Session Summary – 12 November 2008

Just a quick update this one, so I get it done before Midcon, after which I expect to have some more to write about.
A good attendance of 9, including Simon, who we haven't seen for a bit, we split over 2 tables.
On our table we played 2 games, the first was Race for the Galaxy, using the Gathering Storm expansion, but excluding the goals as it was Julian's first game, although considering that he won despite this, we maybe should have stuck them in anyway. I started with Earths Lost Colony and when I looked at my opening hand I found I had been dealt the Alien Toy Shop. Now I have been reading on the geek in the last few days that this is a broken combination, so I thought I'd try it out. It became apparent (as indeed as had been suggested on the geek) that if the combination is broken, it is in relation to the advanced 2 player game, since it relies on running out the VP chips through a string of Consume(x2)/Produce cycles and ending the game before your opponent gets up and running earning 6VP a turn. The problem with multiplayer is that you only get to play one action a turn so you are scoring 6 points (instead of 12) per 2 turns, also you only have to exhaust 24VPs in 2 player compared with 60 for 5 player. Any way I had a try at this and although I got the consume engine going, I couldn't afford to keep powering it as I had to select other actions to get cards, etc.
Perhaps I would have been better going all out on consume/produce earlier but I missed on the possibility if the games end by miscounting the size of Andy's tableau. On the final turn I went for produce and the following turn I would have been up at least another 12 points if the game had gone on. Oh well.

Race for the Galaxy 80 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Julian	1	37
Dave D	2	34
Andy	3	32
Ben	4	31
Dave C	5	28

Next up was Colossal Arena, won by Dave. I didn't get off to a good start in this when the Cyclops, with my secret bet on it was eliminated in the first round, I had been relying on Dave to protect it because he had a 4 value bet on it himself. This is not a bad game but It can sometimes be a bit irritating when the player or 2 following you plays a low card on your favoured creature toward and end of a round and the round then ends before play comes back to you and you don't get the chance to protect it.

Colossal Arena 40 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave C	1	14
Andy	2	10
Ben	3	9
Dave D	4	7
Julian	5	6

Over on the other table the other 4 played Agricola in what seems a low scoring game, I don't know which cards were used. Looking at the score sheet Steve H scored for 5 family members and 5 stone rooms, but had no grain, sheep or boars without penalty, so it looks like he had a card preventing the penalty. Steve P looks like he had a better spread, just missing grain, but had only 3 family members in a wooden hut. Gordon had at least 1 of everything, but had 4 unused spaces and also hadn't upgraded hit hut. Simon had upgraded his house to stone, but had 7 unused spaces and also missed out on boars and Cattle.

Agricola 150 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	36
Steve P	2	26
Gordon	3	25
Simon	4	20

Finally on a stats note this week we passed last year's rather low totals for both games played and also player time. Next Midcon.

Session Summary – 5 November 2008

Only 4 this week. First up was a quick game of Tsuro while we waited to see if others would arrive. The game was very close and I knocked Julian out on my penultimate turn picking up his tile as I had the dragon. My following turn found all 3 remaining sitting around one empty square and whichever way I played the tile I had resulted in mutually assured destruction, so Mike & I ended up in a collision while Andy ended up off the board.

