December 06
November 06
October 06
September 06
August 06
July 06
June 06
May 06
April 06
March 06
February 06
January 06

December 05
November 05
October 05
September 05
August 05
July 05
June 05
May 05
April 05
March 05
February 05
January 05

December 04
November 04
October 04
September 04
August 04
July 04
June 04
May 04
April 04
March 04

Rosliston 06
B&P 06
Midcon 05
Midcon 04

Talislanta
 

4th January 06....................................................10 Players

Tonight we had a turnout of 10 split into 2 tables of 5. For me it was a great session. I really enjoyed the company and an all consuming game of negotiation. Club night can really provide a break in the week and a retreat from the “day to day”.

I have put together a list below of the most played games of 2005. As I did last year I have gone with the total player hours rather than a straight count of the number of times a game has hit the table. I think the chart below or a simple count of the number of times the top games have been played would make for a good geek list if anyone fancies taking on the task.

Our increased membership shows in the figures. We spent between us approximately 1,000 hours gaming on a Wednesday night during 2005. We could have spent the time building a row of houses for the needy, I guess, maybe another year. The 20 games listed above took up a little over half of our total gaming time. I am a little disappointed that Taj Mahal only got played once in 2005 and New England was only played 3 times but something has to give with the huge catalogue of games we have between us all vying for attention.

Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Settlers have been kept off the table by Dave Dudley over previous years (not a dig Dave just an observation :-)). They have seen much action this year due to us consistently having the numbers to run 2 games simultaneously. Another benefit of our increased numbers has been that the slightly more hardcore games have found an audience. Game of Thrones and Liberty would not have been played so often in previous years.

The significant new games to receive their first club airing in 2005 are Caylus, Shadow of the Emperor, Medici, Game of Thrones, Maharaja and Niagara. I think Shadow of the Emperor, Maharaja and Niagara will prove to have all failed to excite sufficiently to make it onto the 2006 top 20 list. Caylus is a keeper and so is Medici, I can’t speak for Game of Thrones because I have not played it. Both Traders of Genoa and Railroad Tycoon where introduced late in 2005 so neither has got the playing hours to be feature far up the list but both games have received a very positive response and are likely to make a good showing in 2006.

The games that seem to have fallen out of favour in 2005 though I suspect they will make a strong showing in 2006 are; Taj Mahal, New England, Web of Power and Euphrates & Tigris.

The games that seem to have been out of favour for so long that they will never make a reappearance are; Alexandros, La Strada, Princes of Florence, Sherlock Holmes, Oasis and Sunken City.

Traders of Genoa – 120 min  bgg

It was great to play this game with the same group so soon after our last playing. This is an intense negotiation game. My voice was going by the end of the evening.

Matt went for the connected buildings. I think he got them all by the end of the game. Steve H was mainly interested in large orders and must have been in the lead for the first half of the game. Steve G and I both went for the building ownership tokens.

I only completed 2 large orders and one message over the whole game, I brought few commodities. By contrast Steve H was buying commodities and cards nearly every turn. Even though we had two completely different approaches to the game our final scores were virtually identical. I do like the way this game balances different strategies.

Guillotine – 20 min

Matt and Steve H got stuffed by Julian who ended the last day early depriving them of a last “head”.

Antike – 130 min

Mike says:

First thing to say was it played completely differently to my previous two games, with hardly any fleet building until the middle game, and the victory arriving through 2 temple destructions whereas previous wins I think required only 1.

 

Secondly, after extremely careful re-scrutiny of the rules, finally spotting the crucial example right at the back of the relevant section, we were playing the temple attack rule incorrectly, you only have to match the strength of the opposition to win and replace the city with your own.  This would of course leave your new city vulnerable to destruction by a single enemy unit, so maybe not a great idea anyway, but you can do it.

 

I was interested to hear other players' comments on Antike, I think Chris said he enjoyed it (winning may have clouded his judgment of course....), Dave D was concerned that it was "a wargame with knobs on".  Given that we as a group tend to play Civilisation as 'all knobs and no wargame', and Vinci (to me at least) is essentially a clever dice-free wargame, something in the middle on a vaguely similar theme or board seems quite useful and certainly for me was enjoyable.  The one reservation I do have is whether the given victory conditions need tweaking, so that it’s perhaps easier to win without temple-bashing.  There are 35 VP cards available, but only 28 of them are non-combat, so if you compare the non-combat cards per player against the victory criteria you get :

 

4 players           7 non-combat/player       9 VP to win

5 players           5.6 non-combat/player    8 VP to win

6 players           4.6 non-combat/player    7 VP to win

 

I would therefore suggest that the game might offer some players a completely non-combat strategy as a realistic option if we reduce the VP requirement by 1 for 4, 5 or 6 players.  Certainly that’s the reason I failed to win this time, having reached 1 short of the requirement with no combat but with no non-combat cards left to win I had to completely change tack and lost the initiative.  This would also I think bring games comfortably under 2 hours.  I don’t think it would make the game any less competitive, but it would make it competitive in different ways with players perhaps less willing to see others get 3 or more “Know-how” VP’s and actively try to deny them the Sea Spaces VPs which so far always seem to be quite cosily divided up.  I think I'd suggest this on a game-by-game basis, depending on how much of a punch-up the players fancy! 

11th January 06....................................................9 Players

There were 9 of us tonight. Firstly I must thank Debbie (of Cash trap fame) for paying for us all to have a Christmas drink. It seems fitting that we should play Cash Trap, I will keep it in my bag for a week or two. I understand that the game is selling well. Debbie must have got a distributor because I have seen the game feature in a couple of online stores and I understand it is available from Wayland Forge. Debbie is now focusing more on the “family” market rather than the hobby boardgamers.

