Session Report – 12 May 2010

8 people this week and a milestone I foreshadowed some time back. The 50^th game of Power Grid, which is the first game to reach 50 plays at the club, at least as far as the records go back and I suspect even if we had records before 2003, there would not be any other games that have reached this figure.

The game was played on the Brazil map using the original plant deck and the Transformer station. The game was played using the 4 northern areas of the board including the expensive yellow area in the west. This prompted 3 of us to start out on the coast where the cheap connections are, while Steve H started inland to the south.

Coal has a low refresh rate in Brazil as compared to some other maps and I somehow contrived to corner the market on it (with plants 4, 10 & 25) which served to mitigate the potential damage as I was the only one who was regularly buying it. The transformer station appeared just after I had picked up plant 25 and I picked that up for 20, Nigel and Steve H had no "end" plant to attach it to, while Steve Pe had a 4 city plant, this proved to be a good buy, as it meant I could power 6 cities with 1 plant. After this the market entered a stall although Nigel was able to pick up plant 31 before hand, so when plant 26 came on the market, the bidding was intense, particularly as people had been stock piling money and the first 2 plants in the future market were 27 & 28 and the only potentially useful plant (5 cities or more) that could have come off the deck was number 20 (which turned out to be out of the game) and that had the problem of consuming 3 coal. I won the plant for 95 (and think it would still have been a good deal if I'd paid a fair bit more) and I think that was essentially game over, the 2 Steve's were stuck on capacity around 8 with no big plants in the offing and although Nigel had 12 capacity, his plants were all mid range, so that it was not so easy to upgrade his capacity.

On the next turn I was just short of ending the game when I was sitting on 13 capacity and the following turn, (step 3 having begun) I was able to just wait and pick up 1 of the 6 city plants at face value to give me 17.

It was a strange game in that both the Steves had something over 150 cash on hand at the end and even I had something like 50 having ended the game. Checking after revealed that the plants removed at the beginning had city values of 4,5,6,6. No resource had a serious shortage, possibly due to the fact that most of the wind plants remained in the game longer that they would normally. The price of Biogas (trash) had fallen to 1 at the end of the game due to the high refresh and the fact that the big gas plants came out only at the end.

Power Grid 110 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	17
2	Nigel	15
3	Steve H	13+
4	Steve Pe	13

Over on the other table was Endeavor.

Endeavor 110 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andrew S	58
2=	Dave F	56
2=	Paul	56
4	Colin	45

Rosliston 2010

Over the last week end a group gathered for the annual Rosliston event and it looks like there were a few good games among those played. Andy has posted a geeklist here.

I have to say though that if 7½ hours is accurate for Britannia that is pushing it even for a game as great as that is.

Session Report – 5 May 2010

9 this week split 5 & 4. On our table we had 4 for Race for the Galaxy now with the Brink of War expansion, which is supposed to complete the story arc. Congratulations to Colin and Andy for coming to the game for the first time with everything (bar takeovers) thrown in.

The new thing in this expansion is the addition of Prestige with a number of new cards which use it and allow you to accumulate it (there are also a few from Rebel vs. Imperium giving Prestige when placed. Prestige has a number of uses in that it is worth VP and the leader in prestige gets a bonus at the beginning of each round. In addition there is the option to spend prestige to play a special action card once per game which gives you an extra bonus on whatever action it is played for.

In this game it was not unexpected to see Colin and Andy lagging behind as it is one that you really need to play a few times before you can even start to get the hang of things, particularly with all expansions in play. I got off to a bad start, finding it difficult to find a coherent strategy before things came together with the new Terraforming Engineers and a collection of Uplift cards including the Uplift code, while Dave F got up and running early with big military which bagged a lot of high value military worlds. Prestige did not play a big part with no one getting any until about half way through, when Dave picked up the first, although I was soon able to overtake him when I was able to start picking some up regularly by use of the Terraforming Engineers. I was the only one to use the Prestige action card (on the Develop action).

This game was a long one with 2 of us getting used to the new stuff while the other 2 were new to the whole thing.

Race for the Galaxy 80 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	50
2	Dave D	42
3	Colin	29
4	Andrew S	21

We finished the evening off with a couple of hands of 6 nimmt, each played as a separate game.

6 nimmt 10 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	6
2=	Colin	11
2=	Andrew S	11
4	Dave D	24
6 nimmt 10 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Colin	10
2	Dave D	13
3=	Dave F	15
3=	Andrew S	15

Over on the other table the game was Small World (including the expansions), the results seem to indicate a close game.

Small World 100 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	78
2	Dave C	77
3	Andy	72
4	Steve H	71
5	Ben C	64

They followed this with Formula Motor Racing.

