Session Report – 18, 25 November 2009

18 November

With 5 players, we all played on the same table. First was Small World using Andy's copy, adding in the 2 new expansions based on a competition for user submitted content. There are interesting new ideas here but nothing that really makes the game any better or worse than before. It is still a reasonable reimplementation of Vinci, but seems to be inferior due to the dumbing down of the basic mechanics of its predecessor, while at the same time complicating many of the special powers, the simplicity of which was one of the strengths of the original game.

This game was a close contest except for Mike who suffered from my use of Ransacking Kobolds, Ransacking is a new power, which allows you to take points off someone else and Mike suffered the misfortune in having his territory arranged in such a way as to make the most inviting target and so earning the most points, rather than attacking a player further up the order who would not yield such a great bounty. I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of this sort of power per se, it does not lead to the controlling player earning excessive points, but I do wonder if there is a problem in that it is the only such power available, possibly leading to the situation where one player suffers disproportionately.

Small World 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andy	89
2	Donald	84
3	Dave D	82+
4	Dave F	82
5	Mike	53

After that there was time for a game of Nottingham, which was possibly the closest I have seen for this game.

Nottingham 40 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Donald	88
2	Mike	87
3	Dave D	86
4	Dave F	74

25 November

Newcomer Andrew joined us this week, along with the crew from Telford, Paul bringing with him my copy of Middle Earth Quest. We split into 2 groups, with Battlestar Galactica on one table, Power Grid on the other, played on the Brazil map. I joined the BSG game, but it was a tough decision.

We played BSG using the full Pegasus expansion with the option of a Cylon Leader. The characters were myself – Ellen Tigh, Andy – William Adama, Andrew – Starbuck, Steve H – Leoben, Mike – Laura Roslin. With Steve taking on a Cylon leader, this meant there would be only 1 secret cylon and I received this card on the first deal, but decided that I would take special care to try to avoid drawing suspicion to myself with the hope of pulling off the win by a premature jump away from New Caprica.

Steve received the "Show Their True Nature" agenda requiring that the cylons win and that he be incarcerated at game end or he has been executed at least once. He accomplished this part of the agenda by making no pretence at helping the humans by sending some Civilian ships to their doom by using Communications, which got him thrown in the brig in short order at which time President Roslin ordered him executed using a Quorum card. Having achieved that part of the agenda things initially went well as population tumbled approaching New Caprica, but he was somewhat worried at the apparent absence of his secret ally.

New Caprica was reached with few Civilian ships to evacuate and all had already launched by the time Galactica returned. When it finally got round to my turn I was just about able to force the cylon win, by seizing the Admiral's title from Helo (this was Andy, Adam's execution having been earlier ordered by Roslin in response to a crisis) using Ellen's once per game power. Morale was on 3 and there were 3 humans still on the ground, if I had been delayed another turn, one of the humans would have moved off the surface and the plan would have failed, which suggests to me that this tactic is not the all powerful automatic win that it is made out o be in certain quarters.

Battlestar Galactica 160 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Dave D
1=	Steve H
3=	Mike
3=	Andrew
3=	Andy

Over on the other table, the result was as below, I have no further details. We still must get the Spanish board on the table with its strange nuclear surge in step 2.

Power Grid 130 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve Pe	17
2	Dave F	16
3	Paul	15+
4	Nigel	15