6 this week with a 3/3 split.
One table I played St. Petersburg with Dave F & Donald, this being Dave's introduction to the game. We played using the full expansion and that combined with the fact that we only had 3 players of course led to much bigger scores than the previous game we played. The use of the expansion of course adds to the number of cards available and leads to a longer game. That does not really bother me as I feel that this one can bear the length, but it is possible to reduce the number of cards if required.
I felt happy with the way this was going for most of the game, having built up a good amount of income both through workers, including most of the ship builders, many of which were upgraded to Ship Yards and also through aristocrats including the Mayor early on, which was combined with a lot of cheap early buildings.
The bulk of the scoring came at the end. By the end of the game I was left with 100 roubles to spare and finished up with 12 different aristocrat types so I had about 145 points from the last round + game end scoring.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Dave D | 279 |
2 | Dave F | 253 |
3 | Donald | 242 |
After that we finished with Guillotine, which I gather was Donald's first play.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Donald | 30 |
2 | Dave D | 27 |
3 | Dave F | 25 |
On the other table was Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, another of Andy's Winsome railway game, I get the impression that this was thought to be OK but nothing more than that.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andy | 36 |
2 | Mike | 34 |
3 | Colin | 22 |
Followed by China, which was the first play since June 2006, although Web of Power which is very similar was played in October of that year, that's a long time for such good games to be away from the table. I think only Mike had played before so it is not surprising that he won, but it looks like it was very close.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Mike | 44 |
2 | Andy | 42 |
3 | Colin | 32 |
August 2010, Meetings 4, Games 17, Average Attendance 7.75
I wouldn't say that GM&O was just okay - I'd say that it was very odd but also interesting. Too early say if it's good game or not, bit of an acquires taste - sort of like the boardgame equivalent of olives.
ReplyDeleteGMO is a bit unforgiving if you get off to a bad start. I invested too much in the first set of rounds, leaving me short of cash and in a vicious cycle of not competing for shares which then pay dividends to allow the others to buy more shares, etc. With the players themselves being to a certain extent being able to force dividend rounds through buying gold shares, I only got 2nd place because, I think, both Andy and Colin made a huge error allowing me to buy a very lucrative share towards the end even though they had more cash than me. I would still be happy top play again and try not to make the same mistake.
ReplyDeleteChina / Web of Power is a fine game, and yes we don't play it often enough! But I will be keeping it in my games bag for a while yet, so hopefully it will be seen again soon.