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