Session Summary - 13 June 2007

4 people tonight, 1 game:

Pillars of the Earth, The 120 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	53
Steve H	2	49
Mike	3	47
Richard B	4	44

I had a chance to play this one last Saturday and enjoyed it so much I went out and bought it. Steve suggested we play tonight, having enjoyed the game played here a few weeks ago, when brought along by Steve P.

Of the players tonight Mike, Steve and I had each played once before, leaving Richard as the only one new to the game. Mike was selected as first player and play began. On the first round Richard picked up the Tool Maker from the selection to buy in Phase 1, and when it came to placing master builders, I went for the Master Woodworker who converts wood into gold, this cost me 7, I was unsure about the value, but I did it as I knew I would make 8 from the card immediately and I was pretty much guaranteed this source of income for the rest of the game (or so I thought). I also went to the King's court and took the metal, so denying it to Richard, but in this case the event gave everyone metal so Richard got to use his Tool Maker after all.

The game now proceeded, with everyone fairly close to each other. Richard had Prior Philip early on giving him bonus points for the priory and a narrow lead in the early going, Steve picked up the Architect in round 2 for a point every round, Mike was getting points for his craftsmen as did I, with a few from the priory.

I felt I was falling a bit behind by half way through, but I was fortunate when the event caused everyone to lose 2, when I was in the Archbishop's office and so immune. This tightened things up a bit. Also on round 4 I was able to pick up the Sculptor (1 stone = 2VP (twice)), which together with another sculptor the following round doing the same thing three times, gave me a sound base of VP heading towards the end of the game.

Amongst the other players, Steve was going on steadily, earning Victory points through his architect, Masons and Pottery and paying periodic trips to the market to sell goods (usually wood), making money and buying other goods he needed. Later on he also acquired a glass blower and a goldsmith on turn 5. On turns 3, 4 & 5 he sent one of his master builders to the Starting player space at the Cathedral, meaning he was start player on the last 3 turns of the game. This did not bother me that much as it meant I went second, but it was a bit irritating, when Steve was able to pick up the only wood card on both the last 2 rounds, upsetting my income stream from the woodworker. The other result of this was that I was the only one who was never the first player.

Mike was somewhat handicapped in the later stages when, on 2 rounds (including the last) his master builders came out of the bag very late, meaning the good placements were pretty well all gone. He had managed to pick up the earliest sculptor, but that could only process 1 stone per round. Richard lost ground as the game went on, although he had picked up a glass blower.

Going into the final round, Steve was narrowly ahead, with the rest of us bunched a couple of points behind. I had a couple of metal which I saved from early on and got the Bellmaker, which together with my sculptors using 5 stone and some other VPs from elsewhere made me a healthy total and overhauled Steve who picked up the Organ Builder and also made some points from his Glassblower and a full 6 from his goldsmith. Mike picked up the other Goldsmith, which he was able to use for 8VP, forming a large part of his score. Richard suffered badly at this point as he had no big VP generators.

There was some discussion following the game. I still think it's wonderful and am glad I bought it. Mike is beginning to have some doubts about the random element. The late draw of his master builders, affected him on more than one occasion, particularly badly on the last round, and he commented that he thought that the random element was perhaps too high in a game of this length. I have issues with random elements in some shorter games than this, but it does not bother me here (at this time).

Until next week

Session Summary - 6 June 2007

A big attendance this week by recent standards, with Matt, Julian & Richard (fresh from his triumph at the UK Games Expo) returning.

With the recent expo and other things, some new games have been picked up and 2 of these hit the table.

Phoenicia 100 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	36
Julian	2	31
Dave C	3=	24
Ben	3=	24

This one was Dave's and he's posted a review on the Geek, on reading the review I was a bit concerned about his comment at the end that this would not appeal to those who don't like auction games, however I'm starting to learn that it's not all auctions that I have an aversion to but blind auction, where you lose your bid whatever the result. The auctions in this are the round the table type as seen in Power Grid, so that's alright. As the game went on though I did see other issues that I'm not sure of.

The game is essentially one of advancing a civilization from primitive roots. Each turn, cards are auctioned which give victory points, production and various advantages such as extra workers and storage, new and improved industries and discounts for other cards to come later in the game. At the start of this game I went with an indentured worker giving me a trained worker as did Julian, Dave bought a granary, increasing his storage space, while I think Ben went for a Tracker giving a discount on a Caravan and upgrading his hunting.