Formula Motor Racing 30 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave C	17
2	Mike	16
3=	Andy	15
3=	Ben C	15
5	Steve H	8

Session Report – 28 April 2010

8 people split 4 & 4. On one table we see the return of the classic Acquire for the first time since July 2008, much too long a time for this game.

In this game I believe Andy had never played before, while Colin had a long long time ago. Mike was on a loser almost from the time of the first merger, when Colin played the tile to merge America into Sackson (this was using my 1999 version), I had the America majority and kept all my shares, thinking that Sackson was not a chain I could compete in and knowing that I should be able to reform it with a built in majority and then merge it straight into Zeta on my following turn (providing Mike didn't reform it elsewhere, which I didn't expect to happen as Andy and I had first and second place locked. As it happened Mike did reform America just to get the bonus share and it was in exactly the right place, so I was able to make the merger a turn earlier and trade for a majority in Zeta, which I was then able to trade for a majority in Sackson, which became the largest chain at the end of the game. I think the game was essentially over at this point.

Acquire 80 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	44300
2	Andy	33800
3	Colin	32400
4	Mike	22800

The club history for Acquire includes the infamous 3 way tie.

Game: Acquire
Plays: 13
Play Time (Hours): 19.08 (Rank 16)
Player Hours: 66.17
First Played: Sep-03
Last Played: Apr-10
	Plays	Wins	Ties
David	1	1	0
Dave D	11	2	1
Mike	10	2	1
Gordon	5	3	0
Steve H	4	0	1
Richard B	4	1	0
Matt	5	2	0
Mark S	1	1	0
Jonathan	1	0	0
Jason	1	0	0
Andy	1	0	0
Colin	1	0	0

Following that we played a quick game of Taluva, which has also been away for a bit. I had the opportunity to win by building all my towers and temples, but was foiled by the combine efforts of Mike and Colin, which caused the game to end by exhaustion of tiles, resulting in the other 3 tying for number of temples, the tie being broken by number of huts placed. We discovered toward the end that we had forgotten the exact rule for expanding huts, but everyone played the same way so it probably didn't make any difference.

Taluva 30 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Mike
1=	Andy
3	Colin
4	Dave D

Over on the other table, Homesteaders made another appearance.

Homesteaders 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	62
2	Donald	49
3	Steve H	45
4	Andrew S	42

April 2010 – 4 meetings, 10 games played, average attendance 7.5

Session Report – 21 April 2010

6 players this week and a game of Kremlin, which has been played every year since 2004 but this was the first time we have had the full complement of players, all the other games being with 4 or 5. I have no memory of the names of all the politicians who played a part in the story of this game, but it roughly goes as follows.

In this one it was Mike who took the early lead, getting control of the ailing chief Nestor on the first turn and succeeding in getting a wave. This was not to last too long however when the old chief expectedly died and the new chief was under the thumb of Andrew. At around this time there was a lot of illness in the politburo and by the time the next turn came around I was in control through my puppet Natasha Nogoodnik and was able to hold on for 2 rounds, waving each time before the plots (mainly led by Colin, who seemed to have most influence in the politburo at this time) brought her down.

What followed was an era of power for Colin, who would have control of the party chief and the top 3 positions in the politburo and he was able to get a wave for the next 2 rounds, before a combination of ill health and cards played by the rest of us brought his power to an end. He did not have the influence to force one of his other puppets into the top job and old Petr Niewitko (who had waited a long time for his chance and was apparently controlled by Dave F) ascended as a sort of compromise candidate.

On round 7 Niewitko was too sick to take to the podium for the parade, but he made it on round 8, by which time I had remembered what I was intending to do (and should have done) the round before, which was to declare my own 4 influence on him, which was enough to control him. He waved on round 8 bring the game to an end. Possibly I was fortunate to forget on the penultimate round because if I had remembered and then failed to wave, there may have been more urgency to get rid of a chief I controlled than one that Dave F did.

The scores

Kremlin 160 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	3
2	Colin	2
3=	Andrew S	1
3=	Mike	1
5=	Steve H	0
5=	Dave F	0

The record of games played

Game: Kremlin
Plays: 8
Play Time (Hours): 17.5
Player Hours: 84.17 (Rank 12)
First Played: Apr-04
Last Played: Apr-10
	Plays	Wins	Ties
Pete B	1	0	1
Gordon	1	0	1
Mike	6	0	0
Dave C	2	0	0
Dave D	8	4	1
Matt	4	0	0
Steve G	1	0	0
Chris	1	0	0
Jonathan	1	0	0
Mark	1	1	0
Julian	2	0	0
Duncan	1	0	0
Steve H	3	1	1
Simon	1	0	0
Andy	1	0	0
Dave F	2	0	0
Colin	1	0	0
Andrew S	1	0	0