The Mine Shaft Gap

The Mine Shaft Gap has moved house!

2006-07-04T14:58:00.000+10:00

It's true.
After more than 8 months (has it been that long?), we wanted a new home that was our very own, owner-occupied rather than rented (albeit for free) from Blogger. A place where we could knock down walls and add new rooms, paint it in gaudy colours, and put nails in the walls.
The new location is http://themineshaftgap.com/blog - if you have bookmarks you should update them now.
The new house was built with WordPress, a free and complete construction kit with an enormous user community, so a wealth of extra features and support is available.

Although we are living in our new house already, some of the renovations are not yet finished. For those visitors that I know personally, I'll soon send you all your own front door key, so you can come in and leave your own stuff here too if you want to. Of course, you will still need your key to get in - if I left the house unlocked I'd get the unscrupulous turning up and leaving rubbish lying around (comment spam).
Also, although I own the address, the "land" underneath my house is provided free of charge by the real estate vendor who sold me the address. In return for the free hosting I have to cop thumping ugly billboards over the front gate. Once I'm more settled in I'll cough up the cash for a more permanent block of land, either with this vendor or another, and the ugly advertising will come down.

Also, I'll keep this old place for storage as long as Blogger lets me. I'm not moving any of the pictures earlier than today's date - hopefully they will all still be visible on the walls of the new place, thanks to linked wall display panels.

So please come and visit. If I know you well don't bother registering at the new place yet, because when I send you your new key it will give you more freedom than the average visitor that just turns up.
See you soon.

Game Session, Jun 25, 2006

2006-06-27T14:47:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Brad, Brian, Alex, Pat, Paul.
Played: Villa Paletti, Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls (SPANC), Das Zepter von Zavandor.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics this week.

Villa Paletti: Something to keep almost-4-year-old Sean diverted with Brad playing while we waited for the others.
It's always fun watching the innocence and fearlessness of a child as they reach for the rods that are among those most likely to bring down the whole tower; even more so when they succeed and make the challenge just that little lit harder for the next player!
In this particular game we managed to reach the entire 6 levels before the inevitable crash.

Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls (SPANC): Before we started this there was some discussion on having a go at Pat's new epic economic expansion game, Indonesia.
But we decided to leave this for another night given Pat's assessment that with 5p it would be after midnight by the time we finished, so we got underway instead with SPANC.
If ever there was game idea designed around a title then is it. The concept is simple enough: Your characters have attributes in 4 categories (SP, A, N, and C) that can be enhanced (or detracted from) by acquiring various "toys", likes pieces of amour, weapons, extra actions and the like. In what appears to be a counter-sexism feature, the most valuable ''toys" are pool boys who, apart from serving cocktails and conducting various pool-cleaning services, provide a +1 benefit on all attributes.
Players step up their best Catgirl for a given "caper" in an effort to win loot and more toys, and then simply roll 2d6 against a given attribute to determine success. The winner is the player with the most loot after so many rounds.
Despite some care in the initial selection of attributes, this seemed to come down to dice rolls, with very little game interest other than the pictures on the cards. Before we had finished Pat remarked that we could have been through the rules for Indonesia by now, much to my chagrin. ''I'm having fun in my own special way," he said, "... and you can quote me on that."
Total time: ~50 mins.

Results: Pat 6. Alex: 4. Brad, Brian, Paul: 2.

Das Zepter von Zavandor: Goa could only accomodate 4p, so we went instead for this economic expansion and management game, themed around magic items. There is a perception here of many paths to victory, but I'm not yet convinced that is not just an illusion! Accumulate victory points through magic items, gemstones, and completing the various skill tracks, but the big points come at the end when the more powerful cards and the special sentinels come out.
Each player is off to a head-start in one of the special skills areas, and general wisdom seems to be to upgrade this as an early priority and start using its advantages as soon as possible. As the game progresses and each player's purchasing choices get more interesting, the game becomes susceptible to analysis paralysis as you try to optimise your decisions and account for every last unit of magic dust (currency). With the occasional discount thrown in, this aspect strangely enough reminds me of Age of Renaissance, although these games obviously have nothing more in common. As Brad and Alex remarked, this aspect of game financial management would be helped by having a spreadsheet or other computerised tool!
However, despite the cash optimisation challenge faced each turn, it didn't feel to me that the game was getting bogged down at all. But it would certainly go faster with fewer and more experienced players, and I was surprised when Brad announced just as we were finishing up that it was already after midnight. From about the halfway point Alex was looking like the most likely winner, and by the end the only surprise in the placings and scores was the enormous margin that Al had achieved!
Total time: A whopping 217 minutes.
We should have done Indonesia after all...

Results: Al: 75. Pat: 57. Paul: 50. Brian: 37. Brad: 29.

