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Rosliston 06
B&P 06
Midcon 05
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Talislanta

 

1st February 06....................................................10 Players

There were two tables of 5 tonight. It was good to have Steve Paget with us after over a year away. It took a little while to get started with everyone wanting to play Amun Re and a lack of keenness for any of the proposed games for the second table. I was pushing forward Maharaja. This is a game I seem a lot keener on than anyone else. My tastes in games are almost an exact match for what we play on a Wednesday night. The 21 games that received the most table time at the club, neatly match my personal favourite games. The one oddity though is Maharaja which I would put up there with Taj Mahal, Amun Re and Puerto Rico but the club consensus is that it is not so good. I am sure there are games other members can not understand why we don’t see what they see in them. El Grande has never caught on at the club even though Mike is a great fan, only Dave Cooper wants to play Age of Steam and Steve Hilton has yet to change any of us into wargamers.

Mike adjusts his dial for the umpteenth time while the rest of us chat :-)

Maharaja – 110 min

Bullying 4 other people into playing your game and then soundly thrashing them at it is not the way to make friends. Well afterwards Steve was actually genuinely keen to play again and Matt and Julian were more indifferent towards Maharaja than hostile towards it. Mike seemed to be uncomfortable with the games chaos from the off. I felt in control. I even had time to metaphorically stop, turn round and ponder where the rest of the contenders had got to before trotting over the finishing line.

We were all quiet close up to about the 5th turn. Only Matt did not have a central palace in at least one city and we all had reasonable road systems. I hit my stride in the second half of the game with the cities getting visited in an order that was good for me.

Matt, amid much gnashing, messed up his turn late in the game, selecting to change character cards twice rather than once plus a palace build. This cost him second place I suspect. Steve made an admirable job of monopolising one of the cities and manipulating the track so it scored twice in quick order.

Julian’s comments:

I think that my dislike of Maharaja comes from the problems of the city scoring order. I spent 3 of actions trying to get the silver city scored a second time without success, if I had spent all three of those actions on the 'take 2 gold' action (which is considered a weak action), I would have finished 2nd, not 5th. If such an action sink, becomes a large gamble then it doesn't fit well with the rest of the game's mechanics comfortably and can cause a feeling of a game that isn't quite right.

 

I would happily have another go at this soon if only to see if my lessons learnt turn my fortunes for the better.

 

Speaketh the Maharaja Game Guru:

Trying to guide the Maharaja to visit a city that only you benefit from is going to be a harder mission than guiding the king to a city you share the top presence in. Also jumping in on a city that someone else is manipulating the king towards could be a good idea. It is wise to be aware of the approaching game end, the last couple of cities to get scored will be well fought over and it is easy to completely miss getting your cities visited in the end game scramble. I am more inclined to giving the influence track a nudge once every two or three turns, throughout the game, as a single action to tease my chosen cities to the fore than sinking multiple actions into a possibly futile mission late in the game.

 

Steve H chips in:

Just so you know, I like Maharaja, again because it’s a bit chaotic and you need to adapt to circumstances. I particularly like the swapping roles actions and the track adjustment action, just for the look on people’s faces (and to attempt to win obviously). I would have happily played it but I was hosting Amun-Re.

 

Mike’s comments:

Kramer's one of my favourite designers, but there's just too much chaos going on here for my liking in a 2+ hours game.  If Dave D is uneasy about the far more limited chaos that the Castillo gives in Kramer's awesome El Grande I can understand why he shied away from this on Wednesday!  Why not remove the ability to change Governor order from the action wheel and make it a player role power - that would have steadied things a little.  As in games like Candidate and Taj Mahal, you must ease off in odd turns to prepare for fights you know are going to come later, but unlike those games the fight may never happen, as Julian found out.

 

Dave D’s comments:

Just to clarify, the reason I shied away from this game is not so much the unpredictable order of city scoring, although that is a consequence of that reason, which is that here we have a (very) limited action game with the added factor that those actions are decided in advance without knowledge of the other players actions, to compound this is the fact that, unless you are first in the order, you cannot guarantee when you will act. This leads to Chaos, but it won't be fixed by Mike's suggestion, which would only affect one aspect and I suspect would not find favour with those who like the game as is.

 

In my view if a game isn't broken don't fix it and if it is (unless all that is needed is a VERY minor tweak) then chuck it away (or at least let some one else play it). In the case of games broken is subjective anyway and fixing something for one person would probably break it for someone else.

 

Regarding games to play, I wouldn't object to Railroad Tycoon, although I'm thinking that 6 players might be 1 too many or Vinci with 4+. I'd also like to give Age of Steam another try, partly to compare with Railroad Tycoon, having played that a bit recently and also to show that Dave C is not the only one who wants to play. Also Union Pacific and finally a bit of Gardening would not be an unpleasant way to spend part of the evening.

Amun Re –  100 min

I understand the sacrifices were kept low in the second epoch which I am guessing did not suit Steve or Duncan.

Guillotine – 20 min

Way to go Duncan.

I looks like I will not be about next Wednesday. Hope to see you all in two weeks.

8th February 06....................................................7 Players
Dave Dudley’s report:

Just the 7 of us this week, down a little on recently, so we split 4 & 3.

