Session Report – 18 August 2010

7 this week split 4 & 3.

Steve H, Colin & I first had another game of World Without End. Notable events in this game included Colin actually going down to zero VP at the end due to being completely unpious (is that a word?) at the end of the first chapter. He did very well to recover to the total he ended up with at the end of the game.

I went for a mixed building/medical strategy and was caught off guard by not taking careful enough notice of Colin's build up of medical knowledge, I knew he had 1 but it turned out he actually had 3, so it was a bit of a surprise when he stepped in and picked up a couple of houses which I would have picked up myself earlier if I'd known he could usurp me.

Steve won with a mainly building strategy but he picked up a large number of points due to his high loyalty count, both by picking up the metal on completion of the Tower and also from payouts on the King & Queen favour spaces.

World Without End 90 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	55.5
2	Dave D	50
3	Colin	40

Next was another game of Pandemic. To increase the challenge a bit I added in the Virulent Strain challenge from On the Brink, but still used only 4 Epidemic cards. Again the game was a comfortable win, although the fact of there being only 3 in the game would have made things a little easier. Next time I think 5 epidemics and the Mutation challenge.

Roles in this game were Archivist (Steve), Containment Specialist (Colin) and Scientist (me).

Pandemic 30 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Colin	W
1	Steve H	W
1	Dave D	W

Over on the other table was Glen More

Glen More 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andrew S	47
2	Donald	44
3	Mike	41
4	Dave F	36

Followed by the Sherlock Holmes card game, I'm not sure how many rounds this was over.

Sherlock Holmes Card Game 40 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	47
2	Andrew S	68
3	Donald	112
4	Mike	124

Session Report – 11 August 2010

8 this week including my (and Mike and Dave C's) old school friend John, who was in the area again on a quick visit. We split into 2 groups.

John, Colin, Andy & I played Coast to Coast Rails, which Andy has been carrying around for a bit, this is another Train game set in the USA, the idea is to invest in shares in various companies attempting to build railways from coast to coast and is played in alternate stock rounds, where 3 shares are auctioned in each of the companies, followed by building rounds.

It is the nature of the game that it is possible to calculate with a good degree of accuracy the potential earnings of the company and use that to base your bidding on, unfortunately at the start of the game I was failing to take into account the system that you were bidding for 2 shares rather than 1 so I was underbidding. The game is such that there is definitely a rich get richer tendency and although I would not say there was a runaway leader problem (there isn't) I definitely see that if you screw up at the start (which I did) then you should forget it for that game and wait for another try (if you are so inclined (which I'm fairly sure I'm not).

The game, to me, has the same issues I have with Chicago Express in that you buy shares and they earn you money, but then they never go down in value and are not worth anything at the end of the game. In addition to that, in this game, you buy your shares which you would expect to be used by the company to fund its building, but it actually goes into a black hole never to be seen again and it is then left to the players who have already paid for shares to dig into their pockets again to pay for the track building. This all seems thematically nonsensical to me.

I have said in the past that I like train games, but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that this should be narrowed to the 18XX series, which were my first introduction to train games, and the Mayfair Crayon rails games.

Coast-to-Coast Rails 100 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	John H	318
2	Andy	271
3	Colin	258
4	Dave D	226

After that we played Pandemic, using the characters and special events from the On the Brink expansion, but not any of the advanced challenges. As some players were new to the game I prepared the deck with just 4 epidemics.

The roles drawn were the Epidemiologist (John), Medic (Colin), Troubleshooter (Andy) and Archivist (myself) and resulted in a fairly easy win for the players, the roles seemed good with both Andy and I being able to fly about the board without using up cards, while John's ability was helpful for gathering the cards needed for a cure together. At the same time Colin was able to deal with treatment, even better when the first cures were in place.

I took a mental note to make it a bit more difficult next time (but see next post).

Pandemic 30 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	W
1	John H	W
1	Colin	W
1	Andy	W

On the other table there was Cyclades, which I don't know a great deal about, other than it has an Amun-Re style auction mechanism.

