jackobot.. They found that the object was a large metal thing that practically filled the room. Despairing at this, Richard appeared to express a deathwish, The Computer showed concern that Richard was unhappy and suggested he took a Happiness Pill. This put a slight smile on his face. Ben took two of them and got such a beaming grin that his head cracked in two. His new clone arrived by elevator shortly afterwards.
Charlottes and Richard were sent to find Room B; they found it on the level below, directly below Room A. Charlotte had some fun trying to get the lift to work to get back; at one point she was heading upwards at escape velocity; then downwards, then sideways etc. Finally she pressed the button for Level 42 and got back to Room A. There was discussion going on about cutting through the floor when the game was called due to time.

Thus ended the game. It was great fun and produced a lot of laughs. Paranoia is true free-form improvisational theatre; other that the basic mission and the starting room and corridor, everything else was improvised and extrapolated from what was being said and done at the time. Also, at one point, the game of Power Grid on the next table was disrupted by Matt laughing at what was going on.

Yesterday, my copy of the new Mongoose printing arrived. Still reading it, but it has been totally revised to bring it up to date with the 21st Century. Alpha Complex is now an economy and you can even sell stuff on C-Bay! The game system has been overhauled and streamlined and looks good. I’ll be running some games in the summer. Ben loved it and said it was the best RPG session he’d played..

Session Summary – 26 March 2008

A little late in reporting this session, but I have added a calendar to the site, which should show upcoming meeting and conventions and you can also go back to previous meetings as far back as 19 March, which I will update to show the games played if you click on the entry. One note, when I looked at this at Dave's last weekend, some of the meetings and Beer and Pretzels seemed to be missing, but it seems fine from my PCs. If someone would like to have a look and let me know if things seem OK, that would be useful. Anyway back to 26 March.
School holidays are with us so Dave was leading the youngsters. It sounded like a good time was being had and the scores are below.

Citadels 65 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Charlotte	1	29
Dave C	2	28
Richard	3	22
Ben	4=	21
James	4=	21
Mathew	6	18
Munchkin 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mathew	1	10
Richard	2=	9
James	2=	9
Dave C	2=	9
Ben	5	7
Charlotte	6	3

 
That left 4 of us and we started with Vinci, for the first time this year. Always a popular game but has suffered of late by there not being room in my bag. I've now moved Pillars of the Earth out since we played it the other week so it was back in. This was Jonathan's first game so a bit of time was spent explaining.
I don't guarantee total recall after a week, but this is what I remember. I went first and picked up Field General/Medicine for a loss of 2. Steve has something with livestock breeding and picked up an extra 2 VP as I had passed it over, Mike had specialist agriculture, while Jonathan picked on Currency + another. The other 2 gained or lost nothing from their choices.
Coming on to the board, I knew that I should be able to spread out quickly, but had the downside that I had no VP bonus. I came on in the north and headed south to occupy the mountain to the north of the black Sea. Unfortunately Steve chose to come in at exactly the same place and did some immediate damage, although my medicine was effective in keeping up my strength. Mike came on at the east of the black sea occupying the mountain there and using this to take the adjacent agricultural areas. Jonathan came on in Ireland and spread without any initial opposition.
As this first "age" proceeded, Mike had the early lead having taken 3 agricultural areas, while Jonathan also scored well with his currency. Steve and I knocked bits off each other and fell behind, but I was able to nearly maintain my forces with medicine and also took some shots at Mike, wanting to make sure that I could force both of them to decline before me. This succeeded, but in so doing I fell a bit behind. Jonathan at this point had moved into the lead, making good points.
The second wave of empires began with Steve entering to the east with a civilisation using militia, giving him some good defence, while Mike with ship building, came in through Scandinavia and headed south intent on destroying Steve's remaining livestock areas. I took Mike and Steve's decline as a cue to do the same, taking agriculture and barbarians and followed straight in Mike's tracks, not wanting to go in the Black Sea area as this was where my original civilisation was still surviving. Jonathan also quickly declined when Steve started taking away his territory and as expected, when currency is lost, his score dropped to virtually nothing and he fell behind while I was able to recover to lost ground.
Around 3 quarters of the way through Steve, Mike and I were very close, but Mike was forced to decline again and this was to throw the game in his favour as he picked up the combination of astronomy and mining, being able to spread to all corners of the board and rack up the points for the rest of the game. I was left in the position with a civilisation that was making reasonable points, but a new one might make better. The problem was that the remnants of my first were still scoring until relatively late in the game (when Jonathan took them out) and by this time, there was not enough time left to make up for the lost tempo involved in declining. Steve did manage to get another new civ in and was able to sneak ahead of me for second place.

Vinci 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mike	1	130
Steve H	2	124
Dave D	3	121
Jonathan	4	109

 
Next up was Industrial Waste; we had all played before so we were able to dive straight in. At the beginning I picked up innovation and hiring/firing cards and decided to try something a little different. Various people on the geek have seemed to suggest that the way to win at this game is to reduce your workforce as quickly as possible and make money by selling raw materials. There also seems to be a view that it is a waste of time to bother with improving your raw materials technology until after the others. There may be a group think thing going on here but I have always found that the price that raw materials tend to go for in our games is not sufficient to make this approach work and if you need to produce you need to use extra cards to innovate to keep this tech in line with your workforce. It seems better from my viewpoint to innovate raw materials together with waste production, the money produced from orders being much better than that from raw material auctions, especially when you can produce using fewer raw materials. This approach has certainly seemed to work for me in the past.
This probably wasn't an accurate check on the theory as Mike also ended up following a workforce strategy. He won, but the result would have been very different if the game had been ended by Jonathan a turn earlier as Mike would have been able to double innovate in the final turn which pushed the game in his favour. Had the game ended the turn before, it would have between Steve and me, possibly a tie, but no more than a point in it either way. As it was Steve was forced into taking out a loan on the final turn, dropping him back.
It should be noted, of course, that delaying the game end was the right thing for Jonathan to do.

Industrial Waste 45 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mike	1	46
Dave D	2=	42
Jonathan	2=	42
Steve H	4	35

 
That's all for March, I expect to have the first April report up on Saturday.