Session Summary - 3 October 2007

By way of a change, here is a report with a couple of days of the actual session, for some reason I felt more inspired to sit down and right this than recently, which perhaps also shows in the length of it.

I was a few minutes late arriving and found Steve watching Dave & Ben play

Mordred 30 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave C	1
Ben	2

This is a strange game by Martin Wallace, which I played once over at Dave's. I'm not sure what the players are supposed to represent, but the idea is to defeat the forces of evil represented by the black pawns of Mordred, while simultaneously building up a network of towns villages and castles, which earn victory points. The game ends either when a player has placed all of one type of building, when all the Mordred pawns are on the board or possibly if a player defeats Mordred in his home castle on Anglesey (in which case that player automatically wins). That last victory condition is straight forward, but the interesting part is when the game ends by one of the other methods. You first look at whether Mordred has won (more Mordred pieces on the board than total player pieces). If he has not then the player with most victory points wins, otherwise the player who did least to aid Mordred wins.

So you have a balancing act because to build things you need money which you get by rolling dice at the beginning of your turn, you can choose from 3 tracks to roll on, with increasing average income, but if you choose the higher value tracks your chances of having to place Mordred units increases meaning the probability of an evil win is increased and you are further along the Mordred track putting you at a disadvantage if he is victorious. To counterbalance this you can use your settlement (Castles are best) to attack adjacent Mordred pawns and if you win, not only is the evil power reduced, but you also get to move back toward the side of light. It is an interesting system and I'm not entirely convinced of the skill element, but it plays in a short time and is quite fun.

I remembered all that and it's been a few weeks since I played, I'm sure Dave will correct me if I got anything wrong.

After Ben & Dave finished we decided to play one of the hot games of the moment.

Age of Empires III 150 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	105
Steve H	2	69
Dave C	3	66
Ben	4	36

I had played this once before at Luke's Happy, Happy Games Day a couple of months back and found that I quite liked it, which surprised me a bit as I've never really been taken by games on this theme, other than the old Sid Meier PC game Colonization.

At the beginning of the game we decided to record the scores on a piece of paper as the scoring track on board is not the greatest ever produced of it's type. Also it's not exactly a vital thing to have when scoring only takes place 3 times. If it had been constantly changing that would be different. As a result of all this I've tried to reconstruct the score breakdowns from Dave's notes, the first and second ages should be accurate as are the totals, but it's possible that the Age III distributions may be very slightly off.

Ben played the Dutch and adopted the strategy of spreading the word of the Lord to the natives, sending over many missionaries and gaining extra colonists that way. He acquired the Monastery in the first age, giving an extra Missionary each turn and then picked up the Cathedral at the end of the second age, so his missionaries would give 2 colonists instead of one. However despite sending many people to the New World, he was weak in the other area, having few trade goods and ships, although acquiring the Taxation building brought in a regular income. He also made no discoveries. Ben might have done better if the Cathedral had turned up earlier in the age giving a longer period for it to have an effect.

Score -
Age I 2
Age II 10
Age III
Colonies 18
Discoveries 0
Capital Buildings 2 (Taxation 2)
Economy 4
Total 36

Dave C was the Spanish and adopted a strategy primarily geared toward colonisation and also some discoveries. He acquired Conquest of the Incan empire in Age I and this enabled him also to pick up New World Cartography for a free discovery. He was soon sending a lot of men including soldiers to the New World and this was helped when he got Indian Allies in Age II, which he used to virtually eliminate every foreign presence in New Spain (fortunately I'd already picked up the Gold having discovered it and been first to 3 colonists). Elsewhere he had more competition, particularly in Brazil, where I had a presence and Steve who also had a soldier, resulting a a kind of standoff. Dave's weakness was income, although he had Trade goods and a couple of ships, he had no other regular source and after the initial boost from the Incan Empire he struggled being unable to afford Capital Buildings in Age III.