Cyclades 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	NA
2	Dave F	NA
2	Mike	NA
2	Andrew S	NA

And another run out for The Speicherstadt.

The Speicherstadt 45 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andrew S	29
2	Dave F	25
3	Steve H	24
4	Mike	16

T Shirts

I started to write this last week and then got sidetracked, but have been just been reminded seeing Mike's email. Mike organised the production of the T shirts and we charged £2 each, with the remainder coming out of club funds, the shirt is shown below (design by former member Luke Morris).

This is really for those who may not have seen Mike's mail, but may read this. If you're interested and have seen the mail, reply to that, otherwise reply here or use one of the contacts on the Contact page (Members Only).

Session Report – 4 August 2010

After 3 the week before, we were up to 10 this week. We split the group 4, 4 & 2.

We played St. Petersburg, which I had put back into my bag after playing a couple of weeks ago. We included the New Society expansion but left out the Banquet as it was Donald's first game, Colin I think had played before.

This game seemed a low scoring affair, which could be explained by the fact that the big points scorers among the aristocrats came out late in the game, with neither of the Mistresses of Ceremonies appearing at all. Steve won on the strength of his buildings which he was increasing during the game; Colin did well with Buildings early on but did not develop this as the game progressed. I did well with workers and aristocrats, which weren't scoring enough points, but my buildings were not scoring enough until too late in the game, I was able to catch Steve up a bit in the end game scoring and leapfrog Colin, but may aristocrat advantage was not enough to make up for the points lost earlier.

Donald enjoyed the game despite coming last and was talking about getting hold of his own copy.

Saint Petersburg 90 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve Pe	88
2	Dave D	73
3	Colin	63
4	Donald	42

Next up was Race for the Galaxy (including all expansions, but with no takeovers) and Donald made up for any disappointment in St. Petersburg with a comfortable win, building a nice engine mainly based on Rare Elements with good capacity for building prestige. None of the rest of us did very well, Steve taking second place from Colin by virtue of early points he gained as sole (or joint) prestige leader in the early stages, Colin had a powerful military and won the highest military goal, but his tableau points were low. As were mine, I played Contact Specialist very early on which quickly turned into a liability when the only military worlds I was drawing were Alien ones, which the card does not affect, in retrospect I might have been better playing some of the military developments I had, but was put off because of the penalty from Contact Specialist. The bulk of my score (about 12 points came in the last round of the game, adding a veneer of respectability.

This is a game I need to play more than I do, and I think I'll be spending a bit of time the AI, now Keldon has updated it for Brink of War (See here).

Race for the Galaxy 60 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Donald	53
2	Steve Pe	39
3	Colin	37
4	Dave D	33

Also played was Chicago Express. According to the records this was the first play of this this year, which surprised me as I thought it had been played more often. I know Mike and others are big fans of the game, although I can't say I care for it much. One of the reasons for this is that I have issues with its origins, although there are other issues as well, the main one being that shares are worthless at the end of the game, which to me is ridiculous and destroys any connection the game would otherwise have with its theme.

This reminds me that I shall have to dig out Steam over Holland, or organise a game of something like 1861.

Chicago Express 75 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	66
2	Andy	63
3	Dave F	52
4	Andrew S	35

Next up was Medina, which is an old game that I think Andy picked up second hand. I have no knowledge of the game at all with the exception of pictures I have seen on the geek at one time or another.

Medina 80 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andrew S	35
2	Andy	33
2	Mike	33
4	Dave F	29

Dave & Ben played Twilight Imperium, this being the second edition of the game, rather than the more recent 3^rd edition, which adds in enough to make it unplayable in an evening. Dave won this game playing the Haken, while Ben played the Nor (my apologies for my almost certain misspelling of these names as I haven't looked at the game and have only typed by what is sounded like Dave said).

Twilight Imperium (2nd. Ed.) 100 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave C	N/A
2	Ben C	N/A