9 this week and the split was 3/3/3. Games played were St. Petersburg, San Juan, Ra (2 games on 2 tables), Jamaica, Louis XIV and Heck Meck (note I have assumed this is the game identified as Pickomino on BGG, maybe someone could confirm or deny this for me).
I played with Gordon and Dave D and we got through 3 games during the evening, first being St. Petersburg. This game was notable in that mostly expensive workers seemed to come up at the beginning and Gordon & I seemed to suffer from this. I lagged behind all the way through as first Dave and then Gordon moved ahead in the building phases and I really thought that I was out of it. Fortunately I had the Debtor’s prison allowing me to grab cards from the discard pile and I used this to build up a good collection of Aristocrats, allowing me to jump into the lead at the end with the bonus points. Nobody had more than 2 roubles at the end, with Dave taking the tie break for 2nd place.
We did run into a slight problem in that somehow the cards that had been replaced from the expansion had found their way into the decks; this wasn’t a problem during the game as we just removed the incorrect cards when they came up and drew another card. Problem was that the Buildings were counted to check whether the game was going to end on one turn; there were 7 cards so the game would not end, unfortunately 2 of the cards had to be removed and the remaining 5 cards meant the game ended a turn earlier than expected.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Dave D | 98 |
2 | Dave F | 89 |
3 | Gordon | 89 |
Next was San Juan, which Dave won for the second week, the scores being even lower than last week. This was the 49th game of San Juan at the club so only 1 further play is needed for it to become only the second game to reach 50.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Dave F | 27 |
2 | Dave D | 23 |
3 | Gordon | 20 |
We actually were going to play another game of San Juan, but the Ra game on the other table was winding up so we grabbed that instead (San Juan’s 50th would have to wait for another time). The Ra game resulted in a win for Gordon so we each had a win in the evening. I grabbed second by virtue of +5 for most suns compared with -5 for Dave.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Gordon | 45 |
2 | Dave D | 32 |
3 | Dave F | 30 |
On another table Dave C intoroduced Jamaica to the 2 Donalds. I played this at UK Games Expo a couple of years back when it first appeared, it’s basically a race around an island with Pirate Ships, I wrote more in this post on the 2008 games expo. Looks like a fairly comprehensive win for Donald.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Donald | 46 |
2 | Donald S | 27 |
3 | Dave C | 16 |
Next up was the first Ra game of the evening, I think this was a first play for both the Donalds, the scores were substantially higher in this game than ours Dave in third place having 1 more point than our winner Gordon.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Donald S | 65 |
2 | Donald | 63 |
3 | Dave C | 46 |
On the final table were Mike, Steve H and Andy S giving the first run out of the year for Louis XIV and I’m sure not the last.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Steve H | 50 |
2 | Andrew S | 46 |
3 | Mike | 42 |
Finally was Heckmeck. As I mentioned at the top, it would be good if someone can confirm whether I’ve got the right game.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Andrew S | 9 |
2 | Mike | 8 |
3 | Steve H | 7 |
Dave, I see from reading your account in 2008 that the game of Jamaica you played was a two player one. You didn't appear to be playing with the Ghost Ship (which often gets in the way) and also the game is VERY different with multiple players. You really need to give it another go.
ReplyDeleteThe refreshing thing about this session to me was that none of the 3 games I played needed a pre game rules run through. Bang onto the table and away we go.
ReplyDeleteSt Petersburg – The first few turns went a bit awry for all of us, particularly for Dave D. The early game is largely about hand management, trying to manipulate the slots on the board so you get a good share of the early workers, but the early workers were all very expensive and we were struggling to get them down and paying for themselves. Dave D and I were having the hardest time of it, at one point Dave F had 7 workers played I had 5 and Dave D 4 which is a big disparity in this game. We were all playing on the assumption there would be one more round, I think the result would have been even closer had this happened. It was a tense game.
San Juan - really didn’t take off for me. I was first to play so I got least choice for a start hand, Dave D played a Prefecture on the first round which ruled out me choosing Councillor, I was left to just chance it that the right cards would come my way to get my early "engine" going. Smithy, Quarry, Prefecture, Carpenter, I didn't see any of them. Dave F pushed out a building every round to end the game quickly.
Ra - Can't think of anything of note about this playing. I consider the 3 games we played tonight to be 3 games I know well so coming last in both the first two jarred me a bit. Thanks to Ra I didn't go home totally beaten.
This was just the sort of hard competitive play I enjoy thanks guys.
I'm afraid I'm with Dave D on the Jamaica front. Despite winning by a large margin, I didn't get any buzz from it. It's a nice enough family game and, when my little one's appeared and put a few years on, I'd much rather play something like this than the typical roll-and-move that kids have to endure; however, this isn't really the kind of game I come to the club to play.
ReplyDeleteIt's fine, it's light, the morning/evening action roll is quite a nice mechanism, but it is one of those games where, ultimately, there are few decisions to make and, if an opponent's roll doesn't work for your hand, sometimes no choice at all. It is very pretty, though. Still, I'd rather play something ugly like Workshop of the World where there more decisions to be made.