As the game went on I seemed to have found a good strategy. You need to be able to balance your production with the amount of storage space you have, early on I was a bot worried because I had more income coming than I could store, but once I rectified this by getting some more storage I was away, I had improved and then advance mining which brought in a good income as well as Victory points and the ability to store them, Dave had got in the situation of having storage but not being able to fill it.

This seemed to be a weakness in the game, because you can only store so much the incentive is to spend all you've got to make way for that turn's income if you've managed to balance income and production. If you've managed to get this balance in a way that your income is greater than the rest, which I had from a relatively early point, the I don't really see an easy way for the rest to catch up. Toward the end a lot of items with high VP value came up and I was able to pick up one of the best of these, despite other people have a discount of 5 on the items.

All in all an interesting game, but as I say I do have the fear that there is this runaway leader potential. Further games will show how easy it is to get into this position, when everybody knows what they are doing.

Over on the other table was

Colosseum 120 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	89
Mike	2	80
Matt	3	67
Richard B	4	66

This is a very pretty game from Days of Wonder and form the discussion seems to have more meat on it than other Days of Wonder games I have tried. I must play soon, but I was a bit disappointed that there is apparently not an option to assassinate the emperor to stop him visiting your opponent's shows. Oh Well.

I leave someone else to fill us in on the game, but there is a picture below.















Until next Wednesday.

UK Games Expo as seen by Brass Jester

Sat 02.06.07
Finally the big day dawned and Ben and I headed off to the Clarendon Suite in Birmingham. It was Ben’s first games convention and he was really looking forward to it.
Arrived at 10.30, both wearing our Halesowen Boardgamers T-shirts (the ones saying ‘Total Beginner’). Queued for about 5 mins to get in; collected our wristbands and goodie bags (some nice d6’s and I got an Urban War figure) then headed inside.
First impression: Overwhelming! I had no idea what scale this was going to be; I’ve never been to Essen or any of the American cons, but this was the biggest convention I’ve been to. The place was like a labyrinth; every corner turned there was something new, and you could easily run a LARP round there.
After some exploring we met up with Dave D, who was playing a game of –Tara ,Seat of the Kings- with the designer. Ben found a computer game demo to play, and we had a brief chat with Nick Kinzett, who was demonstrating World Cup Soccer (was that it’s name?) Dave, Ben and I then went exploring for the next hour or so; we found some other Halesowen Boardgamers (Mike Head and Richard Biddle) in one of the tournament rooms, playing –Puerto Rico- and –Tigris and Euphrates- respectively. A bit later, somewhere on one of the upper floors, we encountered Matt and some friends of his.
Heading back downstairs, the central concourse had been taken over by Darth Vader and some stormtroopers; full marks to the costumes. I found the Mongoose Publishing stand and bought a couple more books for the Conan RPG (a d20 OGL and probably the best fantasy RPG I’ve got). I’ll be running some sessions for the kids in the summer holidays. Ben invested in some more Yuh-Gi-Oh cards.

We then got involved in a game of -Pitch Car-, which I lost (in fact, I forgot which lap I was on) Heading down to Ragnar Brothers, I got a copy of –Invasions- at a bargain price with a set of English rules thrown in. Ben then got playing Heroscape so I had another wander round with Dave, attempting to get the entries for the Win a Dalek competition. We met Julian by the Bring and Buy stand and I left Dave talking whilst I completed the competition. I found Ben and we headed off to get something to eat. This was perhaps the only let down; most of the food appeared to have gone (and it was only 1pm!) and the catering staff were not very helpful (to the point of being brusque). We settled for a baked potato each; then Dave re-found us. A brief chat with Mike and Richard and the sight of Matt playing -Talisman- led us back upstairs. We found another food outlet and Ben had a beefburger; we then tried out a game called –Cinematique-, a cinema trivia game hosted by a very nice lady called Lynn. Any doubts she had about Ben’s age were soon dispelled as he was able to answer quite a few questions, plus the acting out parts etc. that the game involves. After that, a brief look at the –Memoire ’44- tournament (in yet another part of the labyrinth), then it was back to the main concourse.
This is when the wedding party turned up! At first we thought “this is taking LARP a bit far”, but it turned out it was genuine; booked into another part of the building. Quite what they made of it I don’t know, but maybe they were gamers:-
“I now pronounce you Dobber and Meeple. You may now trash the bride at –Caylus-“
Dave settled down to play -Canal Mania- at the Ragnar stand, Ben got into another –Heroscape- game and I played –Niagra- at the Esdevidium stand. Said hello to Roj from Waylands Forge (who weren’t able to be there), then finally succumbed and bought a copy of –Phoenicia-. By this time we were both getting a bit tired (and it was rather warm in there) so, having met up with Dave D again, we all called it a day and headed home. Spent the evening getting trashed at –Invasions- by Ben.
Overall: I hope this appears on the calendar every year as a regular event at the same venue; other than (perhaps) the food (and there were other places close by we could have gone to), the event count not be faulted and was excellent value for money.

