Games Played 19 February 2014

16 this week including newcomers Arturas & Lina and an occasional visit from John H. A total of 9 games were played spread over 5 tables.

I was involved in 2 very close games with Mark and Andy, the first being Trains with the random cards all being Red action cards meaning no special train or rail laying cards. I was doing alright at the start but as  the game went on I did not have enough cards in my deck to cycle through it quickly, which allowed Mark to catch up and win on the tie break of rail tokens played. Andy was only 1 point behind.

The other game we played was Race for the Galaxy, it being the first time any of us had played with the Alien Orb, although Andy and I had tried the new cards from that expansion 2 weeks back and Mark is familiar with the first arc so knows how the game plays. The general impression of the Orb was favourable, although there was no real interaction between players with each of us carving out our own little section. If the game had gone on then Mark's survey team was in range of an artifact that I was targeting and I may have chosen Explore-Orb in the following round to make sure I maintained the priority that I held at that point.

The result was close with Mark just pipping me by one point. Like the game a few weeks ago the time was a lot longer than a non orb game, although the score were quite a bit below that game with the winning score 48 compared with 71 in the earlier game, the others scores being more comparable between the two games.

Among the other games was Russian Railroads. When I first saw mention of the former, I thought this sounds interesting, but I confess that the interest faded very quickly when I discovered that it was yet another worker placement game, the designers have however previously produced a number of 18XX games, so maybe there is hope for it, but to me 1861 would seem a better bet for a Russian train game.

The other first time game was Twilight Struglle, the number 1 ranked game on BGG and by all accounts this is very good (at least it sounds quite interesting). The reasons this has never been played before is, I think, that it is a 2 player game  and also  its length (it was not completed this time), both of which limits it chances of play.

Also played were Carcassonne with 2 plays on differnt tables, Viticulture, Alhambra (for the first time since April 2006) and Love Letter.

All the game details below.

19/02/2014
Trains - 60 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark W	41
2	Dave D	41
3	Andy S	40
Race for the Galaxy - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark W	48
2	Dave D	47
3	Andy S	30
Viticulture - 120 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Chris S	25
2	Mike	22
3	John H	17
4	Ian	10
Carcassonne - 35 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	116
2	Ian	89
3	Chris S	84
Carcassonne - 35 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Lina	97
2	Arturas	89
3	Lee	87
4	Rachel	64
Alhambra - 80 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Lee	109
2	Arturas	107
3	Rachel	103
4	Lina	83
Love Letter - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Arturas	4
2	Lee	3
3	Lina	1
4	Rachel	0
Russian Railroads - 120 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve W	397
2	Gordon	379
3	Stan	305
Twilight Struggle - 180 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
NR	Steve H	0
NR	Dave F	0