Games Night 15th March 2021

5 of us this week where our names all begin with either M or P. A warm welcome to Mark.
Lots of games played this evening all played virtually via Board Game Arena
We started off with Downforce (Restoration Games)

Malcolm bought the Orange car
Mark bought the Blue car
Matt bough the Red and Yellow cars
Paul bought the Black car
Phil bought the Green car
The yellow car dominated the race and crossed all the checkpoints first.
2nd: Blue
3rd: Red
4th: Green
5th: Black
6th: Orange

Final scores:

Well done Matt!
I’m still not a fan of this one. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not into the theme (which is a thin veneer at best) or it’s a roll and move game but with cards.

Next we played 7 Wonders Repos Production

We chose for a random board which also was randomly determined which side we got. The game got underway nicely.

In the end, the end happened.
Here’s the scores:

	Malcolm	Mark	Matt	Paul	Phil
Conflict	4	-2	16	0	6
Coin/3	5	7	5	6	1
Wonder	10	20	10	3	10
Civilian	0	5	16	20	25
Science	18	10	0	0	1
Commerce	2	4	0	10	0
Guild	8	0	16	0	8
Total	47	44	63	39	51

Well done Matt… again!

With this being a quick game, we gave it another go:

Final scores:

	Malcolm	Mark	Matt	Paul	Phil
Conflict	18	-4	-6	18	2
Coin/3	1	4	5	11	2
Wonder	20	3	10	10	0
Civilian	3	4	33	5	17
Science	1	28	0	0	34
Commerce	0	0	3	13	0
Guild	12	13	10	0	0
Total	55	48	55	57	55

A nice recovery from last game by Paul, and a 3-way tie for second place. Matt broke the tie by having the most coins, followed by Phil pushing me into 4th place!
I do like this one, it’s got next to no down time and it provides many avenues to success – or failure.

Next up we played Draftosaurus

It’s a game we played and enjoyed last week, so why not give it another shot with more players?

Final scores:
Malcolm: 38
Mark: 27
Matt: 34
Paul: 42
Phil: 37
Another win for Paul!
We played another game and were surprised when Phil selected the alternate boards!

Final scores:
Malcolm: 35
Mark: 41
Matt: 35
Paul: 33
Phil: 41
Ties for the top two scores were settled by who had the most T-Rexs. So Phil took the lead from Mark and I achieved 3rd place over Matt.
Still a fun little game I’m going to have to pick up IRL once I get a job and have some of that money stuff to spare.

At this point Mark bowed out, so the 4 of us moved on to No Thanks! (Amigo)

Phil explained the rules to us and we gave it our best shot.

The scores:
Malcolm: -73
Matt: -24
Paul: -56
Phil: -26
Another win for Matt!

We tried again.

The scores:
Malcolm: -44
Matt: -38
Paul: -49
Phil: -13
Phil finally wins a game he’s introduced!
I’m usually a bit wary of basic number card games, but this one did feel different enough to be worth it.

All in all a great evening. Not often we have the lofty number of 5 players, so that was nice as well.

Games Night 8th March 2021

3 of us for this week’s virtual meet up via Board Game Arena.
The players:
Malcolm
Paul
Phil

I wanted to play Race for the Galaxy (Rio Grande Games)

so we did.
I explained the rules as I remembered them (it being over 1,400 days since I last played it) and we gave it two goes.

The first game ended when Paul played his 12th card.
The scores:
Malcolm: 23
Paul: 34
Phil: 32
So Paul ‘I don’t know what I’m doing’ won that one.

The second game ended when the VP tokens ran out, something none of us were ready for.

The scores:
Malcolm: 36
Paul: 38
Phil: 37
A much closer game where Paul ‘I still don’t know what I’m doing’ won. At least I was in the top three both times and Phil was a consistent close second.

I really enjoyed playing this one again and am beginning to feel I’m getting the hang of the symbology. I do find this a very satisfying game to play. Hoping to play it again soon.

With a little time left over we tried Draftosaurus (Ankama)

A new game to everyone which we picked up pretty quickly.
2 games again.
The end of Game 1 looked like this:

Scores:
Malcolm: 34
Paul: 31
Phil: 30
Victory at least!

The end of Game 2 looked like this:

Scores:
Malcolm: 26
Paul: 40
Phil: 31
Another win by Paul!

I think we all enjoyed this one even though the random die rolls can be a bit annoying at times. Looking forward to playing a IRL version of this game as I’m always a sucker for dinomeeples and this looks to be a very tactile game.

Player of the evening goes to Phil who managed to get second place in everything.

Games Night 1st March 2021

Four of us this week – a warm welcome to Matt.
Following the confusion of the previous week’s attempt at Terra Mystica, we thought we’d try that again.

Since the last time I took the liberty to peruse the rules and find out how to play the game.

Final scores:
Malcolm: 65
Matt: 99
Paul: 77
Phil: 73

So well done Matt! And well done me for being the only one to improve over last week’s score (albeit only by 2 points) – all that reading paid off…