Norwegian Mine Shaft Gap

2006-06-21T22:36:00.000+10:00

Mark recently discovered this story (click the title above) about those hoopy Norwegians using a (figurative) mine shaft to store a collection of seeds to be saved in case of a hypothetical doomsday scenario.
My question is, what seeds are they storing? "...It will ultimately house replicates of every known crop variety...", says an anonymous statement.
Ultimately.
Not immediately.
So you can bet they'll start with skanky Scandinavian plants.
Well, this is a disaster waiting to happen. We all emerge from our mine shafts after 100 years of nuclear winter to prepare the soil for... what? Not that I'm a botanist, but I couldn't think of one plant they grow in Norway. So I Googled, and the best I could come up with was pine trees, heather, and something called "fagerkokke".
Now, I'm sure these are all very nice plants, and probably quite acceptable for the Norsemen to chow down on, but they're nothing I would want to eat. After living in a mine shaft on nothing but tinned baked beans for years, my digestive system just wouldn't be ready for crunchy pine cones, and whatever the fager fagerkokke is.
Where are the mangoes? The bananas? The pumpkins...?

I detect a Norwegian conspiracy. We need to act quickly, to ensure that there is something for the rest of us to eat on the other side of doomsday.
Mr President, we must not allow... a fruit and vegetable gap.

Game Session, Jun 18, 2006

2006-06-20T14:24:00.000+10:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Andrew, Brad, Brian, Alex, Paul, Richard.
Played: Frisch Fisch, China, Hell Rail, Tikal, Euphrat & Tigris, San Juan.

Exactly 6p led to 2 games of 3 players for the whole night.

Erratum: A few weeks ago I said that Richard had identified the circus music (referred to whenever we play Zirkus Flohcati) as Entrance of the Gladiators. In fact this was Andrew, and I have since updated the relevant blog entry. Apologies for the previously incorrect attribution.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics this week, which will appear here soon...

Frisch Fisch (Fresh Fish): That factory-to-shop road optimisation game (an inadequate description for a great little game). One hour long, to the minute. Objective is to get as low a score as possible, so Al's result was a convincing win.

Results: Al: -6. Brian: 6. Richard: 21.

China: Andrew picked this up at last weekend's Australian Games Expo. This game is a re-do of Web of Power, on a map of China rather than Europe. There are some other minor differences as well, to do with the playing of emissaries, and a two-sided board, to accomodate 3-4 players on one side, and 4- 5 players on the other.
This played quite nicely in 3 quarters of an hour for 3 of us, and as Andrew pointed out, a bit of a "chess game", particularly in the second half. I found I was so focussed on my own cards and plays that I didn't notice the card deck, and therefore the game, had run out a turn or two sooner than I expected! Boosts from my emissary plays gave me a respectable showing in the scores.
20 mins rules; 26 mins game play.

Results: Brad: 43. Paul: 42. Andrew: 37.

Hell Rail: Card-based train game, with a theme of devils, demons, and sinners.
The players seemed not entirely satisfied with this one. 58 mins.

Results: Richard: 44. Alex: 38. Brian: 25.

Tikal: Like a hearty, steak-and-potatoes dinner, this one almost always satisfies the need for gaming goodness. It seemed that with 3 players the analysis-paralysis factor was more significant than one might expect with 4p for Tikal, as each player has a fraction more control, and is a fraction less likely to have building tactical plays messed up by other players.
Of course, that might just be an illusion and I might just be talking crap...
Despite a rather dumb turn shortly after the first scoring round, wherein I thought I was scoring again, I generally managed to hold my own on the points track until the last scoring round. Both Andrew and Brad seemed to have a healthy stock of explorers still on hand, while mine were already all on the board, many in sub-optimal, awkward locations. This felt like it reduced my agility to reach more valuable spaces, although this too might have been an illusion! The game end was rather anticlimatic, much like this report.
20 mins rules; 91 mins game time.

Results: Andrew: 115. Paul: 112. Brad: 105.

Euphrat & Tigris: Make sure your weakest collection is a strong one!
Approx 70mins.

Results: Richard: 14. Alex: 10. Brian: 7.

San Juan: This is a fantastic card game, with enough richness in the cards to keep it interesting for many, many plays.
This is one game I should buy my own copy of! Of course, enjoyment helped by having a decisive win...
56 mins incl rules explan.
Note the pic: I asked Brad to get a snapshot of Richard's coffee mug (used by Alex on this particular night). I just spotted something of immediate appeal in this, and I might use it as an associated image for the M. S. G.

Results: Player: Building face values, Chapel bonus, Special building bonuses, total.
Paul: 20, 0, 12, 32.
Andrew: 15, 6, 0, 21.
Brad: 15, 0, 4, 19.

Game Session, Jun 11, 2006

2006-06-14T21:31:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Craig, Liming, Alex, Mark, Paul.
Played: Klunker, Puerto Rico, Attila, Mama Mia.

