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

 

5th October 05.....................................................7 Players

We were down to 7 tonight and next week it will probably be fewer still with Dave Dudley and Steve Hilton both off.

San Marco – 75 minutes

Richard and Duncan were introduced to San Marco for the first time.

Carcassonne – 40 minutes

Played using the Count of Carcassonne expansion. Carcassonne is a favourite of Duncan’s I understand. I think this is the first time anyone has played with the Count expansion.

Katzenjammer Blues – 10 + 10 minutes

Ra – 70 minutes

It was time to introduce James to our most played game of 2004. It is not a game that grabs you from the first playing, it take a couple of games to appreciate.

First Epoch. I got out very early with only a couple of Ra’s on the track. My bluff was called when I was on my last sun and I was forced to bid when I didn’t really want to. James also got out early which left Dave and Steve to collect full racks of tiles. Steve came out with a lot of Pharaohs. It feels to me like the person who can score the most Pharaohs on the first Epoch goes on about two thirds of the time to score most pharaohs on each of the remaining two scoring rounds. I scored least points with 4. I think Steve had most with 7.

Second Epoch. This was the shortest of the epochs with its main feature being that no floods were drawn. This was devastating to James who had managed to come out of the first epoch with 6 rivers. Steve was still scoring better than the rest of us helped by his Pharaohs.

Final Epoch. We went into this round with Steve about 10 points up with the rest of us all about equal. A reasonable balance of everything came out. I caught a full rack of tiles that must have given me 20 points. Steve could have taken it for himself but it didn’t have anything like that value to him. Steve got lowest suns and Dave got the most.

Industrial Waste – 70 minutes

I enjoyed this game to the extent that I will consider buying a copy when I am at Essen if it is going cheap. Steve and Dave made a much better job of managing their factories than James and I did. James spent heavily on cleaning up after disasters. I was the only one who took out a loan which I never managed to pay off. Steve ended the game after comparatively few turns. From where I was sat it looked like he was controlling the game though Dave was mirroring him most of the game. Dave just missed out on victory when he did a surprise double production on the last turn.

12th October 05.....................................................4 Players

Mike’s report:

Well, just four of us braved the downpours and ignored the soccer, and were rewarded with an enjoyable marathon gaming session - we finally stumbled out of the Club at 11.10 p.m.!

Medici – 60 minutes

If you don't make a reasonable start in Medici it's very difficult to get it back, I picked up lowest values bonus score and a nondescript set of commodities on Day 1 and that was curtains for me.  Chris came back strongly on Day 3 with joint highest values score plus good commodities but Julian's excellent 2nd Day (including a fortunate 10 Gold that dropped in his lap) meant he couldn't be caught.

El Grande – 120 minutes

As close and exciting as the scores suggest!  Chris was always a little behind, Steve and I were the mid-game pacesetters but I attacked Steve and ignored Julian too much and he got back in the game.  A vicious two-pronged attack by Steve and Julian hit me so hard in Round 7 that I thought I'd be looking at 3rd place, but I managed the end-game bid cards and court movement better than the others (a facet of the game where experience counts for a lot, I think) and clawed it back.  Having not had a good experience of EG the first time they played it a long time ago, this time it got a much more favourable reaction from Steve and Chris, so this may see a few more plays now. 

Julian’s comment:

Well played by Mike, despite being attacked by two of us and having the least men on the board, he made the last turn count. I thought I was being clever but missed an easy chance to overhaul him. 

19th October 05.....................................................8 Players

There were 8 of us again tonight which we split into 2 tables of 4. Both Julian and I had come back from Essen with new games to play and Steve had been off buying new games at Waylands so we are going to be in for a few weeks of learning rules.

I will be away next week. I am busting to play Caylus but it will have to wait.

Settlers of the Stone Age – 90 minutes  bgg

Julian picked up the German version of this game for a measly ten Euros. I have had Keith’s copy of this game sat on my shelf for a couple of years and have never brought it to the club. It is a game that for me falls into the same category as Entdecker, Candamir and Elasund all beautifully produced Klaus games that are fun to play a couple of times. None of these games engage my competitive spirit. I don’t care how well I do though the experience of playing is pleasant enough.

Richard took the lead from the off with Julian managing to keep pace for about the first 30 minutes of play. Beyond this polarization took hold and Matt and I went backwards as quickly as Richard went forwards.

Carcassonne – 40 minutes

We used the river expansion to open up the game a little before the meeple placement hotted up. Richard Matt and Julian were all sharing a prosperous field which if scored jointly, would have seen me finishing last and Matt would have finished well ahead. Late in the game Richard inadvertently brought Julian’s 3rd farmer into play allowing Julian to take the points for the big farm and win the game. In fairness I think Julian would have made the connection without Richard's help.

Time Pirates – 90 minutes  bgg

This is the first time any of us have played this Alan Moon game. 

Mike’s Comments:

Time Pirates - I enjoyed it, a game with some good points but ..........a few bad points.

 

Good points - Easy to learn, lots of interesting decisions, and a clever 'do I, don't I' mechanism where you balance the need to gain access to resources against the fact that that may end the game sooner.

