21/08/09 Roborally, Amazing Labyrinth, O Zoo Le Mio

For once, 'we must play games again soon', lead to actual playing of games!

I went round to Kerry's on Friday evening, where Fee was. Sadly Matt came down with an illness and called in sick, so it was just the three of us. Unless you count the many drunk people that seemed to be continuously walking past Kerry's house.

We started with RoboRally, which surprisingly I had never played before. Normally I can pick up games quickly from the rules, but unfortunately the Roborally rulebook is pretty bad - one of those disjointed rulebooks that put things in a strange order, some rules are just on the additional player aid, and some tiles are poorly explained (from an online review -"expect that a few rules - such as moving onto a turning conveyor belt - will be poorly worded, causing confusion").

We had enough trouble trying to setup the game. The setup recommended by the game (six checkpoints across four boards) is laughably long, so we settled for four checkpoints across four boards. It turns out this was both too spread out and slightly too long. I would guess four checkpoints across two boards might be reasonable. When we had worked out where we were supposed to start and put the flags down the game could finally begin.

I got a reasonable start, pushing Kerry down a pit near the first flag, but then just missed the flag when I got pushed off it onto a conveyor belt. I then had a 'turning conveyor belt problem' which left me facing the wrong direction with a hand containing only one turn but three Move3 cards. This left me little choice but to fly of in the wrong direction, leaving me miles behind Fee and Kerry. As I wasn't enjoying the game I decided to drop, so Fee and Kerry decided to just play to the next Flag. If we had played all four flags I think the game would have lasted all evening!

Fee and Kerry both reached the flag on the same turn, which lead to some interesting maneuvers. Fee was able to push Kerry off the Flag for the win.

For our second game, we played one of my Birthday presents - Ra: The Dice Game. It is basically a Yahtzee style game where you use your dice rolls to acquire Pharaohs, Civs, Niles and Monuments which score pretty much identically to original Ra. Unfortunately Fee hadn't played Ra for some time and Kerry had never played, so the rules explanation made the game seem more complicated than it really was. Luckily it all seems a lot easier once we started playing, and the rules summary cards for each player are excellent.

The game seemed to play very quickly. Fee and Kerry collected monuments, whilst I concentrated more on the Nile, and Fee two sets of three monuments was enough for her to beat me by a couple of points. Unfortunately I now realise that I set the game up incorrectly each Epoch, as I was starting with the Ra on the 4 player space, not the 3 player - this may have made monuments a better strategy!

Though Fee wanted to play Ra again, but Kerry was keen to learn another new game so we tried O Zoo Le Mio (aka ZooSim). This is a quick light blind bidding game played over 5 'years' (rounds) that is let down slightly by some poor components - the colours of the exhibits on the zoo tiles don't exactly match the visitors and the relevant information (the * rating of the exhibits) isn't clearly enough displayed. The animal pictures on the tiles add flavour, but I think the game might actually play better without them. I had a reasonable start, but my best exhibits weren't able to grow in year 4 and I lost several visitors to Kerry. She ended up the winner, while Fee recovered from a poor start to take second (you score points for each visitor equal to the the year, so you need to be strong at the end).

Finally we had a quick game of Amazing Labyrinth. This is a fun kids maze game, where the board consists of movable tiles. On each turn you have to move one row (or column) of tiles, causing the path connections to change and then move as far through the maze as you wish. The objective of the game is to be the first to visit each of the locations you have been dealt. I seem to always do well at this game and won again, a turn or two ahead of Fee.

Then I could have left, but decided to stay a little longer to get a quieter night time bus. So we played a couple of hands of Circus Flohcati (Flea Circus). I won the second with a very early Gala Show for a new lowest wining score record of 36.

Then it really was time to leave.

13-08-09 Beowulf, Munchkin

I have some friends who can't make the usual Sunday night gaming (though if they all could we'd have far too many players). Every time I manage to get together with them for games we always say 'we must do this more often', but somehow it doesn't work out that way.

Anyway, with me being busy on several Sunday's in August we managed to arrange a weekday evening at Kerry's in Ryde. It was me, Kerry, Bekki, Scott and Tony. Tony was late, so we already had Beowulf set out when he arrived.

