Midcon 2005                                                                                                              Mike Head

A quick round-up of the bewildering array of games Dave and I managed to squeeze into a couple of days at Midcon, with brief comments where I can remember. I think I've got the order of play right, but anyway here goes :

First off we bumped into Mark and an old gaming acquaintance of ours Richard, who had some interesting new games from Essen to try, though first of all we sprang something new on him :

Cash-Trap (45 mins)

1st Mike Head
2nd= Dave Cooper & Richard Dewsbury & Mark Stretch

In terms of viciousness this was somewhere in the middle of the two play test games we had at the Club. Then one of Richard's games, an intriguing card-driven game of armies and moving hexes, with the main hook being that the two cards you play are then given to the opponents next to you. Play good cards this time, they get them to use against you 2 turns later!

Daimyo (5 mins)

1st Richard Dewsbury
2= Mike Head & Dave Cooper & Mark Stretch

Don't you just love sudden-death games? Unfortunately death came rather suddenly for DC (although only the player who killed his Daimyo wins), so suddenly in fact we all wanted to give it another go.

Daimyo (30 mins)

1st Mark Stretch
2= Mike Head & Dave Cooper & Richard Dewsbury

Mark and I faced-off against each other with huge armies whilst Richard and Dave were more tactical, stealing territory off us while we were busy posturing. In the end, Richard gave Mark a bettter card than Dave gave me, and my Daimyo was history. I actually really liked this game despite being pretty abstract, and would happily play it again.

Railroad Dice 2 (50 mins)

1st Mike Head - 51 pts
2nd Dave Cooper - 49pts
3rd Mark Stretch - 36pts
4th Richard Dewsbury - 35pts

I'd heard good comments about the original version, and this update was supposed to be quicker and cleaner (and not broken...). Despite winning, I was disappointed. The game is very fiddly, lots of little dice fitting onto a tiny board, and the 18xx idea of upgrading track is poorly executed, as the upgrade you get is of course determined by the dice roll and some
upgrades are pretty useless to you. The more important aspect of the game
is train purchase, get the right trains (which sometimes equates to not allowing the others to buy them) and that actually seems to negate poor track building (which, because I moved last, made one bad call and had one particularly disastrous roll, I always seemed to suffer from). Mark and Richard built excellent tracks but Dave and I simply denied them the big trains to get the income they deserved. Had the rules stated that big trains could only be used on big routes, I'd have been stuffed (I feel a variant coming on....).

Around lunchtime, a couple of guys we'd not played against before joined us, but they proved to be excellent company for the rest of the afternoon, firstly playing :

HeckMeck (40 mins)

1st Mike Head - 7
2nd Richard Dewsbury - 5
3rd Mark Stretch - 2
4th Nick Parrish - 1
5th= Dave Cooper & Jem Spiller - 0

Also known as Pickomino, I think Richard said. If I tell you it is about throwing dice to catch worms, I think you'll guess there's rather more fun and luck than brain-power involved, but there was a good mix of laughs and vendetta going on and the game length was just right. Happy to play it again if I see it.

Antike (75 mins)

1st Nick Parrish - 7VP
2nd Richard Dewsbery - 4VP
3rd= Mike Head & Dave Cooper - 3VP
5th Mark Stretch - 2 VP
6th Jem Spiller - 1VP

On the bus journey in, Dave and I had actually been discussing the 'holy grail' of serious gamers, which is "Civ Lite", a game within the historical and developmental sweep of Civ but playable in an evening. Many have tried, all have failed, but this one really hits all the right buttons! It was so good, with such a wonderfully clever turn mechanic, that we had to play it again immediately almost to make sure we hadn't been dreaming! The beauty of it is that, like Civ, conquest is very damaging to the victor and vanquished alike, but you normally won't gain enough VP's to win without some aggro.

Antike (120 minutes)

1st Nick Parrish - 8VP
2nd= Mike Head & Dave Cooper & Mark Stretch & Jem Spiller - 6VP

With five players it played a little differently, but made it even more necessary to show some aggression. None had been displayed in the early game, so there was a long period of weapons proliferation towards the end to make the final push. I was so impressed that I've bought a copy as my Xmas present to myself, so prepare for Antike Time in 2006!

At this point we were joined by some more folk, including Richard B and Karen and a very old friend of mine from from my student days Andy Bate, so we split into two tables for the rest of the night.

Puerto Rico

1st Bill Mayling - 37VP
2nd Kevin Lee - 30VP
3rd= Mike Head & Karen Howe - 29VP
5th Nick Smith - 28VP

A very strange PR, very little shipping, and the game ended through lack of settlers when I think nobody had more than 8 buildings. I started with Corn and fortunately wasn't forced into Coffee as my 2nd commodity (unlike the last 5-player I played), but Karen who sat on my right then soon afterwards got into Tobacco too so I knew I had a fight on my hands around the Trading House. Bill was comfortable winner as he not only kicked in the Corn strategy but had a virtual Coffee monopoly throughout the game. I was chatting to Markus Welbourne afterwards and he rightly commented that the others in some respects handed Bill the game (though he did play very soundly too), Kevin was the player best placed to attack the Coffee situation and I think he may just have been caught out by the quick finish.