Score -
Age I 6
Age II 12
Age III
Colonies 20
Discoveries 14
Capital Buildings 4 (New World Cartography 4)
Economy 10
Total 66

Steve was the British and adopted a similar strategy to Dave, although he also went for trade goods and employed Merchants (I think he picked up Trade routes in Age I) to boost his income, so he had sufficient money to fund his plans. In age III he was able to acquire Mercantilism which boosted his score well due to his collection of goods, but just failed on a last minute discovery, having not had time to accumulate enough men for the expedition. That said he did benefit earlier in the game, when Ben had a failed discovery and he was able to immediately follow up knowing he had sufficient force to do the job.

Score -
Age I 6
Age II 16
Age III
Colonies 14
Discoveries 11
Capital Buildings 11 (Mercantilism 11)
Economy 11
Total 69

I was the Portuguese apparently, but this was because of my desire to be green rather than because of the country. I went first and seeing that the Navigator tile was available I decided to try a similar strategy to that which had served me well in my only other game, so I headed straight for the Capital Buildings. The Captain in the discovery box each turn would allow me to make plenty of discoveries. In addition to this I concentrated early on picking up Trade goods and Ships, then aiming my discovery missions at areas where the goods matched what I'd got. Specialist wise I concentrated on more Captains enabling me to be certain of success in my discoveries and some missionaries, which I would send the following turn to pick up the goods. I didn't bother that much about keeping my discoveries after that abandoning them if hoards of other muscled in. At the start of Age II, I already had a good income and was additionally able to pick up Privateers, which was quite good as I already had 2 ships and this would later become 3. In Age III I had enough money to afford 2 Capital Buildings on the first turn and the fact that one was Factory ensured I picked another 2 in the following turn, the others were Wealth, Prosperity and Population, I'd have liked Mercantilism, but Steve beat me to it.

Score -
Age I 8
Age II 6
Age III
Colonies 12
Discoveries 25
Capital Buildings 36 (Factory 5, Wealth 14, Prosperity 12, Colonisation 5)
Economy 18
Total 105
I won comfortably as I did in my other game by adopting the same strategy. In both games I was the only one to play this way, while the others were fighting a lot over the New World colonies. I can see that at some point I'm going to have to modify this as it relies so much on having the right Capital buildings to support it. I probably play this way because of my general preference for an economic route rather than one of conquest/conflict and it is nice for a game to allow both types of play. Whichever way, it looks to me as if Money is Power as it buys Capital buildings and whether they are direct point scorers or give other advantages, the right ones are vital to whatever strategy is used.

Until next week

Session Summary - 26 September 2007

4 people this week.

Caylus Magna Carta 135 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	53
Dave D	2	47
Mike	3	39
Matt	4	38

This was the second time for this one, I think Matt and Steve had played twice before, myself once and this was Mike's first. The first game we played ran over 2 hours which I thought (and hoped) having read the views of many on the Geek was probably an aberration and, thinking about it afterwards I thought I saw the problem as being not enough castle building because people would not do so if they couldn't get the gold preferring to hold their resources in the hope of getting another try in a future turn when they would be first in the castle. I think we were influenced by Caylus in this, but on thinking about it I thought "Is the gain of gold worth as much as a favour in that game?" and came to the conclusion it was not. Having thought this I had it mind to try to play it differently next time. Unfortunately I forgot all that when it came to actually playing the game.

This was a 4 player game and the initial set up included the buildings giving 2 gold, 1 food and 1 stone so there was no initial source of wood. Early in the game both Mike & I built the small wood buildings providing supplies for all in the early going. Steve & I also built small stone buildings while he also built a lawyer, which was going to be very helpful as it was the only one built in the game. I don't recall Matt doing any early building, but taking a few of the 4 value castle tokens. Moving on there was a bit of a food shortage as only one large food building had been built in addition to the initial one, I think. There was no Stone problem as there was soon a large quarry built in addition to the small ones.

Matt then built a food building, but immediately converted it into a residence before it could be used, although the food shortage then became relatively less important as both the previously built wood buildings became residences, leaving no supply of this resource at all, the only choice was to buy it, which was possible using 2 buildings by this time.