UK Games Expo as seen by DaveD

Just got back from UK Games Expo, I ended up going on Saturday and also Sunday afternoon. Here are my comments on what I did and my thoughts. Please anyone else who went and has posting access, post your reports as well as it will be interesting to compare notes on what we did, thought and played. Some of the memories are over 24 hours old now, so please forgive any inaccuracies that you may spot.

I got there on Saturday morning a few minutes after 10 and stood in a short queue, once I was in I headed in the direction of Ragnar Brothers (stopping on the way for a quick chat with Richard Dewsbury and to admire his HeroScape setup) to pick up my copy of the Canal Mania 2nd. edition upgrade kit, this turned out to be the only new thing I picked up all weekend and I'd paid for that in advance so my expenditure was lower than I thought it might have been. After chatting for a bit with the Ragnars, I set out to explore the show, seeing several dealers selling Caylus Magna Carta, which I had thought I might get, but not without being able to try it out first, disappointingly Esdevium weren't demoing it, so I didn't buy but obviously many did as by the end of Saturday all the copies seemed to be gone.

I eventually sat down with the designer of Tara, Seat of Kings who unsurprisingly soundly thrashed me at his game, essentially an abstract using cards to play pieces on a board to eventually capture the space at the top of a pyramid. I think, in this one, experience and knowledge of the card mix would be a big advantage. Just as I'd finished I was found by Dave C and Ben and we wandered around together for a bit taking in a five player game of Pitch Car. I was in second early on overtaking Ben in the second half of the second lap and eventually won by half a lap (obviously a game requiring great skill).

Dave & I left Ben playing HeroScape and went to find the boardgame tournament room where Mike & Richard were playing, running into Matt, who had played a game of Fondue, his comment as I recall being that he would rather have played Fury of Dracula (you can draw your own conclusions about that). Having exchanged brief greetings with Mike & Richard who were heavily into Puerto Rico we ran into Julian and I spent some time chatting with him while Dave went to find Ben.

When I left Julian I briefly ran into Dave again and then headed over to the Garden House for a pint and something to eat, it sounds as if this was a good move as it seems the catering at the show had run out of most things on the menu, possibly something that needs to be looked at for future events. I must say that the Garden House is a much more pleasant environment anyway.

After lunch it was back to Ragnars and a first try at 2nd. edition Canal Mania. Unfortunately I made a bit of a bad mistake right at the beginning and this together with a lot of advice given to the newbies by the designers meant I lost rather badly (oh well never mind). That was my last game playing for the day the remaining time being spent wandering. I left with Dave & Ben just before 5 I think.

I had been in 2 minds about whether to go on Sunday but when I got home and opened up my Canal Mania box I found a few of the contract cards were creased, so I set off back for the show after an early lunch the following day. Ragnars were happy to replace the cards and after dealing with this I had another quick look around and had a quick chat with Mike & Matt, then went and had a game of the new 4th edition Talisman. Although I am not one to give high priority to how a game looks, I have to say that the production of this is a vast improvement on the old 2nd edition on which it is based. What surprises me is that the set we were using seemed to be of production standards (although there are a few corrections to be made on some cards and the board) but it is not due out until October. While I was playing Matt wandered by (apparently he won a game of this yesterday) and later on Gordon & Steve P. There was a bit of a commotion at one point when someone rushed past proclaiming his innocence pursued by several Imperial Storm Troopers (and a girl dressed in the costume of one of Jabba the Hutt's slave girls?). We did not have time to finish the game but I was declared winner by virtue of advancing my character the most. Some pictures I took follow:

All in all I think the show was a great success and will definitely go again next year, although I do think some more space could be set aside for open gaming and it sounds as if the catering could do with improvement.

