The Games We Play

The Games We Play

A repository of reports on the Wednesday night sessions of the club and anything else related to the club or boardgaming in general, which may be of interest to anyone who may be passing by.

Sunday 27 July 2014

Games Played 23 July 2014

After a couple of weeks where attendances have not been as high and knowing that 3 of our regulars would be missing, I wondered if attendance might be low this week. As it turns out we had 16 people with Lee & Rachael back with the School holidays. We also had Dave C and Simon here for the first time in a few years (although I gather it's likely a one off in Simon's case). We also had a first time visit from Máté, who hails from Hungary and has just moved into the Birmingham area.

We split into 4 groups of 4, with the games played being Milestones, Stone Age, London, Power Grid, Guillotine, Ticket to Ride, Space Hulk: Death Angel and Ra. Milestones & Space Hulk were new to the club. Some further info follows.

After 3 weeks of Power Grid, I was taking a week off and my main game was London. Dave & I had played before, while James & Máté had not. I've usually found that paying back loans wasn't too much of a problem, provided that you don't take too many, but on this occasion the money seemed to flow out as fast as it came in and I was left with 2 unpaid at the end of  the game. James was the only one who was able to pay off his debt and then only just, being left with no money to score points at the end. Poverty was tight with James & I on 6 being equal lowest and neither of the other two suffering a serious penalty. I overcame the lost points due to unpaid loans, mainly due to the number of VP that I been accumulating through card activation during the game and the number of Underground markers in my boroughs at the end. I think that most of us were fairly level on the other scoring.

After that Dave left and we had a quick game of Guillotine, this one was close.

Despite my opting out, Power Grid still got played, this being on the Brazil board and was Simon's copy of  the game I think. The deck was the original without modification and I see that Gordon won.

After the Power Grid game, the same group played Ra and I watched the end of this game after finishing Guillotine, while waiting to pick up the scores. It's quite interesting, sometimes, to be a spectator of a game that you know. At the end of the second epoch it looked like it was between Simon and Bob, with Gordon struggling as a run of Ras had brought a quick end to the epoch. In the third epoch, however Simon and Bob went out early and shortage of Ra tiles allowed Gordon and particularly Jonathan to catch up. Jonathan was able to put together a big score of monuments to win the game. Simon picked up the 5 points for highest sun value giving him second over Bob who lost 5, also dropping him behind Gordon on the tie break.

Of the others, Ticket to Ride was played using the 10th Anniversary edition, which I must admit looks very pretty. I'm not sure that I would actually want to risk playing such a deluxe edition (if I had one) for fear of damage and it's not as if the standard edition of the game is in any way underproduced.

From a brief comment following the Space Hulk game, it sounds as if the Marines got a good kicking.

Results follow

23/07/2014
Milestones - 70 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Chris S67
2Jaime52
3Stan32
4Isabel24
Stone Age - 120 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Steve W150
2Rachael148
3Mark W120
4Lee104
London - 110 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Dave D55
2James S47
3Máté34
4Dave C23
Power Grid - 120 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Gordon16
2Bob13
3Jonathan M13
4Simon11
Guillotine - 20 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Dave D25
2James S23
3Máté21
Ticket to Ride: 10th Anniversary - 60 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Chris S162
2Jaime125
3Isabel113
4Stan61
Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game - 40 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
4Lee-
4Rachael-
4Mark W-
4Steve W-
Ra - 60 Mins.
Posn.PlayerScore
1Jonathan M36
2Simon32
3Gordon26
4Bob26




4 comments:

  1. Games are made to be played, no matter how deluxe or beautifully produced they may be!

    It would make for an awesome thing to hang on the wall and show off though, but that's more of an abuse than playing it in my opinion ^^.

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    Replies
    1. I agree with you, but I can't help feeling that were I to own such a game I'd spend too much time worrying about the handling of the bits to enjoy myself much. That may be just me of course.

      The Ticket to Ride Anniversary edition is of course not really expensive as these things go, but if I had something like the War of the Ring Collectors Edition (for example), I'd be scared to death and it's for that reason that I would likely never buy it, even if I was a fan of the game.

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  2. Wonderful to see Simon after so long. First time I have played with Bob and Jonathan and they certainly bring a real intensity to a game. Had a great time, I'll try to get over more often.

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  3. I played two new board games for me. Milestone was very good game, but maybe a little difficult to understand for me because this game is too diferent than I normally play to. I hope Stan brings it again in the future and I can try one more time.
    Then we played Ticket to Ride. I was looking after this game many time ago although Jaime have it in the computer, I prefer board games always. It was a game very nice and It met my expectations.

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