It was also about this time that I built a gold mine, which for a long time was the only one in the game, this served me well as someone (nearly always Steve) would always use it allowing me to convert another resource into gold, meaning that Steve and I accumulated a lot of this. There was also a bank enabling the buying of gold so this was another option, but this of course cost money, which we did not (with the exception of Steve who got the income from his Lawyer) havemuch of. I think it was the gold mine that decided the game in Steve's favour and gave me second place as it allowed me to build the largest and one of the the 2 second largest prestige buildings, while he just accumulated gold, since he only managed to get to the Lawyer first once and so only got one residence and hence one prestige building.

The game concluded with all prestige buildings built and a run on the castle. We were all pretty close on castle points, while I came out on top in buildings, but Steve overtook with spare money and resources and a lot of surplus gold. The game had again run over 2 hours and I still think this was due to slow castle building with no hurry until the prestige buildings were all used. Another factor, which I have not considered before is that each player has a building where castle tokens can be bought, and I don't remember that any of these were built during either of my 2 games.

After the game 3 opinions were expressed, based on the length of the game as we play it:

Matt & Mike expressed disappointment. They are fans of Caylus and at this length are of the view that they'd rather play that.

I feel that given the choice between this and Caylus (of which I'm not a fan, finding it rather tedious), I'd rather play this, but if this length is going to be normal for our group then there are a lot of games I'd choose in preference. If we could play it a fair bit shorter (and I still think we should), I think I could play this fairly often.

Steve finds Caylus somewhat too much for it's length, though not as anti as I am, but is happy to play this even at this length.

Following this there was time for

Guillotine 25 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1=	25
Mike	1=	25
Matt	3=	21
Dave D	3=	21

A close fought game, Mike was leader for much of the time and, therefore, the number one target. Matt had all sorts of support cards in front of him while I built up a huge hand of cards which usually weren't useful when it cam to my turn. Steve finished the game and was able to equalise the scores between him and Mike.

Until tomorrow.

Session Summary - 19 September 2007

I was hoping to post this together with last weeks summary, having again let it ride longer than it should, however I'm umming and arring a bit over comments on Caylus Magna Carta and it's taking a little longer to write than I thought, so here's this one that I did earlier.

It was me and Mike this week so he dug out some 2 player games.

Kahuna 50 mins
Player	Posn.
Mike	1
Dave D	2

I seem to recall watching Mike play this in the past, but have never played it myself. The idea is to control islands by building the majority of bridges form that island to its neighbours. When you achieve this you get to knock down an opponents bridge form the island you've just taken. This is done by the play of cards to place bridges and also to knock down bridges. Scoring is based on whoever controls the most islands at the end of each of the 3 rounds.

The problem to my mind is that when you reach the 5 card hand limit you have to start discarding cards to draw new ones, so if you accumulate the cards to make a major attack, you are virtually committed to playing it immediately or lose one of the cards and if you are forced to do this too early in the round you give your opponent time to respond, while you have to start building your hand again.

Still fairly inoffensive 5/10.

San Juan 30 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mike	1	32
Dave D	2	26

This works OK with 2 players, but as has been pointed out by many people including the designer Andreas Seyfearth, the Library is so very powerful when one player has one and the other doesn't (despite the fact that you can only use it for one role when you're Governor). In this case Mike had one as his first build but he was unable to draw many other good cards to go with it. He still won by 6 points.

Babel 30 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	18
Mike	2	5

Another in the Kosmos 2 player series and to my mind better than Kahuna. I seem to recall playing it before in the dim and distant past before records began (I think with Julian). The game has interesting options with scope for some nice combos to bash your opponent. It was indeed quite satisfying to finish the game off by stealing the top of Mike's big temple and then demolishing the rest of it and I'd certainly play again, but I think that if I know a session's going to be exclusively 2 player I'd rather fill it with Fury of Dracula. 6/10

Now I must get back to last week and Caylus Magna Carta.

