Games Night 16th June 2016

Greetings to LH, who found us through the tableTop Gaming website.
Origin, Race for the Galaxy and Seasons all had the top vote this week and all were new to us. The missing Origin cards turned up in the post yesterday morning.
SC was called upon to choose for us. She chose:

PH turned up while we were staring blankly at the unfathomable rules. Most of the first half of the game was spent as such. We had so many light bulb moments that some of the earlier light bulb moments went out and needed to be rediscovered.
Finally, we found a pretty playable game despite the rule’s best efforts to confound us. Those of us familiar with the workings of Puerto Rico benefited a little.
In the end, the military might that was MC and the gene farmer AL both had the 12 cards in their tableaux.

Final scores
AL 52 – Winner!
LH 20
MC 27
PH 33

Next, out came

With MC getting to grips with the rules the night before, we were much quicker getting started with this one.
As AL pointed out, it was the micro-management of the Power Cards that made this game longer than it needed to have been.
At about the halfway mark MC played Kairn the Destroyer and spammed it mercilessly for the rest of the game. AL complained about it, a lot – at least until he also got to play a Kairn the Destroyer.
LH suffered from a continual bout of not having enough Summoning.

Once the third, and final year came to a close, the final scores ended up being really close:
AL 191
LH 188
MC 200
PH 204 – Winner!

I do hope LH that your double crushing defeat hasn’t put you off coming back again.

Games Night 9th June 2016

This week AS made Board Games in Bedford an international thing by visiting us from France. Okay, he happened to be in the area at the time, he didn’t specifically fly on over here just for this event. Thank you for joining us. And a welcome back SF.

With PH still en route, four of us kicked of with a game of Fluxx.
As more and more new rules came out, this game got convoluted quickly. PH arrived and perused the latest tabletop Gaming magazine  from the pile kept handy for just such occasions. MC managed to kill off some of the more annoying rules before AL stole the Keeper he wanted from AS and won the game.
With all present, we moved onto the most voted for game, with 3 votes:

After explaining the Tunnel game mechanics to AL and AS as well as all the rules to SF, we all got cracking with placing our trains. MC optimistically kept all his tickets.
After a few rounds SF finally realised that he could use the cards he was accumulating in cute little piles in front of his to place his trains.
At about the 4th tunnel AL finally understood the mechanic (to be fair, the 1st 3 tunnels were built without any penalties, so made little impact).
AS played the game-ending move leaving MC with one 4-length tunnel and only 3 matching cards away from completing his big ticket!

PH utilised an app he happened to have handy for the scoring, which turned out thusly:

AL (Yellow) 59 train points, 10 longest route points, 30 completed ticket points: Total score: 99
AS (Blue) 78 train points, 26 completed ticket points, -8 incomplete ticket points: Total score: 96
MC (Black) 67 train points, 16 completed ticket points, -26 incomplete ticket points: Total score: 57
PH (Green) 63 train points, 36 completed ticket points: Total score: 99 and the winner due to the tie break condition as he had completed the most tickets
SF (Red) 57 train points, 20 completed ticket points: Total score: 77

With a bit of time left, we became gibbering, raving Cultists with

Always a risky game to be used as a filler, this one went on for over 90 minutes.
AL kicked off and very quickly built up a considerable armament as did PH. MC had a Go Up A Level as a starting card so did just that, SF took the slow and steady approach and AS found himself not doing very much at all.
MC then died horribly at the hands of some unwholesome awful thing.
Once resurrected, he promptly died again thanks to thanks to AL embiggening the unnameable terror.

AS also managed to kill himself in a bid to get rid of his rubbish cards and start over, a ploy that worked well to get him off the starting block.
SF’s tried for the hat-trick by sending over a wandering Cthulhoo, with PH’s assistance this clash grew to epic proportions, which all came to nought as MC and PH managed to successfully run away.
PH came dangerously close to winning, but was thwarted by MC.
MC did kick the bucket for the third time before AL managed to attain the glorious heights of level 10.
Final scores (as near as I can remember them):
AL – 10
AS – 7 (1 death)
MC – 7 (3 deaths)
PH – 8
SF – 4

Games Night 26th May

A warm welcome to SF this week (no PH, AL didn’t being Science Fiction to games night – though that would have been pretty neat, SF’s Superman shoes sufficed quite nicely).
With SF being a little new to the whole gaming thing, we decided to go old school and bedazzle him with Settlers of Catan…with the Seafarers expansion to make it more interesting for those more familiar with the base game.
From the get go, PH (Green) demonstrated his immense deducing capablilites by taking five minutes to place his first Settlement. This did indeed go on to be a long game.

SF (Red) streaked into the lead, first with a new Settlement then with the longest road. PH also dominated the small portion of the board he was able to occupy. AL (White) and MC (Blue) barely did very much of anything. MC did make the best Catan-Bot though, while PH got cards almost every single roll.
AL then started to expand, stealing the longest road off SF. PH claimed the largest army and the first City.
MC was the first to land on another island and claim a gold mine (which produced all of 1 time). SF was next to reach an island with AL claiming 2. PH, being all blocked in didn’t claim any.
AL then revealed he had the winning VP as a card, during SF’s turn, making us all play one fruitless turn so he could play it, then realised he had enough points to have won during his last turn anyway.
Final Scores:
AL – 15
MC – 7
PH – 13
SF – 9