 

Bad points - too long for the amount of skill and/or fun involved (90 minutes, probably down to 75 minutes with experience), the old 'much will have more' problem (as per St. Petersburg, if you get off to a flyer at the start it's extremely difficult to catch up, as my opponents on Wednesday learned), and a really feeble twist at the end, where the special bonus points on offer are too small to make any real impact and tend to favour the players who are already doing well up to that point anyway (our game illustrated that perfectly, I was way ahead on contracts anyway then all the bonuses basically depend on having loads of contracts so I scored even more!).  Alan Moon got the latter problem nailed so wonderfully in San Marco, where the Doge can score you lots during the main game even if you only control one region, but the players with better all-round distribution can catch up on the final district-by-district score, it's a shame he couldn't pull it off here.

 

Another bit of weird design is that the VP's for harder to fulfil bigger contracts increase slightly (4 artefacts gain you 4 VP,  but 5 artefacts gain you 6 VP) so you initially think it's a big-set collection game, but I quickly realised that the key to success is the ability to zoom around the board to avoid the cops and get to areas with the artefacts you want, and the most efficient way of doing that is lots of little contracts - the opposite strategy!  A game with an identity crisis?

Vampire – 20 + 20 minutes  bgg

Yet another Knizia card game, he must make up a new one of these every other week.

26th October 05.....................................................11 Players

We got a healthy turnout of 11 tonight. I forgot my camera yet again so we have no pictures. I think these reports are a bit boring without pictures and the web site is getting dull without the colour pictures bring so I will make an effort to bring the camera along next week.

Caylus – 150 minutes

There is a lot of buzz about this game on bgg at the moment. It was the most talked about strategy game from this years Essen. It is great to play a game that has only been around for 2 weeks. The only people in the world who have played it more than a couple of times are the play testers. Here is a nice review by one of the testers. 

With explanation time added in we could not manage to finish a full game. It was decided to call the result 2 building spaces in from the final scoring space. This worked ok but left the result, had we carried on, slightly in doubt. I know Matt would still have won but I could not say for the rest of us. James was marching up fast and I felt like I was on the wane.

This is a big game full of possibilities. I can only comfortably make space for a new release like this once or twice a year because of the table time that will be needed to explore its possibilities. I can say already that for me it is up there with Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence and Amun Re.

We were all finding our feet so I can’t pick off much in the way of comment on individual strategies. Matt was early into the castle which gave him a neat foothold on the favours table. James seemed to do the best job of accumulating money which by the end of the game he was managing to convert neatly into prestige. Richard was up with Matt for half the game, with some sensible balanced play, I am not sure why his score tailed off. I used the bottom buildings row of the favour chart which I think I could have made really work had I managed to win more favours. 

James’ comment:

I enjoyed Caylus a lot, it was a nice night.  Lots of routes to winning, and way too much to think about! Interestingly the game was all won in the last 3 turns, in building the blue city buildings, so you're still in it to the end, which is encouraging. I suspect with a longer game, it'll be hard for someone to run away with it too, which is also good!

 Advanced Civilisation - 120 minutes  bgg

Played to the end of the Bronze Age (I think?). This was a trial run in preparation for the marathon session due this weekend.

Dave’s comments:

Everyone just made it into the Late Bronze age at the end and at that time I think we had only had 3 minor calamities (I got 2 of them), so we were at the point where things were going to get interesting had we continued, Civil War and Famine must certainly have been in the near future. Still the try out served its main purpose which was to get people into the swing. I gather that Julian had never played before so I’m sure he will have got something out of it.

Cape Horn – 40 minutes  bgg

The kids are off school for half term and Dave again kindly volunteered to play with them. Daniel had a fun evening.

Save Doctor Lucky – 30 minutes  bgg

Scarab Lords – 10 minutes  bgg

Dave is a bit unconvinced by this game. It has the look of the sort of game Daniel would like with attractive cards containing pictures of tough warriors and small cryptic symbols.

Mike has won the trophy for October with notable victories in San Marco and El Grande, two of his favourite games.

Average attendance 7.5

Revised Trophy Points system introduced beginning of June 05

Trophy points are calculated separately for each game, the winners points are calculated by multiplying the game length in minutes by the number of participants. The second placed player gets half the winners points, the 3rd placed player gets half the second players points etc. The last placed player gets zero points. All players’ points go back to zero at the end of each month. There are 3 special situations that are dealt with below: 

  1. Points awarded for draws are calculated by averaging the points that would normally be scored for the drawn position and the skipped positions. Eg in a 6 player 120 minute game the results are Player A gets 15 victory points, B-15, C-15, D-10, E-10 and F 5, so there is a 3 way draw for 1st place, a 2 way draw for 4th place and F comes 6th.  Players A,B and C will get (720+360+180)/3, players D and E will get (90+45)/2 and player F will get 0 trophy points.
  2. In games that involve team play, a team is a player, for the purposes of calculating trophy points. Eg in a 100 minute game of Scotland Yard there is one player playing Mr X and 3 players playing the detectives, the winner (either the player playing Mr X or the players playing the detectives) gets 200 trophy points and the loser(s) get 100 trophy points (each).
  3. In some cases the results of a game might be unclear. Eg Games that are not completed or the results are hard to call because of a rule misinterpretation discovered half way through play. In these cases a common sense result will be called. In the cases where the decision is controversial we can reach a solution by the consent of the effected players and if an arbitrator is required the ultimate decision goes to the player who is least effected by the controversy.