Games Played 24 July 2013

As the holiday season approaches, attendance was down to nine this week, including newcomer Steve. Games featured a first runout for Love Letter, 30 minutes sounds a bit long compared to what I've headr of the game, but this could be down to first play syndrome. Power Grid was played on the UK map using England, Wales and Scotland.

24/07/2013
Power Grid - 120 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	17
2	Dave D	17
3	Dave F	15
4	Dave G	11
San Juan - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	34
2	Dave D	26
3	Dave F	25
Love Letter - 30 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark W	3
2	Andy T	2
2	Mike	2
4	Scott	0
Citadels - 75 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark W	27
2	Steve W	23
3	Mike	22
4	Scott	21
5	Andy T	17
San Juan - 50 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Scott	37
2	Mike	33
3	Steve W	32
4	Mark W	17

Games Played July 17 2013

14 people would have been unbearable in the room upstairs in this weather, which I hate at the best of time, but fortunately we wer able to split the group and run some games in the bar, which was more comfortable.

The games played:

17/07/2013
Robo Rally - 75 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve Pe	0
2	Mark W	0
3	Dave D	0
4	Mark R	0
Race for the Galaxy - 50 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark W	51
2	Steve Pe	36
3	Dave D	31
4	Mark R	29
Taj Mahal - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	55
2	Andy S	43
3	Gordon	42
4	Dave G	34
Keyflower - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	69
2	Andy T	61
3	Donald	32
Caylus Magna Carta - 140 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Phil	54
2	Mike	50
3	James S	45
7 Wonders - 30 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	65
2	Gordon	54
3	Dave F	46
4	Andy S	40
5	Dave G	30
6	Andy T	20

Games Played 10 July 2013

These are the games played last night. Another play for Tzolk'in. Industrial Waste has now been played at least once every year since the records started in 2003.

10/07/2013
Industrial Waste - 60 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	54
2	Mark W	34
3	Phil	26
Discworld: Ankh Morpork - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Phil	0
2	Dave D	0
2	Mark W	0
Lords of Waterdeep - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	135
2	Andy S	122
3	Dave G	107
4	James S	101
Tsuro - 15 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave G	0
1	James S	0
3	Mike	0
3	Andy S	0
Tsuro - 15 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Andy S	0
2	Dave G	0
3	James S	0
4	Mike	0
Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Scott	51
2	Gordon	48
3	Dave F	39
Kingdom Builder - 30 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Scott	64
2	Dave F	56
3	Gordon	44

Games Played 3 July 2013

OK, I've been fiddling about for some time with the stats pages and came up with an easy way of generating the HTML, meaning I could do away with all the PDFs and easily update every week (or as soon as I get round to updating the master spreadsheet at any rate). It occurred to me that I could copy the same table HTML into a blog post, so here's the games played last Wednesday, no comments unless I think that there's anything notable to say, although anyone else is welcome to do so.

03/07/2013
Race for the Galaxy - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	34
2	Mark W	31
3	Dave D	29
4	Scott	22
Race for the Galaxy - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	45
2	Scott	36
3	Dave F	30
4	Mark W	25
Race for the Galaxy - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave D	53
2	Scott	38
3	Mark W	29
4	Dave F	18
Race for the Galaxy - 40 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Dave F	59
2	Mark W	46
3	Scott	44
4	Dave D	36
Lords of Waterdeep - 90 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Steve H	112
2	Mark R	109
3	Dave G	108
4	Andy S	99
Dominion - 45 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mark R	46
2	Andy S	30
3	Dave G	25
4	Steve H	19
Caylus Magna Carta - 140 Mins.
Posn.	Player	Score
1	Mike	49
2	James S	39
3	Phil	37

To the Death in Venice - San Marco - 8th May 2013

New and reasonably interesting games continue to come along, though I must admit there's not been many that have really impressed me over the past couple of years and certainly none that have persuaded me to purchase them, but I'll be honest and say that between us we already have so many great games that if we never played another new one I wouldn't grow tired of what Club members own between us.  A case in point is San Marco : a superb Alan R. Moon design that's at least 10 years old but puts many new designs to shame, with a brilliant central mechanism - 'I cut the cake, you choose first' - wrapped in minimal extras that delivers a highly-interactive game with plenty of difficult decisions with the right balance of a bit of luck.