Steve H says:

Dave – good report but a bit light in the Alhambra section. Who, for example, had the nicest begonias?

 

Bit of transcendentalism going on on Dave’s table I think. First we have the desire to be at one with nature and the environment and flowerbeds, followed by the development of filthy industry. Which one is more advantageous to human nature? Discuss…

 

Sorry it’s been a long day.

 

Dave:

But the factories in Industrial Waste last night were in fact probably as green as the gardens; I’ve never seen anything like it you could grow begonias in the land fill at the end of the game.

Tycoon - 85 minutes  bgg

Dave has been waiting to play this for some time. My personal memories of the game are not favourable, but tonight participants seemed to enjoy and the game was close, with the exception of Richard, who I would guess had never played before and may be needs another play if he wants one.

New England - 70 minutes

Another game that has just never done it for me. Moral -  if you want to noble the leader don’t take Mike’s advice as to who that is, I hung around at the end to wait for the scores and he predicted before the count up that Dave had won, although as the scores show this was incredibly close, and maybe a bit difficult to call.

Alhambra - 60 minutes

This is one I do like, unlike Steve. Luke was in the lead after the first scoring with the longest wall, but on following rounds Matt and I were able to connect up our wall sections and move ahead in various colours to overhaul him.

Industrial Waste - 60 minutes

I believe this was Luke’s first club win (congratulations to him). The game played close and, I think, longer than normal with everyone reaching 19 or 20 on the growth track and the end on 2 out of 3 of the innovation tracks. The result of this was that the main difference between players was cash on hand at the end of the game.

15th February 06....................................................13 Players

We started off with 15 tonight but Dave Cooper was called away at the start of the evening to report to the hospital regarding an ear operation and he took Ben with him. The rest of us split into 2 tables of 4 and one of 5. Luke’s wife Anna joined us for the first time.

Caylus - 135 minutes

At the end of the game there was a bit of confusion about when different rows on the favours chart can be used. This seems to be a common rules query looking at the various threads on boardgamegeek. The rule is best summed up in the FAQ document on the publisher’s web site.

Matt went exclusively for the building favours. Luke finished with a bunch of gold and Anna used her favours to gain victory points. I understand there were a couple of muddle ups in the game which affected the scores. I hope the confusion can be put down to learning the rules and that overall the game was appreciated.

Puerto Rico - 100 minutes

We had all played PR many times which set the stage for a hard fought battle. This was a long game with no quick draining of the colonists or filling up on buildings. We all went off in different directions doing our own thing. I am abysmal at judging who is doing well in a PR game. I would have said we were all neck and neck throughout and I would not have been surprised if anyone of us had won. I still can’t see how the results were so spaced out. How did you only have 32 points Steve with 2 large buildings?

Steve G finished with 2 large buildings. He was the first into Coffee. He pulled off a couple of neat moves to get big payouts via the trading house.

Chris started in a confident manor with the Hacienda, Hospice and Construction Hut as his early builds. He acquired 4 Quarries which is quiet an achievement considering this was a 5 player game. On a couple of key rounds Chris was hurt by other players’ selections. I know I produced one turn when Chris had not counted on it and later in the game I brought the last of the Coffee roasters before he had a chance to get it. Chris did finish up with the big building which awards points for colonists which overall complemented the way he had been playing.

Mike got his factory and a diversity of goods. He built the City Hall which brought him a healthy bonus at the end of the game.

Richard was the only player not to finish with a large building. He did have a combination of a Factory, Harbour and Warf so not surprisingly his vp’s were well up on the rest of us.

Gordon. I became very single minded from early in the game. I just wanted one of each of the production buildings and the Guild Hall and then I wanted the game over before the big shippers (Richard) could run away with the lead. It went to plan with my shipping points helped by the Harbour. I get less satisfaction from winning a game with a simple strategy conducted in a single minded manor than I do from cleverly balancing the elements of a game to gain a victory. Still it was a win at PR played with a table of sharks. I certainly get satisfaction from that.

China - 45 minutes

Three of us drew with the tie breaker the number of pieces left un-played. Mike scored well from advisors. Chris and Richard scored reasonable from advisors and cloisters. Steve had a major 8 (or 9?) point road and I placed only one advisor gaining all my points from cloisters.

Lord of the Rings with Friends & Foes - 115 minutes  bgg

There are two ways to win this game when using the Friends & Foes expansion. You can either throw the ring into the volcano or you can kill all the foes. I understand that all the foes were beaten but they carried on to Mount Doom anyway. Unfortunately all the hobbits died on route which makes for a rather hollow victory. Points were awarded as if this was a 2 player game with all the players as player one and “The Game” as the second player.

22nd February 06.....................................................7 Players

I have made some updates to the web site recently. We now have an average weekly attendance at the bottom of each of the monthly pages. There is also an introduction page where you first enter the site and there is a section for convention reports where you can find Dave Cooper’s and Mike’s Midcon write-ups. It would be nice if you would take the time to read these. I don’t believe either of the reports was ever generally circulated and they really are worth a read. www.halesowenboardgamers.org.uk

Antike - 105 minutes