Caylus – 180 min

Well we were all jigging about at the prospect of playing Cayus again. This time it played a bit differently again. This is the second time I have lost but the first time where I really felt out of contention.

Matt appeared to be a man with a plan. He was out to impress the King from the off, industriously building the castle most turns and taking vp’s from the favour track whenever he had the opportunity. It did feel like the wheels came off his cart, so to speak, about halfway through the game. A couple more favours late in the game and Matt would have won.

Mike had no obvious plan at the start of the game but by mid game he hatched a plot which saw him build two prestige buildings on the last turn. A wholly deserved victory and I suspect one of Mike’s most satisfying gaming results.

Gordon. Well I did start with a plan and that was to ignore the castle and get my vp’s elsewhere. I also planned to shorten the game where possible to lessen the number of favours awarded over the course of the game. I went the entire game without a single favour so I managed that part! Overall it did not work as you can see by my end score though that could just be because I made a mess of implementing the strategy.

Steve and Duncan were, as far as I can tell, playing each turn as it came.

The question of how to play Caylus well eludes me. In an attempt to help my own thoughts settle I will indulge myself by putting my musings into writing. This is my take on how we played this time:

Single whole game strategies - Matt going all out for vp’s via the favours track, I was going all out for vp’s via buildings.

Half game strategy – Mike focused himself later in the game on getting a prestige building or two.

No strategy – Duncan and Steve played without a consistent plan stretching from one turn to another

So is Caylus a game that benefits from strategic planning or is it purely tactical? My conclusion is… “I have no idea”. I so want there to be multiple meaningful whole game strategies but I am still to see any benefit it playing anything other than turn at a time.

Steve’s comments:

Really interesting thoughts on Caylus – what an intriguing game it is. You are right that I didn’t follow any strategy, and interestingly I never have done in this game, but I’ve usually been very close each time we’ve played. I think this is because Caylus concentrates on the skill of “reacting to events”. Maybe this sort of game suits me (and possibly Duncan) as an ex-wargamer where the random element can be strong and you frequently have to change plan. In this game I think if you have a firm strategy it can be torpedoed by events and other players very easily, as Matt was at one stage on Weds. Other than get a residence early and tick over on a presence in the castle, my only plan was to see where the VP chances were based on the buildings that were in play (the Church always helps).

 

That said, I have been thinking about a long-term strategy that hasn’t been tried yet. I will probably give it a go next time, just for fun.

 

Mike’s comments:

Yes, it was a pretty satisfying win, in the last 2-3 turns I felt I had about as much control as it's possible to get in such a reactive game, manipulating turn sequence and pub at just the right time, so that I could even afford to do actions simply to stop others doing them (denying Steve yet another visit to the Church was vital).  Even so, I needed Matt to provide me with the method of winning, had he not built the blue buildings architect I'd have had to do it myself and the extra turn and resources would probably have denied me.

 

I did have an overall strategy, though very simple: get my fair share of favours, and plough them into just one favour track.  Having decided on the building track that affects everything else. There are two problems with the building track, firstly given we are tending to build early residences, for my strategy the residence favour could do with happening earlier (though it eventually helps, even forces, a two-blue building strategy). Secondly and crucially, the real pain is where someone else is on the same track.  My Caylus record would be 2 wins from 3 had Gordon not built a building I needed in my 1st game - this time I could pick and choose resources and buildings for maximum benefit.

 

Matt’s comments:

Gordon did me out of 8 vps by ending ducking out of the turn earlier than he could have, but, more accurately, my lack of 1 gold did it to myself. I don't think the strategy is a bad one, i think i made a number of mistakes throughout the game, and particularly in the last 2 turns that cost me the game. Building the architect was an awful move.

 

Repeatedly hitting the vp track pays off very well in the late stages of the game, so I should have been jousting at every opportunity. I was attempting to diversify into a prestige building, which was a clear error- I should have kept jousting having made sure I had 2 batches in the castle in the last phase. Putting in more than 2 batches doesn't pay off if you are only using one track so you need to put them in, separately if possible, to get the most effective number of favours.

 

I felt I should have built the castle at the earliest opportunity, this would have got me a favour and I could then have built a residence over it, removing it from the game. I haven't seen the effect of an early residence in any of my previous games and it's certainly an advantage. Saving a few stone and a gold or two for the opportunistic late prestige building that gives a favour might be worthwhile too.

 

If you get screwed out of jousting, you can collect materials for a later batch or a favour building, change the turn order, or collect silk.

 

I'll try a different tactic next time- i have a new idea for a long-term plan that might be ok.

 

Good game, i just wish i'd played it better. I should have thought it through more, before I sat down.

Kogge – 110 min  bgg

Money – 15 min  bgg

18th January 06....................................................8 Players

We were missing many notables tonight including the Steve’s, Duncan, Richard, Dave and Chris but we still managed a turnout of 8. Our two new visitors, Richard and Luke both discovered us via the boardgamegeek web site. New players bring fresh energy to our gathering from both a social and gaming perspective. It was great to have Richard and Luke’s company and they brought out a new dimension in two of our most played games from 2003/2004, Taj Mahal and New England.

Mike, Peter and I are off to Oxcon this Sunday to play in the Settlers tournament. We are all going to Oxford in the one car and anyone else is welcome to join us. Contact me to discuss arrangements.

As always comments are welcome, encouraged in fact, regarding anything I have written here. Copy in any or all of the mail recipients listed above. Most feedback will get pasted into the web page at the end of the month.

Taj Mahal – 90 min