One drawback is that despite being 3-4 player we've long decided that 3 players is by far best, so I was really glad to get David and Andy S to try it on Wednesday.  It's not for the faint-hearted, being nasty to the others is forced on you, and being the nastiest is often part of the winning strategy, and sometimes you really have to ride your luck, but under that pressure a win feels really satisfying.  I did win against the 'newbies', and they perhaps felt that they were always going to lose out to the more experienced player, but 2 turns from the end I was in a desperate situation and possibly staring at last place.  If the penultimate turn Limit Cards had been more harsh I could have reached 10 and missed the last turn, for a certain last place, but my chancing paid off  for a good win.  I suspect both of them, now they understand many of the nuances of the game, will fancy their chances much more next time!

10 Years of Records

The club was formed back in the 90s when Dave C, Mike and myself, along with others along the way used to meet at each others' houses. We moved to the Conservative club, as it was then, in 1999 according to notes Dave C has.

The earliest records of games played date back to April 2003 (it's possible that we had earlier records, but if we did, they are lost) and for the first 5 months they only include a record of the game and the result. In September of that year, the "Trophy Point" system was instigated by Gordon and part of this system involved calculating points using the number of players involved in a game and the length of that game. We stopped running the Trophy Points at the end of 2006, but since then I've still recorded the games like this, because Player-Hours seemed a good measure of the amount of play a game has received.

As at the completion of yesterday's session, that means that we have 10 years of records and I have collated a list of all the 383 different games played (excluding the RPG sessions Dave C used to run) here in order of player hours. Due to the five months of records with no time there are a number of games that would be further up the list.

One other point 6 different players are recorded in April 2003, 4 of those  were at last night's session.

Brine is fine ! Magnum Sal : Muria - 16 Jan 2013

Dave F, Scott, Steve H and I (Mike) gave the Magnum Sal expansion Muria a first outing at the Club - sadly only available direct from Poland for the foreseeable future.  I really like the base game, lots of strategy, a bit of luck, and a worker placement that actually feels a bit like you're using workers - they even get tired!  The new expansion now makes the water you're busy shifting out of the mine valuable as brine, as it can be used to make the normal salt varieties (2 for brown, 4 for green, 6 for white) and can be itself a component in some new Royal Order tiles.  It also has a totally different mine layout method - no longer fixed, but players themselves explore where they want and dig down to lower levels with six new shaft tiles.  A couple of new tools support these mechanisms, but you stick with 7 types available so two types will be removed at random, which offers even more variety.  Each player also gets a Foreman super-meeple, worth double when working in the mine, again offering some additional strategies.

So, Muria gives you more to think about, and therefore probably adds a little to the game length - our first attempt took nearly 3 hours, but the time didn't drag for me, because you're constantly having to watch what the others are doing while you - it's as interactive as the base game.  It also gave a pretty close result, I think we all made mistakes (easy to do in this!) but Scott played the steadiest and deserved his win despite a little bit of luck right at the end. 

You also get components for a 5th player, I'd like to try with this number but am doubtful it would be as good, certainly if any less-experienced players were included I think I'd try a 2-Phase 'tweaked' game rather than 3-Phase game to guarantee to keep it within an evening.  On the whole it adds more to an already engaging game so I'd stick with keeping it in for the future.

On the other table, Gordon, Simon and Dave D were playing Galaxy Trucker.  I played it once when it first came out and my thoughts are a bit like I think I heard Dave D say - a lot of fun for 30-45 minutes but the fun wears thin because the game goes on for at least as long again as repetition rather than development.