23 December - No Meeting

Owing to snow fall tonight's meeting is cancelled. I'm trying to get in touch with most people. Merry Christmas to All.

Session Report – 18, 25 November 2009

18 November

With 5 players, we all played on the same table. First was Small World using Andy's copy, adding in the 2 new expansions based on a competition for user submitted content. There are interesting new ideas here but nothing that really makes the game any better or worse than before. It is still a reasonable reimplementation of Vinci, but seems to be inferior due to the dumbing down of the basic mechanics of its predecessor, while at the same time complicating many of the special powers, the simplicity of which was one of the strengths of the original game.

This game was a close contest except for Mike who suffered from my use of Ransacking Kobolds, Ransacking is a new power, which allows you to take points off someone else and Mike suffered the misfortune in having his territory arranged in such a way as to make the most inviting target and so earning the most points, rather than attacking a player further up the order who would not yield such a great bounty. I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of this sort of power per se, it does not lead to the controlling player earning excessive points, but I do wonder if there is a problem in that it is the only such power available, possibly leading to the situation where one player suffers disproportionately.

Small World 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andy	89
2	Donald	84
3	Dave D	82+
4	Dave F	82
5	Mike	53

After that there was time for a game of Nottingham, which was possibly the closest I have seen for this game.

Nottingham 40 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Donald	88
2	Mike	87
3	Dave D	86
4	Dave F	74

25 November

Newcomer Andrew joined us this week, along with the crew from Telford, Paul bringing with him my copy of Middle Earth Quest. We split into 2 groups, with Battlestar Galactica on one table, Power Grid on the other, played on the Brazil map. I joined the BSG game, but it was a tough decision.

We played BSG using the full Pegasus expansion with the option of a Cylon Leader. The characters were myself – Ellen Tigh, Andy – William Adama, Andrew – Starbuck, Steve H – Leoben, Mike – Laura Roslin. With Steve taking on a Cylon leader, this meant there would be only 1 secret cylon and I received this card on the first deal, but decided that I would take special care to try to avoid drawing suspicion to myself with the hope of pulling off the win by a premature jump away from New Caprica.

Steve received the "Show Their True Nature" agenda requiring that the cylons win and that he be incarcerated at game end or he has been executed at least once. He accomplished this part of the agenda by making no pretence at helping the humans by sending some Civilian ships to their doom by using Communications, which got him thrown in the brig in short order at which time President Roslin ordered him executed using a Quorum card. Having achieved that part of the agenda things initially went well as population tumbled approaching New Caprica, but he was somewhat worried at the apparent absence of his secret ally.

New Caprica was reached with few Civilian ships to evacuate and all had already launched by the time Galactica returned. When it finally got round to my turn I was just about able to force the cylon win, by seizing the Admiral's title from Helo (this was Andy, Adam's execution having been earlier ordered by Roslin in response to a crisis) using Ellen's once per game power. Morale was on 3 and there were 3 humans still on the ground, if I had been delayed another turn, one of the humans would have moved off the surface and the plan would have failed, which suggests to me that this tactic is not the all powerful automatic win that it is made out o be in certain quarters.

Battlestar Galactica 160 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Dave D
1=	Steve H
3=	Mike
3=	Andrew
3=	Andy

Over on the other table, the result was as below, I have no further details. We still must get the Spanish board on the table with its strange nuclear surge in step 2.

Power Grid 130 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve Pe	17
2	Dave F	16
3	Paul	15+
4	Nigel	15

Session Report – 11 November 2009

6 players and a 3-3 split. On one table we played a couple of games of Power Grid-Factory Manager (hereinafter referred to as Factory Manager), the new game by Friedemann Friese.

I will admit that the association of Power Grid with this game is what attracted my attention to it, but reading about it made it sound interesting and I decided to buy. Although the game has very little in common with the earlier game, it plays quicker and provides an interesting game in what should be about half the time.

The game is unusual (or at least it seems so to me) among many modern games in that it is won simply by having the most money, without having any systems to earn Victory points. It is played over 5 rounds, all of which follow the same pattern.

1. First there is a turn order auction, which is the only real similarity I see to Power Grid, other than the artistic style. You bid for tiles which have a number from 1 to 12, the player order will then run from lowest to highest, with the higher numbers having a discount on purchases for that turn to compensate for acting later in each phase.
   Bids are made using workers and because each player only starts with 7, with the potential to hire a maximum of 2 seasonal workers, the auction does not take long, with positions often being sold for nothing, since workers used in the auction are unavailable for other tasks later in the turn.
   