Session Summary - 12 September 2007

3 of us last Wednesday and the game chosen was

Power Grid 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	17+
Dave D	2	17
Matt	3	16

This was played on the Italy board, only the second time this has seen play. The last time was a long brain burning affair when the game went on a turn too long resulting in the 2 leaders becoming back markers due to running out of fuel. This one was a more conventional affair played on the bottom 3 regions, so leaving out the 3 at the top of the country with all the cheap connections.

Matt set up in the South with me in North, while Steve sat in the middle. The game developed so that Steve was left in the position of starting Step 2 by making a very expensive connection up the east coast by passing several cities and then building last in the following turn after Matt and I had picked up the best of the newly available '15' spots. When the game came to an end I thought I was in a good position and was amazed to realise that Steve had so much more money left over. It's true that I probably paid more for fuel over the length of the game, but I'm sure he paid more for connections. I'm still wondering what I missed.

With plenty of time available it was onto

Industrial Waste 25 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Matt	1	38
Steve H	2	35
Dave D	3	30

This game was a milestone for me, in that following it I was the one with the most recorded plays of it on the Geek. The fact that this was with only 23 plays tells me that the game is grossly underrated.

The game itself was not my finest hour as Matt rushed through for a quick finish, before anyone could really get going. It was a successful tactic that gave him the win.

After the quick previous game, it was suggested that we play another game of Industrial Waste, but as the second game probably would not have been as quick as the first, we settled on

Guillotine 15 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	25
Matt	2	24
Steve H	3	22

This was the third successive week for this game. Early on (I can't remember the exact circumstances) Steve played a card to swap hands with me, I was at first unhappy about this, since I had a good hand, but as it turned out the hand I received was pretty good as well.

Going into the last day I was in 3rd place and was first to play that day. Steve had handed me a Double feature early on and Robespierre was second in line, so I was able to collect him and one other for 5 points and finish the game in my favour.

So 3 players, 3 games and we each achieved a first, second and third. It goes without saying of course that Guillotine is the most skillful of the 3 played.

Until tomorrow

Session Summary - 5 September 2007

Another late report. There were 6 of us on this Wednesday with Mark bringing along his son Jonathan. The games were:

Canal Mania 110 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Mike	1	93
Steve H	2	92
Dave D	3	89

This is was the first outing for the second edition of Canal Mania at the club. The new rules do make a difference in that there does not seem to be the previous tendency for a player to run away. I have played this edition 3 times and on one occasion the game was decided on a tie break, while as can be seen for this one the scores were very close. The other game was also very close for much of the game before scores spread out towards the end.

In this game I was set up in the north running down into the East Midlands, Steve played mostly in the south, While Mike seemed to stake out territory in the middle. Mike led early, with us not far behind, before opening out a bit of a lead, which was closed right up at the end. Each us us had our own story of bad luck/incompetence. Steve reckons he built his junction canal in the wrong place, missing out on the extra point which would have enabled him to take the game on the most prolific constructor tie break. Mike was just short of finishing another contract at the end. I made an idiotic move (in retrospect) of not taking a card to place a good in Manchester at the end, which may have made me 5 points potentially (although I'm not sure it would have).

The others still seem lukewarm about the game, but to me it is definitely the best game to come out in recent times.

We had another game on another table

Age of Empires III 110 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Jonathan	1	54
Ben	2	50
Dave C	3	35

We had another table as well, with a game of Age of Empires III going on. This was the first Wednesday night outing for this and the scores seem very low. Mind you that is based on the limited experience of having played 1 game and read reports of a few others.

Dave & Ben disappeared after that and Jonathan joined us for

Guillotine 20 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Jonathan	1	25
Steve H	2	23
Mike	3	21
Dave D	4	15

Guillotine seems to have become popular again. This was a very high scoring game, which saw me coming last with a score that was better than the one I won with last week, that was with 6 players mind you so the scores would be lower.

I hope to post last week's report either later tonight or tomorrow.

Session Summary - 29 August 2007

I have just posted last weeks delayed report, so if you're interested go there now.

