4th May 04.....................................................4 Players

Mike is off to the Beer and Pretzels Games Weekend in Burton 15/16th May 2004. I am thinking of going. I am hoping Keith will go as it combines his like of figure war games and board games. Anyone else interested? It might be a chance to play one of the longer games that don’t fit into a Tuesday night. I fancy a 3 player game of Age of Mythology which runs at about 3 hours. Keith is usually up for anything Settlers related.

Ticket to Ride – 90 minutes

Everyone was new to this game except me. I played this game half a dozen times with the family over Easter and it was very well received. I consider the game to be a bit light for its length of play at our Tuesday night sessions. I don’t want to take away from Dave’s victory but being dealt with probably the 2 longest overlapping routes on your first turn is very lucky. I have the tickets spread out in front of me and there are 4 cards in the range 20-22 12 cards in the range 11-17 and 14 in the range 4-10. Maybe we should have each started with a ticket from each of these 3 ranges. Another method might be to hand out the tickets at random at the start of the game but re-deal a hand that has more than 1 20+ point route. Then again the score were close so maybe the imbalance was more apparent than actual. I do have sympathy with Steve’s grumble about completing a lot of small routes and being poorly rewarded.

San Juan – 60 minutes

I keep doing badly with this game but I enjoy it all the same. I think we will be playing this for a long time to come. We have got the play time down so that we are not asking San Juan to provide the main course for the evening. As a main event game I think it fails to deliver but as a meaty filler I really like it.

I am looking forward to the possibility of playing Amen Re next week. Now come on Dave you promised J. We have spent some time away from the heavier strategy games which I consider work so well on a Tuesday night session; Amen Re, Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Medieval Merchant, Taj Mahal, El Grande, Acquire, Union Pacific, New England and Capitol.

11th May 04....................................................5 Players

Amun-Re – 120 minutes

It has been about a year since we last played Amun-Re as a group. This game delivers an all consuming gaming experience in that unique Knizia way. This is one of my favourite games for a Tuesday (soon to be Wednesday) night. I went for a bold ploy of building only 1 pyramid in the first epoch. I know my result suggests this is not a successful way to play but I still maintain that the pyramid points scored in the first epoch have little consequence on your final score. The clever money was on the camels in the first epoch and the farmers in the second. Steve had a nice momentum to his play throughout, ending with a great farmer score enhanced by a +1 card.

I will try to get to Burton for 10am on Saturday for the Beer and Pretzels Games Weekend. I look forward to seeing the Dave’s and Mike for a whole day of board games. Ticket to Ride was this year’s most played game at Baycon, I expect to see it getting a fair amount of table time this weekend.

19th May 04...................................................5 Players

We got a new member tonight or rather an old member back again. Hello Tony. Coincidentally we played 2 games which were being played when Tony last showed up some 3 years ago.

Ra – 90 minutes

This was a hard fought game which generated a lot of excitement. In fact so much excitement that I hope we did not scare Tony. Dave C commented that there was a feeling of playing by committee. Some of us were (ok so I mean I was) getting so taken up with the game that we wanted to play everyone’s turns for them. This time Ra was most noteworthy for:

• We pulled more floods than rivers in the first epoch.

• Every Epoch Mike took the knock for least Pharaohs and Tony the benefit for the most.

• It was a low scoring game in part due to the lack of early rivers.

• Mike had 7 of his 8 monuments by the end of the 2^nd epoch. He never did get the 8^th but did finish with the highest monument score.

• I got the 5 points for the highest total sun values at the end of the game. Dave C was 1 point behind. Dave D got the least.

Bohnanza – 40 minutes  bgg

We have not played this game for well over a year. We only managed to go through the deck once, not the suggested 3 times. Dave D won though I did taint that victory a little by pointing out he had one more go than everyone else. As a 5 player game this would take 60+ minutes to play which I think is too long for what is essentially a filler. It was nice to give Bohnanza an airing but I think Trans America or Royal Turf would have better filled the time slot, both working well with 5 players. I better add “in my opinion” to the last sentence because I know I don’t speak for others on this one.

26th May 04....................................................4 Players

We have had some great sessions this month. The highlights for me have been Amun-Re, Ra and St Petersburg all of these were fought over with complete group focus, very enjoyable games and company.

St Petersburg – 90 minutes

I have done a fair amount of dwelling on this game since I first played 10 days ago. This was my 3^rd game and I have another head full of ideas about how best to play. The game to me feels solvable in that I think there is probably a best strategy dependant on the number of players. Even if the strategy can be “solved” the game will still have a constant stream of tactical decisions to keep it alive. We were all in contention throughout. I had the biggest end of game noble bonus with 8 different ones.

Labyrinth – 30 minutes

One of Dave Cooper’s games he has somehow kept from us. This was fun and very light. I would certainly be up for playing it again. The game was given more concentration by me than such a game deserves because this was the final game of May and the Trophy winner was not yet confirmed. I needed to win and Dave Dudley to lose which was rather unlikely but this is an anything can happen kind of game. Labyrinth has no kingmaker possibility which was on reflection a good choice for the last game of the month.

Dave Dudley gets to keep the trophy for another month, clap clap clap, well done Dave. With Steve becoming a full timer Dave should experience a bit more competition over the coming months:

Average attendance 4.5

Trophy points are calculated separately for each game played by multiplying the game length in minutes by the number of participants and dividing that figure by a player’s final position. All players’ points go back to zero at the end of each month.