2. Once turn order has been determined, each player in turn must add tiles to the market according to the number of workers they have available (which must be a minimum of 1), the last player also has the chance to move a number of extra tiles (depending on the number of players into the market). These tiles represent machines that produce goods, together with storage for those goods, robots (which increase a machine's production or decrease its manpower requirement) and control and optimisation systems which reduce energy requirements together with increasing production and/or reducing manpower requirements.
   The tiles are laid out on a display and the cheapest of each type must be brought into the market before more expensive tiles of the same type, so it is an interesting situation if you are early in the turn order as you may have to bring down cheap tiles in the hope that those later in the order will being down the more expensive tiles of that type that you may want to buy. Conversely if you are later in the order, you may be able to bring down the tiles you want, but run the risk that someone earlier in the order may buy them before you get the chance.
   
3. Next is the purchase of new tiles and placement in the factory, together with the removal of existing tiles. Again you need workers for this, 1 worker to buy a tile, 1 worker to remove a tile. The cost of a tile is the number printed on it, less any discount that you may have due to you turn order tile. It is that this stage, following all other actions that you can hire seasonal workers, which will be usable until this stage next turn at the cost of 7 each, again less turn order discount.
   The reason you may want to remove existing tiles is due to limitations of space, the factory can hold a maximum of 10 machines robots and storage tiles (increasable to 12, by paying 10 per space) and 1 each of control and optimisation systems.
   
4. In practice, this phase of the game has tended to be merged into phase 3 in the games I've played, with players moving straight on to carry out the necessary changes needed to their factories as soon as they have bought tiles, while the next player carries out their phase 3. This speeds the game up, but Strictly speaking all players should complete phase 3 before the first player moves on to phase 4.
   In this phase players decide which of their machines/robots are used and adjust their production storage and energy tracks, at the same time setting aside the necessary workers to operate the factory in the canteen. These workers will not be available in the following turn for bidding or use in phases 2 and 3. Finally after all players have made the necessary adjustments, the energy price rise (from 0 to 2) will be revealed.
   
5. In this phase, players collect income which is determined by the lower of production and storage less the cost of energy determined by the amount used multiplied by the cost determined in phase 4. The income is doubled in the final round, so this is something to bear in mind.
   

I like this game, it is different to Power Grid and I have heard some people say they like it more, while others prefer the former game. I'm not yet willing to say I like it as much as Power Grid, that is one of my favourite games and I do have slight doubts as to the replayability of this one, although it has to be said that here has been plenty of variety in the games I have played so far, with some games where a lot of people go for a lot of machines, compared with other where robots are much in demand and further variation in whether people go for production robots or personnel robots. There has also been variation in demand for optimisation/control tiles. The one thing you can guarantee that will be wanted is storage.

This variation has possibly been driven by the fact that the low end of each type of tile is maybe not very good and if no one is prepared to bring the lesser value tiles into the market, then the higher value ones never get bought, although it is possible to move past the lower end tiles without buying them if players cooperate. It is possible that a more predictable pattern will appear with more play, but that remains to be seen, I think there is a fair bit of life in this.

Our 2 games this Wednesday were markedly different; the first was very close, suing the beginners' rule, which sets energy cost increase to zero in the first round. In the second game, the energy cost went up by 2 in the first round and I made the mistake of thinking that that meant it went from 1 to 3, in fact the 2 is a column shift on the table, so the rise should have only been to 2. This was combined with Donald having done a better job of controlling his energy use on the first round than Steve and even more so than me and as a result, it was something of a runaway. I played a further 4 more games at Midcon, some with, some without the beginners rule and all were close, interestingly they also tended to be higher scoring than these 2 games, although this may have been connected to all being played with 4 or 5 players.

Factory Manager 75 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	178
2	Donald	172
3	Steve H	148
Factory Manager 60 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Donald	238
2	Steve H	195
3	Dave D	122

Over on the other table, 3 different games were played.

Caylus Magna Carta 80 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	46
2	Julian	41
3	Dave F	39
San Juan 40 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	37
2	Dave F	28
3	Julian	14
Katzenjammer Blues 20 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	6
2	Julian	4
3	Dave F	0

Session Report – 4 November 2009

We had 8 this week and unusually split 3 & 5. This was due to the planned game of Republic of Rome planned for Saturday. 3 of the players had not played the game before, while those of us who had played had not done so for (I would guess) 15+ years. We never expected to complete the game but this gave the chance to get some familiarity with the play for the weekend.