Some of the usual suspects out this week because of the innaugural Australian Games Expo in Albury (see here for source link).
Here also is an account of that event by Pat.
The old Nokia again for the pics this week, as Brad was out of action (although not in Albury).

Klunker: A short 'filler' before the others arrived, which ended up blowing out to 45mins! Craig must play this in his sleep, as well as sprinkle magic luck dust over the card deck (how else could he keep getting dealt sets of 4?).
I'd had enough of this before we were even halfway through! The misery eventually came to an end a good 20 minutes or more after Mark and Alex arrived.

Results: Craig: 34. Liming: 10. Paul: 10 (but wins the tie-break for 2nd by having the most cards).

Puerto Rico: A good baptism for Mark, although Liming had only played the PC version before. I'd be keen to get his view of the main differences between that and playing against real players...
Mark seemed to struggle getting commodities early on, although he did make a few good building purchases. Liming went a strong indigo production strategy and was the most successful "shipper", but perhaps at the expense of getting some of the better buildings early on. Craig also shipped well, but helped with some stronger building purchases.
I too tried to stick with a consistent shipping strategy, getting 'free' slaves through my hacienda. However, I had a good 10 (or more) potential points stomped off my final score when I didn't get to ship in the very last turn, after investing heavily in a wharf! I should have seen it coming I suppose.
Al almost completely ducked shipping altogether, and focussed instead on purple buildings (with $3 quarry discounts) and bonuses, with devastating effect in the final score reckoning!
110 mins incl rules explan.

Results: Player: shipping VPs, buildings, bonuses, total.
Alex: 8, 23, 17, 48.
Craig: 16, 17, 0, 33.
Liming: 20, 11, 0, 31.
Paul: 18, 12, 0, 30.
Mark: 8, 22, 0, 30.

Attila: This is a simple but quite intriguing game of majorities, with winning plays all in the timing. I've heard the criticism of the theming being weak in this (eg; Pat's view that this could be shoe-selling franchises), and perhaps this is fair enough - there is nothing special in the geographic regions which are very carefully drawn on the map board with unnecessary contrivance and detail in the borders. But the theme still works well for me - I'm quite happy with the gradual expansion of competing tribes throughout Europe from the central-north.
Lesson learned: Play your 'move two score spaces' marker early rather later!
Well done to Mark, who slipped right past Craig and me in the last scoring round for a decisive win.
85 mins incl 15 mins rules explan. 30mins, 17, 18, 20 for rounds 1-4 respectively.

Results: Player: Rnd 1 score, rnd2 (progressive), rnd 3, rnd4 (=final).
Mark: 7, 18, 48, 86.
Paul: 9, 28, 47, 71.
Craig: 11, 31, 55, 68.
Liming: 6, 18, 31, 48.
Alex: 8, 21, 29, 47.

Mama Mia: Without trying too hard we managed to talk Alex into staying on for another game, despite his need to get up early for a DBM tournament! This game ended up being 35 minutes (instead of the promised 20), including some entertainment from Mark who recited the "badger song", triggered by appearance of the mushroom cards. None of us knew what he was referring to, so he provided a link: http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/ (and also a timely soccer-inspired version: http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/footy/).

Results: Craig: 5. Mark: 4(6). Liming: 4(1). Al: 3. Paul: 2.

Game Session, Jun 4, 2006

2006-06-05T23:35:00.000+10:00

Venue: Brian's place.
Present: Brad, Alex, Andrew, Richard, Brian, Paul.
Played: Zirkus Flohcati, Top Race, Barbarossa und die Rätselmeister.

Thanks to Brad for the pics!

Zirkus Flohcati: This is the funny set-making card-game with the risk element in card flipping - turn over the same colour as a card already available and you've blown your turn. A 19-minute filler played until Alex arrived.
Brian snuck through with his declaration of the gala show. Until then, Richard was looking like the more successful player, with his quick melding of low-card sets.
Presentation of the gala show is supposed to accompanied by the circus music: da-da-daddle-addle-ad-da- daa- daa...

There was some discussion of the name of this piece afterwards, with Andrew insisting it was something called "Enter the Gladiators" (or similar). Well, according to at least two sources, he's right: See TorgoX, who describes the piece written by Czech, Julius Fučík, at the end of the 19th century - he also includes a midi file (which I couldn't get to work in Firefox, but did work in Internet Explorer).
A supporting source is good ole' Wikipedia: See the Julius Fučík link, which includes another (shorter) midi file (which does work in Firefox!), and Julius' passport photo, which suggests he might have had a job at one time as a circus ringmaster, hence the association of this piece of music with circuses and clowns.
The Wikipedia source indicates the piece has also been known as "Thunder and Blazes".

Results: Brian: 54. Richard: 48. Andrew: 44. Paul: 41. Brad: 38.

