Comments on Halesowen Boardgamers: Session Report - 2 February 2011

I'm afraid I'm with Dave D on the Jamaica ...

2011-02-10T13:21:14.956Z

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.

It'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.

The refreshing thing about this session to me was ...

2011-02-10T11:10:21.452Z

The 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.

St 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.

Dave, I see from reading your account in 2008 that...

2011-02-09T20:09:41.437Z

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.