Dave was absent this week so everyone, young and old, gathered for a 6 player game of

Cosmic Encounter 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Matthew (Parasite)	1=	5
Charlotte (Chronos)	1=	5
Dave D (Fungus)	3=	4
James (Gambler)	3=	4
Mike (Aura)	3=	4
Steve H (Oracle)	6	3

After spending a little time explaining the rules, we were off, playing fairly straight with only the addition of kickers and some of the later powers. We had a slight advantage in the explanation in that Mike was the Aura, meaning everyone else had to play with their hands exposed on the table, meaning that edicts were visible and could therefore be explained. The downside of this was that more analysis was possible leading I suspect to a longer game.

The game was close and I was able to move to 4 bases and be confident that I was certain to win, if I got another turn. The problem was getting that turn and I didn't think I would, as each of the 3 youngsters could win before it got back to me. In light of this I thought a joint win was the best I could do and persuade James to create a grand alliance of the 4 of us against Steve, which was unbeatable with my stacks of fungus tokens and the sanity edict, which I was able to play to prevent me from getting zapped. But James betrayed us all and compromised sending my fungus stacks to the warp and splitting them up. My plans for galactic domination were ruined.

As is turned out Matthew and Charlotte finished the game when Matthew attacked her on his turn, playing Emotion Control and agreeing a base swap to give them a 2 was victory, so I was right about not getting another turn.

And the moral of this story is never trust children.

After that we played

Guillotine 25 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	14
Steve H	2	13
Mike	3	12
Charlotte	4	10
Matthew	5	10
James	6	9

I was able to grab the king on the first day, but was Charlotte who revealed that I had missed and he went to the back of the line, but I got him again on my next turn and this time didn't miss. So I was well up there with Steve and James after the first day.

There was a lot of good nobles available on day 2, but I finished it early by grabbing Robespierre. Things were still close.

Day 3 was long to make up for the short day 2, with several extra carts being added. Steve was unfortunate to pick up some grey nobles and I was able to nobble James with the Missing Heads card, causing him to lose the Cardinal. When the day finally drew to a close, I was the winner, having only taken 4 heads, but they were good ones.

Until next week.

Session Summary - 22 August 2007

This is a somewhat delayed report as I haven't seemed to be able to summon up the inspiration to write it, but to get things up to date here is what happened.

Gordon, Steve and I met upstairs, while Dave ran another episode of his Corporation campaign down below. Unlike me, I noticed that he got this online over at his blog almost immediately (I suspect this was as soon as he got home) and the story can be viewed here.
Meanwhile, we were giving yet another outing to

Pillars of the Earth, The 90 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	57
Gordon	2	50
Steve H	3	45

Things are a bit hazy now but these are the main points that I remember. Steve went first, but did not take the woodworker that I like (the one who converts wood to gold), so I was able to take this craftsman when I went second, beating Gordon (who is apparently also a fan of the card).

As the game moved into the middle sector, Gordon built up a bit of a lead and Steve was also doing pretty well on turn 3, while I fell a bit behind. I was able to overhaul Steve the following turn, with the help of Prior Philip and occupying both spaces in the priory for 5 points, but not Gordon.

The game was one of those where metal was common and I had 3 stored up as we went into the final turn, Gordon also had some metal on hand. On the final turn it seemed it was screw Gordon time, I can't remember the exact order of things, but I was able to grab first the Bell maker from the available craftsmen and then the Organ builder using a master builder. To compound this Steve used a master builder to grab the goldsmith. So I could convert my three metal into 14 points and Gordon had only a Glass blower and money that he had no goldsmith to convert into VP. Into has to be said that, if Gordon had been able to grab any one of 3 craftsmen, the 1-2 order would have been, I think, different.

Following this we played

Cartagena 30 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	6
Dave D	2	5
Steve H	3	4

This was Gordon's first try at this and I thought my third, but looking back I can only find a record of my having played once before. The first time I played I made the mistake of running out of cards and being stuck at the back. In this game Gordon too ran down his cards, but was in a position to gain more by backwards movement and wound up winning.