Session Summary - 30 May 2007

Just the three of us tonight. In the absence of Mike & Steve, I thought it might be like this so I dug out a game that I thought Ben might enjoy and I think he did.

Cosmic Encounter 45 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1
Dave D	2=
Ben	2=
Cosmic Encounter 25 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1
Dave D	2=
Ben	2=
Cosmic Encounter 35 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1
Dave D	2=
Ben	2=

Three games and Dave won all three. We played a fairly basic version including all non-lucre powers and the kickers, but no flares, moons, lucre, special star systems and what have you.

First Game Dave C - Miser, Ben - Vacuum, Dave D - Delegator
Second Game Dave C - Dictator, Ben - Zombie, Dave D - Pacifist
Third Game Dave C - Terrorist, Ben - Healer, Dave D - Trader.

Not a lot to say about the games, which were fun but more players would have been better. I did think that maybe this was a game of a more innocent time, I can't really see that the Terrorist power would have been included if the game were published today.

That's all really except to say I've updated the stats pages for May and the full details for 2004 are now there. Also to mention Games Expo at the weekend. I shall be there at least Saturday and Sunday as well if Saturday is OK. Mike is planning to be there all weekend having entered loads of tournaments. Dave and Ben are planning to be there on Saturday as Ben is hoping to enter the Memoir '44 tournament. I expect to see others as well. Maybe people will post some reports of what they got up to.

Session Summary - 23 May 2007

5 this week including Ben and welcoming back Richard for the first time in a while. The games:

Power Grid 75 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	17
Dave D	2	15
Richard B	3	14

This played on the Benelux board, with the 3 central regions containing all the cheap connection costs. Steve got the first in the turn order and bought the number 3 oil plant, I think we let him have it for 6 which seems a good deal, since on this board it is Oil rather than Coal that is initially cheaper and it is the lowest numbered plant allowing him to be first to build. I got the number 4 coal while Richard took the number 5 hybrid. Steve started his network in the middle of the board, while I took the north part with the really low connection costs and Richard took the west.

In this version of the game, the lowest power plant is removed every turn and I would have expected this to impact on the mid game stall, may be eliminating it, this did not seem to be the case, however, as the market seemed to fill with nuclear plants, which considering the maximum refresh rate for uranium is only 1 for 3 players, did not seem very good deals, the gaps seemed to be filled with a few trash (which also has a low early refresh) and wind plants, it was as if some one had decided that oil and coal were bad right from the start. So we built up capacity slowly and the wait for step 2 allowed us to build up money.

Step 2 coincided with the arrival of a couple of decent coal plants (20 & 25), but only lasted one round before step 3 hit before 20 was bid on. As a result of this 20 never got bought as other better plants became available. The game finished quickly now and Steve's central board position was an advantage as he could go in either direction to find available 15 spaces, while Richard and I only had the initial choice of Steve's original area, also Steve, at this point, had the cheap northern connections available and he ended up a comfortable winner.

For some reason I always end up reflecting on what I should have done differently when I play this game (even when I win).

As expected the choice of board gave us a shorter than normal game of Power Grid so there was time for

Industrial Waste 50 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Richard B	1	56
Dave D	2	55
Steve H	3	32

Steve is almost always an advocate of a green strategy and whenever he departs from this, things seem to go horribly wrong. In this case he went for reducing the workforce early on and allowed his waste produced to go up into the yellow section and even once into the red. Of course he got hit by 2 accidents resulting in his needing to take a loan to cover the costs and when he repaid the first loan he was soon required to take another.

I tend to reduce my raw material requirement early with the idea to control waste by using cards, but there seemed to be a bit of a shortage of such cards this game (they tended to turn as duplicates and get discarded) and I had to change strategy part way through to reduce waste production, I had to take a loan at this point to pay for the innovation necessary as the order I was about to produce would otherwise take me into the yellow zone when an accident was certain the following turn as the card deck was almost exhausted. I was able to recover from this later repaying the loan.

Richard had quietly gone along adopting a combined waste/raw materials plan as well as regularly advancing his factory, so it was that he was the one to trigger the end of the game. No one was affected by the end game accident and although I was slightly ahead on innovation I lagged behind on factory growth and this together with a slight advantage in money gave Richard the win in a close game. Steve had been forced to take a second loan and lagged some way behind.

