Session Summary – 10 September 2008

We welcomed Andy Evans to the club for the first time, who is from Wolverhampton and contacted me via the geek having seen the website. He joined Mike and Steve Paget for a couple of games, while Gordon, Steve Hilton, Jonathan and I played Pillars of the Earth with the expansion.
This was Jonathan's first try at the game and Gordon's first with the expansion, we adopted the modified rules for Master builder placement, despite their being strictly for the 5/6 player game and this seemed to work OK.
I do not recall that much of the game play except that I did not play very well and thoroughly deserved my last place, there were a couple of times when the St. Denis card would have been helpful, but I did not choose to take it with my first placement and lost out to Steve, who I also recall making good use of it in his first play of the expansion. I think I need to re-evaluate my priorities which it comes to placement in this area.
It was very close for 1^st place between Steve and Gordon, Gordon having a very good last turn having done a good job of playing down how good a position he was in for a lot of the game. He was obviously in no way disadvantaged by unfamiliarity with the expanded game.
Still this game is always fun.

Pillars of the Earth, The 135 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	50
Steve H	2	49
Jonathan	3	45
Dave D	4	42

Over on the other table 2 games were played, the first was Tinners' Trail, which was new to Mike and Andy. I gather there was a slight error in the turn order rules and there was some concern over a runaway leader issue. This is not a problem I have seen in my 2 tries with the game, in the first at game expo I was second by a single point and when we played here back in June, I was last in a 3 player game, but still only 10 points behind the winner.

Tinners' Trail 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve P	1	162
Andy	2	121+
Mike	3	121

Finally there was a game of Arkadia, this is game I have seen, but never played and really know nothing about.

Arkadia 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve P	1	110
Andy	2	102
Mike	3	91

Session Summary – 3 September 2008

This evening we were joined by Steve Perkins and Paul. Steve had again brought along Tribune, which Mike had expressed great interest in giving a try, but on the (at least) 2 earlier occasions the game had put in an appearance, he hadn't been available so I had suggested we waited until he was. This time Mike was here so 5 of us sat down to play it.
The game is essentially a set collection card game, with a worker placement mechanism to both collect the cards and use them once collected. The cards represent members of various different factions in Republican Rome (Senators, Gladiators, etc) and the idea is to use them to take control of these factions. Controlling a faction gives you an immediate benefit when you take control, followed by a continuing benefit received each turn.
The game is won by achieving a number of objectives out of a set of requirements that can be varied from game to game. We played to get 4 out of the 6 available, which included the collection of Laurels, Legions, gaining a permanent favour of the gods, a tribune and 25 money; I don't recall what the 6^th was. These are achieved through the use of the powers of the factions, sometimes in combination with board effects.
In this game, it was clear from a turn out that Gordon would win as he only needed to gather an extra legion from the Gladiators (I think) and he was able to guarantee this by spending big money on the chariot to protect his position, he also needed to gain some laurels, which were available at the Field of Mars. It was possible that he could have been stopped (by outbidding him for the chariot) or combining to deny him the place in the field, but it seemed to me that a player would be simply be handing an advantage to someone else, by damaging their own positions and everyone went ahead and played to maximise their own score. Another factor from my point of view was that by that time (despite it not being a long game) I was desperate to get to the end.
In conclusion I found that this was a nice looking game, but in terms of play, tedious. You are very dependent on the right cards coming up and in turns when you are late in the order you are at a severe disadvantage. In all the other worker placement games I have played, there is some kind of mechanism to change the turn order, or at least the start player and I think this mechanism is definitely lacking here.

Tribune: Primus Inter Pares 75 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	4
Mike	2	3
Steve H	3	2++
Steve Pe	4	2+
Dave D	5	2

After that Paul joined us and there was time to have a game of Nottingham, which is a game I quite enjoy, although it perhaps goes on a bit. I thought I was doing well in this one, but Gordon was in there again for the win. He seems to be in good form at the moment. Mike was beset with ambushes from every direction.

Nottingham 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	78
Dave D	2	62
Steve H	3	51
Paul	4	45
Steve Pe	5	35
Mike	6	33

 
There was other action going on as well as Dave C, Paul, Daniel and Ben first played Tinner's Trail followed by a game of Gheos after Paul joined us for Nottingham. They rounded out the evening with Ben and Daniel playing games of Quinamid, I've scored that as the number of games won by each.

Tinners' Trail 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Paul	1	107
Dave C	2	59
Daniel	3	56+
Ben	4	56
Gheos 20 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Daniel	1	73
Ben	2	60
Dave C	3	36
Quinamid 45 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Daniel	1	6
Ben	2	3