I played in what was probably my worst game of St. Petersburg for some time, never being able to get my engine working properly and feeling I wasn't making enough money in either the worker or aristocrat phase. Why this was is difficult to pin down, although clogging up my hand with the Academy at the beginning and picking Debtor's Prison instead of Observatory on round 1 might have had something to do with it. I also might have had a few more points from a relatively early Textile Factory if not for seeing Gordon picking up a couple of Shepherds in front of me.
Bob lead for a great deal of but lost out at the end due to missing out on the final Aristocrat scoring, Jonathan, in his first game picking up the strategy well, took victory over Gordon having scored slightly better over the course of the game (both of them having 10 aristocrat types) while I just scraped third having 9 aristocrats and 4 points for money over Bob's 4 aristocrats.
Also played was Suburbia, which was new to Steve and (I think) Chris. I gather Steve wasn't too impressed with the game. The other "long" game was Relic, FFGs Warhammer 40K game based on the Talisman mechanics. I did not know this game was actually a cooperative until Wednesday night. Mike was killed part was through and joined and joined the Suburbia table to play Hanabi. Both of the evening's coop games ended up being lost.
Next up is our seconds Saturday Games Day tomorrow.
Full results as follows.
| 17/09/2014 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Saint Petersburg - 120 Mins. | ||
| Posn. | Player | Score |
| 1 | Jonathan M | 166 |
| 2 | Gordon | 154 |
| 3 | Dave D | 124 |
| 4 | Bob | 123 |
| Suburbia - 100 Mins. | ||
| Posn. | Player | Score |
| 1 | Máté | 113 |
| 2 | Chris S | 104 |
| 3 | Scott | 98 |
| 4 | Steve H | 72 |
| Relic - 150 Mins. | ||
| Posn. | Player | Score |
| 3 | Mark W | - |
| 3 | James S | - |
| 3 | Mike | - |
| Hanabi - 30 Mins. | ||
| Posn. | Player | Score |
| 5 | Mike | 15 |
| 5 | Scott | 15 |
| 5 | Chris S | 15 |
| 5 | Máté | 15 |
| 5 | Steve H | 15 |
I've been wanting to try Suburbia for a while, as the mechanics have been of high appeal (I love the geometric element of Among the Stars, with positioning being as important as having the tile), but was a bit put off by the rather bland theme, although I was still hoping to get/try it eventually ^^.
ReplyDeleteI have to say it really does a great job with that mechanic and blends it well with the cost system in place, and has the very fun catchup mechanism making you plan ahead about how quickly to attract people to increase your population. Very fun!
I do still think the theme isn't much for me though, so I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming 'castles of mad king ludwig', which looks a touch lighter in game-play and with a much more cheerful theme! (Hopefully being lighter means Grace'll enjoy it too ^^).
Rather disappointed with Relic, I had always been intrigued by the idea behind the original Talisman back in the 80's but unimpressed by the game play including one 4.5 hour session over at Geoff Kemp's in Tamworth where I was still slogging around on Level 1 at the end, so the idea of a re-thought variant appealed, but they haven't fixed it enough. Too many levels of chrome, a difficult to read board and still the horrible randomness - typically, I was killed by an event which Mark drew and I just happened to be on the same level so copped it too. When you pick challenges based on your strong characteristics, but then the challenge deck is laced with ones which test your other characteristics, you know that the luck to duration ratio is way too high.
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