Dave and Ben meanwhile were playing

Blackbeard 145 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Ben	1	15
Dave C	2	0

This is a game that I remember spending many an hour on on Saturdays in the old days, the pirates battling it out this evening were:

John Taylor (Ben) - Sunk.
Edward Teach (Ben) - 15 points.
Francis L'olonais (Dave) - Marooned following a mutiny
Emmanuel Wynne (Dave) - Retired penniless
Henry Avery (Dave) - Sunk

Until next week.

Session Summary - 16 May 2007

We had 8 people, including Ben this week, more than we've had for ages, we actually made a profit. This is much more like it.

We spread across 3 tables and played games.

Notre Dame - 100 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Gordon	53
2	Dave D	47
3	Matt	19

This is a game I picked up when in Burton at the weekend. The game has had a lot of Buzz and I was eager to give it a try, unfortunately despite having read the rules and there aren't exactly a lot of them, I forgot about one very important one and this impacted Matt very heavily (I only realised what I'd done while lying in bed later).

In the game you control one of the boroughs adjacent to Notre Dame Cathedral in the 14th century and compete to gain the most prestige, while at the same time controlling the rats which will cause the plague and do you serious damage if allowed to go unchecked too often. There are reckoned to be multiple paths to victory and we each tried a different method in the first period, I went for some early influence in the Park which would give a constant prestige bonus throughout the game, Gordon went with moving his carriage to pick up messages and picked up gold, while Matt put 2 influence into Notre Dame and made big donations to get prestige that way, I also put a block into Notre Dame to share the influence with Matt.

It was at this point that the problem arose. Both Matt & I had managed to use all the influence blocks from supply and also run out of gold, so going into the 2nd period could not put any influence onto the board to get more blocks into supply and/or earn more gold. I was fortunate enough to draw my Trusted friend card in the first round and therefore get influence by moving him to the Cloister school to get things moving again, Matt was not so lucky, not drawing his friend until the last of the 3 rounds (and I didn't pass him one) meaning he could do nothing for 2 rounds during which time the rats were uncontrolled and not only did he gain no prestige he also could not get more influence on the board. Essentially his game was lost at that point. After the event I remembered the rule that says that if you have no influence in your supply you can move blocks from one sector on the board to another and activate the sectors that way. If this had been known then Matt could have got some more influence and/or gold and stayed in the game.

In the final part of the game, Gordon & I raced ahead and it was a close finish, he was forever on the edge with the rat track while I kept mine well under control, may be too well as if I had spent influence elsewhere I may be could have picked up a bit more prestige. After the game all said that they would play again and I think it will take a few plays to work out what we're doing. Matt was understandably a bit scathing about the situation of a simple early mistake essentially putting you so badly out of the game, but this should not happen again. Probably, neither Gordon nor Matt will be aware of the bad mistake in explaining the rules until they read this.

After Notre Dame there was time for

San Juan - 35 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Gordon	33
2	Matt	27
3	Dave D	23

This is the clubs most played game in terms of games played and we are all well versed in the rules. In this 3 player game I don't think the Producer or Trader were used until about half was through as all went for the violet buildings. I was most disappointed by the fact that the gold mine I built on the first builder phase produced no return whatsoever, especially when the one that Gordon built late on did. The game was a low scoring game going to Gordon, I just missed being able to get a Guild Hall down which would have given me 2nd.

On the other table:

Pillars of the Earth, The - 110 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	53
2	Mike	49
3	Steve P	46

We seem to have been into Cathedrals this evening, this one is about the building of one in the fictional town of Kingsbridge. This is another game that has a lot of good press despite being licenced from a Ken Follet novel. Steve H has said he will report on play.

Formula Motor Racing - 15 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	18
2	Steve H	5
3	Steve P	3

This is a game that I own but don't particularly like, being somewhat of a motor racing fan (maybe not as much as I once was) I find this simple card game just does not do the subject justice being a prime example of a mediocre Knizia with pasted on theme.

Meanwhile on the third table Ben was beating his Dad at

Memoir '44 - 25 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Ben C	6
2	Dave C	0

This was Omaha, Ben was the Axis, Dave the allies

Memoir '44 - 30 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Ben C	8
2	Dave C	3

This was Suomassalini (is that right?), Ben was the Russians, Dave the Finns

Memoir '44 - 45 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Ben C	5
2	Dave C	2

This was Knightsbridge. My knowledge of WWII, particularly on land is somewhat lacking, but this gives me visions of the Battle of Harrods. Ben was the Axis, Dave the British (apparently we were supposed to win this one) .

Dave has said he will fill in more details.