Beowulf doesn't hasn't got too many plays recently (nothing has really apart from Race for the Galaxy and Dominion) but everyone seemed very keen to play it. The risking adds a random element that can let someone get lucky once or twice, but you can't really be successful without good judgement on how much to bid and push your luck, and correctly valuing points, gold and cards.

As has happened previously I drop out without playing a card in an early auction whilst everyone else went to about 4 or 5 cards. None of the early auctions are that vital - I try to conserve cards early on and pick up some cheap gold.

I think I always took Scrolls at selection as I think it is vital to try and get at least some gold. Generally Gold seems undervalued, whilst the others tend to overvalue the special cards - especially the cards that just provide symbols - if you played several cards to just gain a card with some symbols have you really gained anything? I take a couple of wounds in the midgame, but everything is under control as I have Discard two scratches and Refuse a wound, scratch or misfortune in my hand.

Everything pretty much goes to plan, I think I am leading in points coming to the final few auctions as I have cashed in five cards for five points and two cards for three points in the Opportunities and still have a very good hand for the final battle with the Dragon. I win that and also have a decent showing at the final totting up of cards and treasure for a comfortable six point win from Tony. Another really enjoyable game of Beowulf, a game that deserves a much higher score on BGG (I rate it a 9 because I am very stingy with my 10s).

After that Scott has requested we play Munchkin. I haven't played munchkin for over 10 years, and this game reminded me why. Over the first five turns I can achieve absolutely nothing, and I decide I would have more fun by dropping from the game. By pretty much unanimous agreement the game is halted about 10 minutes later. Nothing more to say about that really.

02/08/09: Notre Dame, RFTG: RvI

Only three of us this week, Tony, Colin and me.

We started with another new game from the recent Euro Math Trade - Notre Dame.

In Notre Dame each play drafts three cards from their action deck of 9, each card corresponding to an area of the board and offering various resources. You need cubes to play onto the board, coins to bribe persons and buy VP at Notre Dame and you need VP to win. And don't forget to not let the rat problem get out of hand.

Once three rounds have occurred a period ends and the 9 card decks are reassembled. I started the first period by making two plays into my park. This set me up for plenty of bonus VPs, but meant I would obviously struggle for resources most of the game. Colin concentrated in the Hotel during the first period, which is unfortunate as it's probably the weakest building, and he was the only person to make any coach moves. I think Tony concentrated generally on resources, ending the first period with more cubes and coins than he started with.

During the second period the rat problem intensified. Plague levels had slowly increased to the point where at the end of round 4 or 5 all three us at were at either 8 or 9 in the harbour. The next turn the cards revealed six rats! Tony already had a reasonable presence in the Hospital and was able to kill enough rats in his turn to be okay and Colin used the minstrel to move 3 cubes from his Hotel to the Hospital. I just accepted I was going to 'bust' this turn and didn't worry about it - in fact I went over 9 for most of the remaining turns. This meant I ended up with considerably less cubes on the board than Tony whilst Colin did not have plague problems, but did run short of cubes in hand and had to move cubes around a few times.

For the second and third periods I mostly got points from collecting messages, and I got decent VP from the Master Carpenter (point for every occupied region) . Tony scored big on Beggar King (points for low plague levels) , Master Carpenter and the Mayor (3VP for each region with 3+ cubes) . Colin had a few messages and scored for the Lady of the Court (VP for each cube in the most occupied region). Notre Dame points were split 4/4 each period, everyone visiting twice. Colin purchased 6VP on his first period visit, but ran short of gold later so this was a mistake I think.

Result: Tony low-mid 60s, Simon mid 50s, Colin high 30s

After Notre Dame we played a couple of games of Face for the Galaxy with both expansions (Gathering Storm and Rebel vs Imperium). Goals were on, and takeovers active for the second game. The second game saw a takeover attempt, the first I have seen! I managed a second place in both games - in the first I had Trade League plus several big VP alien worlds and 3VP Alien goal, and in the second a mixed bag that saw me claim 3VP for both first to discard and full house of powers and 5Vp for 3+ explore powers. I still don't really feel that RvI added a huge amount to the game - though it does seem that we shuffle the deck during play a lot less now. I guess that is good, given it's size!

Next weekend: Grand Prix Brighton! (Magic 2010 sealed)