Tsuro 15 mins
Player	Posn.
Dave D	1=
Mike	1=
Andy	1=
Julian	4

After that nobody had appeared so we played Vinci, there being an unwritten rule of the club that everyone must know how to play this game and Andy picked it up very well. Julian went first and picked up the Medicine/Port Building combination in position II, while I followed taking Port Building/Rebirth with +2 VP on it. Andy and Mike both also went with the position I options, both having Mountaineering in their selections together with Barbarians (Andy) and Slavery (Mike).
Julian started in the area around the Black Sea but got somewhat boxed in as Andy came in through the North Eastern mountains and spread out quite widely taking the early lead and Mike came into the Balkans and Southern Italy, moving into second place. At this stage Julian considered declining on his second turn but decided to continue and I was glad he did. I had come on through Ireland and taken the port in England/Wales, my port building would persist after decline and I had thought to decline immediately using Rebirth and grab the Mining/Revolutionaries combination that had dropped into position I. I then reconsidered thinking surely that no one would decline before it came round to me and knowing I could grab a second port on turn 2 so I was a bit worried when Julian thought of a decline.
I declined next turn on schedule, having picked up my extra port and selected the Mining/Revolutionaries combination and Julian also declined on his turn (taking Fortification/Espionage), before I had my revolution in the Balkan Mountain mine and expanded into the adjacent forest mine. In the turns following first Andy declined (taking Port Building/Slavery) and then Mike who ended up taking Barbarians/Astronomy from position III losing him 4 VP. Mike was to say later that he felt he should have declined a turn earlier, but didn't expect everyone else to do so before him meaning that he could not get the civilisation he desired (there was some discussion about the lack of really powerful combinations in this game).
At this point in the mid game I started to move into the lead with the mines scoring well together with a bit of help from the ports, although this didn't last too long as first Julian and then Andy both came in through Ireland and the English port soon bit the dust, while Mike went all round the board using Astronomy, picking off my last port in the process.
A couple of turns later we started to move to the final set of civilisations, first to go was me, taking Livestock Breeding/Militia with +2 VP, which Mike had passed over earlier, followed by Mike who took Field General/Heritage for +2 VP, it being the other combination that he himself had passed over. Heritage was quite useful to him as his declined empire was spread out all over the board, but he had no bonus scoring and at this point I think he essentially was resigned to last place as both Andy and Julian were pulling away from him and closing on me. Julian declined next for Revolutionaries/Port Building, while Andy then went for Ship Building/Rebirth, he wasn't able to use Rebirth but he managed very good use of Ship Building.
Julian actually ended the game going to 121 points and I was left desperately trying to gather enough points to keep Andy behind. It was one of those situations where I would have declined if it were not for the impending game end meaning that the loss of tempo would mean more lost points than staying with the current civ. Andy passed me to win, with Mike in fourth place. I had thought that Mike's actions on his penultimate turn had, perhaps, denied me the chance to stop Andy, but in hindsight I don't think it made a difference

Vinci 120 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Andy	1	127
Dave D	2	125
Julian	3	121
Mike	4	111

I see from Gordon's comment on Andy's post that we are expecting him and Steve P next week and then it's off to Midcon.

Session Catch up - 15,22,29 October

Session report - 29 October

Hi – this is my first go at updating the blog so please excuse any serious faux pas. Also please excuse any muddled English – hopefully the plain English course I’m booked to go on next week will improve it in future!

This week we welcomed back Julian who had been on a long hiatus from the group.

Again there were 8 of us this week (edit by DaveD, just to note that in addition to our 8, Dave C was downstairs with younger members running Paranoia, although I gather this didn't go as well as hoped and I'm not sure whether Dave will post on his blog). Gordon and Steve P (and I assume Julian seeing as he had a game that is not released yet) had just returned from Essen bringing with them an assortment of new games – many of which, those who had been unable to go to Essen due to Work, Money and Other-half commitments etc had been reading up about in the Essen coverage.

We split into two groups of four. Our table played Martin Wallace’s new game Steel Driver. This is a train (track) game – and is similar to the 18xx games in that you don’t own a company/colour per se but purchase shares in these companies. The game is essentially split into two phases. In the first phase a share in each of the companies is auctioned off, and then track is built – earning the players connection fees in addition to the shares they won. The second phase is pick-up-game – as players try and gain sets of goods for the companies they have the most shares in.

I played quite badly in this game – which inspired me to write my first session report on BGG http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/2774253 which goes into far more detail of how the game was played for those that are interested.

Steel Driver 70 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	1530
Dave D	2	1290
Julian	3	1270
Andy	4	1220

The second game we played was Yspahan by Ystari (who-else with that name!). To those who haven’t played it, it basically involves you rolling a bucket of dice, distributing these dice over the 6 available actions and then picking an action. Points are earned through purchasing buildings (which convey additional benefits) and placing goods into sets of market stalls. Points can also be earned for placing goods on camels – although this aspect was most definitely on the periphery in our game. The game was pretty tight, with Dave D nipping away at the end thanks to some bonus points earned through a building he purchased. Also I’m sure Steve H would’ve been a lot closer to the top of the scoreboard if he hadn’t misunderstood the rules – cashed in gold coins for points early and dropped in the turn order on the final turn.