Karen then left us, and I must have drifted into a masochistic mood because I dragged out :

Medici

1st Nick Smith - 117
2nd Kevin Lee - 89
3rd Mike Head - 78
4th Andy Bate - 57
5th Bill Mayling - 54

An uproarious game, full of incident and gnashing of teeth, particularly when Nick had an outrageous slice of fortune when filling his boat for free.
So outrageous that we bet he couldn't do it again......

Medici

1st Nick Smith - 102
2nd Kevin Lee - 101
3rd Mike Head - 100
4th Andy Bate - 84
5th Bill Mayling - 74

He did! An incredibly close end but a perfect example of how you can sometimes recover from what looks like a bad start, as I was 5th after day 1, just scraping 4th after day 2 then stormed a couple of commodities and top boat to run it very close. Meanwhile on the other table :

Caylus

1st Ben Brown - 110
2nd Richard Biddle - 80
3rd Dave Cooper - 67
4th Mark Stretch - 54
5th Jem Spiller - 51

Dave had been itching to play Caylus, and I don't think he was disappointed, whereas he was by :

Euphrat & Tigris - The Card Game

1st Paul Heald
2nd Dave Cooper
3rd Richard Biddle
4th Simon Cutforth

Definitely not of the same calibre as the board game, with brevity (if that's what you're looking for) being the only gain.

Fruit Bandits

1st Paul Heald - 29
2nd= Dave Cooper & Simon Cutforth - 24
4th Richard Biddle - 21

A fun filler game Dave has just bought, he likes it a lot, but I gather Paul and Simon were less impressed.

Sushi Bandits

1st Dave Cooper - 10+
2nd= Paul Heald & Simon Cutforth & Richard Biddle - 10

Sounds a close game, but Dave didn't think much of it. Crashed into our beds at 12.15 a.m. (yes we both got a bed this year!)

After breakfast.....

Aladdin's Dragons

1st Mark Stretch - 7
2nd Nick Kinzett - 6++
3rd Dave Cooper - 6+
4th Mike Head - 6
5th Steve Jones - 5

It's always a joy to play with Nick, and this morning was no exception.
I've played AD once before, a long time ago. The central mechanism is an elaborate game of bluff and counter-bluff, and while there is some planning and skill, and a few laughs, involved I'm not sure there is enough 'meat' in there to deliver a game which I'd want to play frequently.

Ticket To Ride - Europe

1st Steve Jones - 122
2nd Mark Stretch - 116
3rd Gary Duke - 97
4th Dave Cooper - 86
5th Mike Head - 35

Oh dear.......... I'd played the original once before, pretty sure I won it then mainly through some lucky route draws and therefore unimpressed, and this is supposed to be better (and is). I decided on the route completion strategy again, and it went completely pear-shaped. Mark built my main required segment first, so I had to completely change routes, was then competing in the middle with Dave and Gary which made all of us suffer, and at the end was the accidental victim of Mark hoarding a particular colour of loco and never drew a single joker from the blind deck to overcome it - recipe for disaster. The first game of the weekend where the learning curve really bit, but I want to play it again.

This group broke up, Julian wandered over, and Dave decided that despite getting stuffed the last time he played it he fancied :

China

1st Mike Head - 51
2nd Dave Cooper - 50
3rd Julian Bailey - 41

The best game of this I've played so far, incredibly closely fought throughout. Julian got good roads but missed out of the alliances really, I thought that I might lose the game simply by being the start player (who I think is at a small disadvantage), but Dave couldn't pull off a sufficiently strong last turn to thwart me. Superb, I'm beginning to think this really is better than Web of Power.

By now we were ready for fillers to finish....

Fruit Bandits

1st Mike Head - 30pts
2nd Julian Bailey - 25pts
3rd Dave Cooper - 23pts

A glorified guessing game really, but light and short, I enjoyed it. we decided to see how it cope with more players

Fruit Bandits

1st Julian Bailey - 29pts
2nd Dave Cooper - 28pts
3rd John Colledge - 25pts
4th Mike Head - 24pts
5th Kath Collman - 19pts

Even more chaotic, to be honest, but just as quick and fun. Dave then left, and I had time for one last game....

Katzenjammer Blues

1st Julian Bailey - 9
2nd John Colledge - 7
3rd Mike Head - 5
4th Kath Collman - 0

A new game to Kath and John but it got a very favourable response. A deceptively clever game of card management, I think.