Games Played - 24 February 2016

Written 4 days after it happened, but if memory serves me we had 11 in attendance, which is about average lately, split 4-4-3 at the beginning.  One of the 4's was Scott's copy of Stefan Feld's Bruges, which I suspect has a bit of a learning curve to it as Scott proceeded to win his own game :

Scott = 69
Gordon = 63
Steve W = 58
Stan = 53

I know there are Feld-fanatics out there but I must admit I'm a bit wary, I lke Speicherstadt and In the Year Of The Dragon but back in 2013-2014 I played 4 newish Feld games in fairly rapid succession and my opinion was1 good, 2 indifferent and 1 bad so not a great record for me, but opinion on Wednesday seemed generally favourable.  After Stan left it was a 3-player base game San Juan, where Steve proceeded to make the most determined "Chapel Strategy" attempt I've ever seen - 13 cards!  Unfortunately I have to agree with Gordon that, although it would be nice if it did work, this strategy is very unlikely to deliver the win, the fact is that you'd have to be a far worse player than anybody at HBG, where I consider the standard of play to be high, not to turn those 13 cards into more than the 13VPs gained through it.  Valiant attempt though, as Gordon powered through to win.

The other 4 was a (new to HBG?) game called Xenoshyft, at least I'm pretty sure it was but on the Geek the playing time is given as up to 60 minutes and they hadn't finished when I left and it had been going for nearly 3 hours, but I understand there are a lot of expansions so perhaps those were in and added game length.  Not sure that type of Sci-Fi combat game is my cup of tea, but hopefully someone on that table will comment.

For the 3-player table, myself, Steve and Rob, it was an old favourite Caylus Magna Carta for starters, though Rob had only played it once and was very keen to get into it again.  The  Trading Post was excluded from the start cards, this usually means tight cash but an early Architect saw a rash of Residences so cashflow problems were only occasional.  A game where the super-Quarry and the Church never got built was always going to be a slow game, so much so that I found time to build 3 Prestige buildings (One strange thing was that I built a Gold Mine quite early but was the only player to use it, which definitely helped me a lot), but Steve really hit the Castle early on, and those 13 extra points and resultant Gold more than cancelled out my buildings tally :

Steve = 50
Mike = 44
Rob = 42

End of session filler for us was Splendor, I won my first game of this a while back but it was clearly "Beginner's Luck" as I've never come near to victory since, some indifferent play and sudden dearth of the gem cards I needed for my strategy saw me come last with Steve winning his second game of the night.

UK Games Expo Boardgame Tournaments

Tickets are now available online for most of the boardgame tournaments at the UK Games Expo. I draw your attention, in particular, to the Voyages of Marco Polo tournament on the Friday! Tickets for some additional tournaments - 7 Wonders, Agricola and Splendor - are not yet available as the details are still being worked out with the sponsors.