This is by way of a catch up of what's been going on since the games expo. The last few weeks have been filled with new games.
4 June
Dave had to pop back home to wait for a call from Jen to pick her up from the station, so we tried a quick game of Tsuro, while we waited.
This is a game I have played a few times over at Hinckley on Saturday afternoons. It is great fun and plays up to 8, all this and it is playable in 15 minutes. The game is one of playing tiles on a 6 x 6 grid, each of which has four paths running from one side to another side. You have a piece which starts off the board and must move to the end of its path each time it is extended. This goes on and eventually the pieces will start running off the board or colliding with each other. If either of these happens you are out of the game and the last player remaining is the winner. The elimination aspect is not a problem because the game is so short.
Tsuro 15 mins
| |
Player
|
Posn.
|
Mike
|
1
|
Dave D
|
2=
|
Alec
|
2=
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Ben
|
4
|
Steve H
|
5
|
Another games expo purchase, this is the new Ragnar Brothers game, which I tried and enjoyed at the show, but I don't think as much as Canal Mania. I won't go into any detail here about the game here but point you in the direction of my review on the geek. Feelings about the game were mixed, with Mike and Simon not keen, while Steve thought it OK. Simon thought he was doomed from the start but I think this was mostly due to his reluctance to buy his extra monks, which to me seems the most basic of strategy. Mike felt the fact that his secret was tile was brown was a disadvantage. I don't really agree with that but a still have a worry that it is possible to be seriously disadvantages by bad card draws.
Monastery 120 mins
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Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave D
|
1
|
35
|
Steve H
|
2
|
29
|
Mike
|
3
|
23
|
Simon
|
4
|
20
|
Munchkin 45 mins
| |
Player
|
Posn.
|
Dave C
| |
Ben
| |
Alec
| |
Tinners' Trail 75 mins
| |
Player
|
Posn.
|
Dave C
|
1=
|
Ben
|
1=
|
Alec
|
1=
|
Steve Perkins and Paul were with us this week and we had a split of 3/3, with Steve P, Paul and me on one table and Dave C, Ben & Steve H on the other.
On our table we played Monastery, which played a bit differently with 3. We all went for monks early and the game played quickly ending with the taking of all the letter tiles rather than the end of the second day as in the previous game. My victory was due to having more blessings at the end and a lower deduction from unused buildings. There was again some discussion about the disadvantage of having a lot of brown tile and some solutions offered along the line of making the Abbey dual coloured or maybe grey at the front and brown at the back. I think I'm a little less concerned that there is a serious problem at the beginning as if worse comes to worse, you always have the option of leaving your monk in the abbey at the start, earning a point allowing you to buy your next monk, but I wouldn't be adverse to allowing a mulligan on the first tile draw.
Monastery 75 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave D
|
1
|
35
|
Steve P
|
2=
|
28
|
Paul
|
2=
|
28
|
Tinners' Trail 75 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Steve H
|
1
|
137
|
Dave C
|
2
|
122
|
Ben
|
3
|
104
|
Tinners' Trail 60 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Steve P
|
1
|
136
|
Paul
|
2
|
131
|
Dave D
|
3
|
126
|
Confucius 60 mins
| |
Player
|
Posn.
|
Dave C
|
1=
|
Ben
|
1=
|
Steve H
|
1=
|
Nice to see Matt this week after a longish absence, although it is sad we will be losing him when he moves down south in a couple of months time.
Steve H, Mike & I were agreed on giving Steam over Holland a run out and Matt joined us, he being new to 18XX. This is a game I first became aware of some time back and I was interested because it looked like and 18XX game that could be played in an evening, so when I saw a copy at games expo I picked it up. The game is shorter than most 18XX by operating over a fixed 15 rounds (a stock round followed by 2 operating rounds and then repeat). The game develops quickly by allowing each company to lay 2 tiles on a turn (either 2 yellow or 1 yellow and an upgrade). Companies get money for the shares they sell and they can raise money by selling unsold shares to the open market rather than waiting for them to be bought by players.
In this game we all went our own ways each having control of a single company. That left 3 other companies which were never started. I don't know whether this is normal in this game. The critical point as I see it occurred at the transition to phase 4 of the game. In the previous stock round Steve sold one of my MSN shares dropping the price and leaving me to operate third. I sold one of Steve's HYSM shares to move his price down too, but that still left me to operate behind Mike's OSM. When we got to the operating round Mike did not declare a dividend, but did not buy the first 4 train which would have meant his losing his 2 trains, this left me to get an extra turn out of my 2 train and buy the 4 train. If Mike had bought the 4 train I would have still been able to buy the 4, but because of the 2 trains rusting my share price would have stayed the same for a turn. As it was it went up and continued to rise for the rest of the game, often by 2 levels at a time.
The final scores were pretty much in the order of who had the most valuable company. This does not have the flavour of a full blown 18XX, but is certainly a good option for an evening. It was suggested that 3 might be a better number than 4 and it will be interesting to try this some time.
Steam Over Holland 150 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave D
|
1
|
2454
|
Steve H
|
2
|
2142
|
Mike
|
3
|
1733
|
Matt
|
4
|
1513
|
Gheos 50 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave C
|
1
|
116
|
Alec
|
2
|
48
|
Ben
|
3
|
36
|
Pandemic 40 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave C
|
1=
|
L
|
Alec
|
1=
|
L
|
Ben
|
1=
|
L
|
Pandemic 40 mins
| ||
Player
|
Posn.
|
Points
|
Dave C
|
1=
|
W
|
Alec
|
1=
|
W
|
Ben
|
1=
|
W
|
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