This was our largest attendance for a long time with 12 people. The numbers were swelled by the arrival of a group from Erdington, including Andy Hopwood designer of Mijnlieff, which won the award for best abstract game at this year's UK Games Expo. We had already split into 2 groups before their arrival, so in the first instance they sat down for a game of For Sale, which I do not have a record of. After that we rearranged things.
On our table we started off with a game of Gheos, a nice light little game which has been a few times before, particularly in 2008. The game can vary sharply because of the random order of the tile draw and this was so in this case with 4 out of the 8 epoch tile coming out in about the first 6 player turns of the game, which although the rate levelled out later this meant a short game. I was caught out by the end game when I forgot to play a scoring tile on what turned out to be my last chance and then the game ended on Dave's turn immediately before mine. If it had got back to me the scores would have been rather different but this is always a possibility in games with random endings. Gheos is light enough for it not to be an issue.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Dave C | 34 |
2 | Ben C | 33 |
3 | Andy | 29 |
4 | Dave D | 22 |
After that we rearranged 2 groups and Andy H and Pete came over to join Andy E and me while Ben and Dave joined Hugh and Ed on the other table. We played Saint Petersburg, which Andy H had brought with him. This is a game I like a lot, although in this case we had not the expansion on hand so the base game only was in play. A lot of people claim that the base game is broken in favour of anyone who has the chance to pick up a Mistress of Ceremonies in the first round. I wouldn't go as far to say broken as other things can happen, but there is a big advantage. This was demonstrated by Andy H who finished with a handy win. I have said we must have a rematch using the expansion cards, which halves the income from the Mistress. Still a very enjoyable game.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andy H | 116 |
2 | Dave C | 87 |
3 | Andy | 62 |
4 | Pete C | 54 |
After that Andy E departed while Andy H took the opportunity to demonstrate his game to me. This is definitely a game where the more experienced player is going to win most of the time. It is a quick game where each player has 8 pieces to place on a 16 square board, winning points at the end of the game for scoring lines of 3. The mechanism is such that the piece you play constrains the position of the piece that your opponent can play in the following turn. My problem I think was not having learnt to think more than 1 turn ahead so I would play a piece with the idea of forcing Andy not to play in certain positions without considering the nature of the pieces he could play. Andy would then play a piece such that I had no legal play and I ended up missing a turn. This happened on a couple of occasions and it's the sort of thing you learn over time. While it's a good enough game and takes next to no time I can't see me having much chance to improve considering the scarcity of 2 player gaming that I do.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andy H | 2 |
2 | Dave D | 0 |
Dave & Ben joined Hugh and Ed to play Small World, this played without any expansions. I don't know any details of the play. I have referred to Ed as Ed-2 in the results to distinguish him from the Ed who visited us in March.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Hugh | 105 |
2 | Ed-2 | 93 |
3 | Dave C | 90 |
4 | Ben C | 85 |
On the other table we had Mike, Andy S, Dave F and Steve H. They first played Caylus Magna Carta which again clocked in at just under 2 hours. Mike pointed out that I'd said I give this one another chance and I pointed out I had. The big problem to me is the length, if it could be made to consistently come in at an hour or fractionally more, I'd probably play this.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andrew S | 47 |
2 | Mike | 46 |
3 | Dave F | 44 |
4 | Steve H | 42 |
After that they played The Speicherstadt, which I don't know much about other than it is by Stefan Feld, who has a somewhat patchy record with me. I like Notre Dame but am not too keen on In the Year of the Dragon (possibly would be OK with 2 players, but I don't tend to play many of those as mentioned above). This was still going on when I left, but looking on, it seems to consist of a series of Dutch Auctions to buy things, which presumably help you score points to win the game.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andrew S | 32 |
2 | Dave D | 25 |
3 | Mike | 23 |
4 | Pete C | 14 |
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