The game is one of those with many fiddly rules and there was much studying of the rule book during the session, but by the end I think we were getting to grips with it. By this time Rome was almost on the brink of destruction, beset by 3 wars including the matched set of 1^st and 2^nd Punic with Hannibal and Hamilcar in attendance, the unrest was sky high and the treasury was almost bankrupt. I don't think the Republic would have survived another turn anyway and it was just a matter of which game end condition we all lost to.

The Republic of Rome 150 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Dave C
1=	Dave D
1=	Dave F
1=	Donald
1=	Steve H

Over on the other table the game was Caylus Magna Carta, which I gather was a very tense game, although to me the 2 hour playing time would have been far too long. That said it is good that we are getting multiple games running at a time these days allowing play of games such as this, which I really don't like.

Caylus Magna Carta 120 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Julian	54
2	Mike	52
3	Ben C	46

Session Report – 28 October 2009

Half term this week with the role playing down stairs. Steve Perkins was here having been to Essen, bringing back the Chicago Express expansion for Mike and a Power Grid promo card for me. We also had the pleasure of Julian's company for the first time in while. We split into 2 groups of 4, with Andy, Donald, Julian and I playing Last Train to Wensleydale.

Ok, a train game by Martin Wallace, nothing new there then, but this is somewhat different. Whereas in most train games (and not just the Wallace ones), the object is to build up a network and maintain it to continually move goods throughout the game. In this game it is very much a case of build track, use it to get as many passengers and/or goods out of the locations it serves and then sell the track on to one of the 2 major companies (NER and Midland), ideally disposing of the track in the same turn that you built it. This run down is based on the 4 player game and there may be differences with different player numbers.

The game is played over 4 turns with 4 players (varies with number) and is divided into phases. In the first you use your investment cubes (you get 12 a turn and can carry 3 over between turns, if you don't use them all) to bid on 8 lots, which provide influence of 4 different types, that is Government, Train, NER (Green) and Midland (Red). Each player is allowed to win 2 lots and the bidding continues until each is unopposed in 2 of the lots, the auction has similarities with the province auction in Amun-Re but without the requirement to increase bids in triangular sequence and also without the prohibition on overbidding in the same lot you've just been outbid on.

Once the auction is over the player orders for track building (highest government influence) and train purchase/shipping (highest train influence) is determined and players then proceed to build track. This is done by placing wooden pieces across the boundaries between areas at the cost of 1 investment cube each (2 if either of the areas are valleys), in addition if you link to a town controlled by one of the companies, then you have to pay influence in that company and if an area contains a white nimby, then you have to pay government influence to remove them.

Next it is buying trains and shipping goods. Taking turns starting with whoever has most train influence, players can buy a train costing 1, 2 or 3 train influence points, the higher values have higher carrying capacities and the trains at the same cost vary in the split between goods capacity and passenger capacity. Alternatively a player can use a turn to remove a good or a passenger from the board, providing that the good is either Cheese in an area where he has track or stone in mountain area adjacent to a town where he has track. Passengers must be in an area which is linked to a company town corresponding to the colour of the passenger. In most cases there does not seem to be that much competition in this phase, although there will be some occasions when 2 players can conceivably claim the same good or passenger, in which case order does become significant. Following the completion of this phase, profit and loss is determined by subtracting the length of track owned from the value of goods/passengers collected and adjusting the track which runs from -10 to +5.

The final phase is takeovers, where each player may have some/all of his track taken over by one of the major companies, this requires that you can trace the track from a town to a town controlled by the company taking over and that you use influence with that company at the rate of 1 influence per 2 track pieces sold. Note we got this part wrong by allowing players to have takeovers by both companies each turn, we found part way through that you are limited to 1 takeover per turn, but decided to keep playing the same way for this game.

After 4 rounds the score is determined by adding the total number of goods/passengers collected + 2 for each set of 4 different goods/passengers – the number of owned links left on the board +/- the players position on the profit/loss track. In this game I started off well, but suffered on the middle turns, by keeping ownership of far too much track.

Looking back at the game, it certainly bears another play, having realised the vital importance of not keeping control of too much track. I have a bit of a worry about the random set up of goods and passengers, which certainly in this game seemed to give an advantage to the player going first, in this case, Donald, but this could be self adjusting with experience as if the first player is made to pay enough for his government influence, he will be short of investment cubes necessary to build track to take advantage of the position.

Last Train to Wensleydale 100 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Donald	22
2	Andy	19+
3	Julian	19
4	Dave D	13

 

On the other table the game was Peloponnes and 2 games were played, I don't know the game so have no comments.