I really enjoyed playing this game but would agree with Julian’s comments that the game has too many interesting mechanics that don’t gel particularly well.

Yspahan 50 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Dave D	1	74
Andy	2	70
Steve H	3	62
Julian	4	55

The other table played Princes of Machu Pichu – one of Steve P’s new games which he had brought back from Essen. There was a lot of odd language coming from this table with much talk of ‘virgins’ and ‘condors’ – questions I felt were best left unanswered! This game was one of the ‘stars of the show’ at Essen – and judging from the noise made it sounded like a lot of fun.

Princes of Macchu Pichu 160 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	36
Steve P	2	24
Mike	3	20
Steve Pe	4	14

Session report - 22 October 2008

There were 8 of us this week so we split into two groups of four.

On our table we played Mike’s new game Mykerinos. This is an area-control / set-collection game. You attempt to gain control of tiles, which have a 3x2 grid on one side and one of five colours/patrons of the museum on the other. At the end of the game you earn points for the number of patrons which are adjusted by the multipliers you gain from cubes you have managed to place in the patrons’ rooms in the museum.

The patrons’ cards have special abilities during the game and there was some debate over their relative powers. We played a BGG-inspired house rule which limits the use of the Brown card to once per game instead of every turn – however my patron of choice; blue gave me an extra cube every time I used it which enabled me to gain control of more tiles. However I have a nagging doubt regarding whether I should’ve been allowed those extra turns granted by my bounteous cube supply after reading some comments on BGG. Will have to investigate before playing next time.

Mykerinos 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Andy	1	48
Mike	2	36
Ben	3	33
Dave C	4	27

The second game our table played was Big City – an older Rio Grande Game. This remained pretty tight all through the game until the very end. Despite the high score, the only thing that separated first place from last place was the placement of one building. I managed to fulfil the onerous conditions to build a Shopping Centre and placed a park on my next turn to prevent Mike doing likewise.

Big City 70 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Andy	1	91
Mike	2	65
Dave C	3	63
Ben	4	61

The other table played Saint Petersburg – a game I know very little about other than it can sharply divide opinions! And from a quick glance at the wide spread of the scores I can see one possible reason why!

Saint Petersburg 130 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	214
Dave D	2	160
Steve H	3	158
Steve P	4	114

Session report - 15 October 2008

This week there was only 4 of us and we played two games with a broadly similar theme but very different mechanic.

The first up was Manhattan. Each player has a number of different sized buildings to start with, and has to select which ones to use before each turn begins. Each player also has a hand of cards which govern where they may place a building within a city block. Players then take it in turn to place a building in a block – attempting to either control a block (player has the most buildings) or build the tallest building on the board a the end of each turn.

As there were a number of city blocks up for grabs – it became a game of carefully choosing what fights to pick. Going gung-ho in one city block meant giving up control in another so efficient use of buildings was key – as was hand management – holding back a card or two that would allow you to take control back of a block if someone else decided to disenfranchise you.

Final scores were:

Manhattan 50 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Andy	1	48
Mike	2	43
Dave D	3	40
Steve H	4	33

The second game was Metropolys. Due to the positive write-up in Counter Magazine combined with an odd but interesting mechanic I decided to buy it unseen and give it a whirl. Each player has 13 buildings labelled 1 to 13, with 13 being the most prestigious and 1 being the least. A player starts the bidding by placing a building in an empty area and then players may then outbid each other by placing a higher numbered building into an accessible empty adjacent area. The player who has placed the highest numbered building gets to build it. Points are scored for building in areas where there are Metro or Trendy area (‘Flapper’) tokens and lost for building where there are Archaeological site tokens. Bonus points are awarded at the end via your secret objective cards – each player has 1 area card and another card for fulfilling certain conditions.

We all guessed early on that Steve had the Park area card but none of us realised he got bonus points for building either side of bridges which allowed him to pick up many bonus points. Despite it being my game I really didn’t get to grips with the odd but fun mechanic and there was a complete reversal of fortunes compared to Manhattan when points were added up at the end:

Metropolys 70 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Steve H	1	40
Dave D	2	29
Mike	3	28
Andy	4	25