Peloponnes 60 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	27
2	Dave F	24+
3	Steve Pe	24
4	Mike	21
Peloponnes 60 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	27
2	Dave F	26
3	Steve H	24
4	Steve Pe	20

 

 

Session Report – 21 October 2009

5 players for Battlestar Galactica with the Pegasus expansion. The players were myself (Helena Cain), Dave C (Starbuck), Ben (Gaius Baltar), Andy (Dee/Boomer), and Steve H (Laura Roslin).

The early going was uneventful and things looked good for the humans, there was no sign of any overt Cylon activity although I succeeded in casting a little suspicion on myself as I think did Steve by underplaying into a couple of skill checks, not wishing to overkill and we ended up failing the check. My motivation for this was genuine as I think was that of Steve (I think he was human at this stage).

The sleeper phase was reached at distance 5 and the new loyalty cards were handed out, it was beginning to look like a close game as all resources drifted to lower levels. At one stage we jumped at -3 on the track and lost the population. I would have preferred at this stage to use Cain's Blind Jump ability, so the loss came from Civilian ships, meaning there were fewer to evacuate when we reached New Caprica, but I did not receive an XO, possibly because I wasn't entirely trusted due to the reasons mentioned earlier in the game.

Reaching New Caprica (this was a first for us), I was cast in Detention through a crisis card, but was still Admiral, then morale hit 2 and Dee shot herself. Andy selected Boomer as his new character and I think it was her first act to execute Roslin (who was also in detention, due to playing a Quorum card on New Caprica); this confirmed what we had suspected (that Roslin was a Cylon).

As the game drew to a close, we were able to evacuate all the civilian ships that hadn't been destroyed by Occupation forces and it came to my turn with morale at 2 and population at 2, so I was left with the decision to jump the fleet away from the planet. All the other humans had already left the surface, but I remained in detention, so I had to sacrifice myself for the human victory. The other cylon was Starbuck, who never really had a chance to show her true colours

So the humans won in a very close game. We had agreed at the start not to use the cylon leaders, but I'm not convince that this was the difference, since those games were marked by serious losses of morale early on that I don't think the leader was responsible for. I'd previously thought not to use the leaders in 5 player games for fear of unbalancing what was the sweet spot of the base game, but I would like to try the leaders again with 6 (or possibly 7) players.

Note that although declaring a human victory on the night, I have entered this in the stats as a tie, the reason for this is that we (I) made a mistake when Boomer came into the game, she should have started in Detention so at the very least we would have had to get her (or me) out of there before we could jump. Bearing in mind the closeness of the game this could easily have tipped the balance the other way. Andy might have chosen another character of course, if we'd realised at the time, but to compound the issues, he had used Boomer's once per game ability to automatically pass a skill check, which would not then have been possible.

Battlestar Galactica 150 mins.
Posn.	Player
1=	Dave D
1=	Dave C
1=	Ben C
1=	Andy
1=	Steve H

Session Summary – 14 October 2009

For the third week in a row, Combat Commander was on the table, although Steve and Donald have suggested that they will join the rest of us next week. They are obviously enjoying the game a lot. I got the impression when leaving on Wednesday that Steve was on for the win and I have included that in the records, I'm sure someone will chime in, if I've got this wrong.

Combat Commander: Europe 160 mins.
Posn.	Player
1	Steve H
2	Donald

That left Mike, me and Dave F and first we played San Marco. This is a game I have mixed feelings about, the card selection system is a wonderful idea and makes for some very hard decisions, the problem is that the cards to be selected from are totally random. I don't think this is such a problem with the action cards, but I think that the limit cards would be better if a fixed selection was available for allocation on each round eliminating the possibility of a mass of 3's appearing one round and a collection of 1's the next, both of which happened in this game we played. There is also the question of the random allocation of first chooser every turn, but my biggest issue is with banishments, which I find too potentially game breaking.

Despite my problems, this is a game I can probably be persuaded to play occasionally and I don't think anything happened in this one which would have changed the result.

San Marco 90 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	65
2	Dave D	45+
3	Dave F	45

Next was Industrial Waste. I fell into a path of reducing the workforce early on and correspondingly used innovations (which seemed scarce in this game) to match those to allow me to produce orders. Unfortunately this meant I couldn't innovate on Waste production and had to take a risk when may waste snuck up to 9 (in the yellow) and then fell victim to an accident, this was immediately followed by another accident in the following turn, when I still hadn't been able to get the waste down.

Dave and Mike meanwhile pushed on with growth and the game ended quite quickly, although I somehow managed to stay with Mike and take second on the tie break for my second second place tie break of the evening.

Industrial Waste 55 mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	49
2	Dave D	34+
3	Mike	34