Top Race: Card-playing car racing, almost as funny as Ave Caesar. All the car "strength" cards are dealt at the start of the game, and then you bid for cars, generally favouring those you will have most control over based on your hand of cards. Then you race, tactically playing cards to optimise your own car's position while upsetting those of your opponents. But, you can also earn (or lose) extra money after the race has started, by betting on those cars you think are most likely to win.
The game-changing cards are those that cause a break-down or a catch-up - the player's choice how to use them. There are exactly 3 of these, with each pairing the coloured race cars. If you have one of these then you have some power, even better if they match your car. If you don't then an important tactic is to try and keep your matched car not too far away if yours is ahead, to discourage the playing of the break-down (or to minimise its impact).
Timing: 40 mins for rules and first race, 31 mins for the 2nd race, 23 mins for 3rd race.

Results: Progressive after race 1, 2, 3 (final position):
Richard: 410, 640, 830 (1)
Paul: 450, 670, 690 (2)
Brian: 230, 270, 620 (3)
Brad: 240, 400, 410 (4)
Al: 150, 160, 280 (5)
Andrew: 190, 210, 200 (6)

Barbarossa und die Rätselmeister: A controversial choice, that by the end was seemingly reviled by Andrew, Al and Brad! Sure, the game mechanics could be better, but the plasticine modelling is an original (although now, not unique) core game element, and is still quite cool. For mine, this game is no worse than Humm Bug, which almost never gets played by the rules as written...
From memory, the first sculpture to be correctly guessed was Andrew's sceptre; in fact, I recognised his royal set almost as soon as it appeared, but just couldn't think of the word orb until it was revealed at the end! Brian's apparent give-way sign and flat sheet had Richard guessing pizza (rectangle-shaped) and pizza oven shovel, and me getting a flash of inspiration that in fact it was a broom and rug, until Brian burst our bubbles by revealing that his pair in fact had no commom theme (balalaika and paper). Nor did Brad's, who at one point had me guessing that he'd made an electric eel and tungsten filament from a light globe (slug and coiled spring).
Alex's religiously significant Virgin Mary-looking thing, and Santa sleigh were the first two to be guessed out (sphinx and ankh).
I doubt I would have ever guessed Richard's racing car theme with helmet and spoiler, since I seemed to get stuck on furniture and plumbing with his sculptures.
My choices seemed to create some controversy too, as I only made representative portions of an elephant (trunk only) and gazelle (head).
Perhaps this is best left for parties, given the creativity required and the controversy created! 102 minutes with 6p.

Results: Paul: 1st (more successful guesses), then Al, Brad, Richard, Andrew and Brian, in that order.

Game Session, May 28, 2006

2006-05-30T11:47:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Brad, Pat, Alex, Richard, Brian, Paul.
Played: Gother than Thou, That's Life, Goa, La Citta, Sherlock Holmes.

Thanks to Brad for the pics!

Gother than Thou: I first read "Gother" to sound like "gopher", as opposed to "being more goth-like", an indication of how successful I was likely to be in this short and silly romp. In the rules sheet it describes itself is as a parody on the goth subculture and, like Army of Darkness, each card should be read as it is played. Don't enter too much emotional investment in this one; your fate is largely in the hands other players as they play cards on you like ''Visit from your Mom", which gives you a cash boost, but also drastically lowers your Ankh score (ie., the index of true Goth-ness that you need to win).
Brad gave us a brief segment of This Corrosion, which to Pat sounded like a re-do of Good Vibrations. The latter stuck with us for the rest of the night.
20 minutes for five of us. Brad won.

That's Life: The tile jumping and claiming game, with clover leaves to convert negative tiles into positive ones.
I sat out of this one having dinner. All over in 20 minutes again.

Results: Brad: 19. Richard: 17. Brian: 9. Pat: 6. Alex: 1.

Goa: This is one that I've had my eye on for a long time, so I'm pleased I finally got to play. There seem to be a lot of "moving parts" in the game engine here, which take a bit of getting used to. I found this reminded me a lot of Puerto Rico, although not simply because of the theme of colonial commodity production and shipping. Actually the game mechanics and actions of these two games have nothing in common that I can see. Other than the theme similarity, I think it is the multiple paths to victory element, and the fact that on first playing, one just doesn't know the best course of action or the true value of things. Which means this wants more playing!
So like early playings of Puerto Rico, the feeling after ending the game is similar - there are many paths to victory and there is much to learn and improve upon in one's tactics. Let's do this one again soon!
122 minutes, incl. rules.

Results: Pat: 44. Paul: 34. Brad: 32.

La Citta: Richard, Brian and Alex played this while the other 3 of us played Goa, starting and finishing within 1 minute of us, perfect timing in readiness for the last game of the night.
Apparently Brian spent some considerable game time just on the wrong side of the starvation knife-edge, which obviously affected his final score. 121 minutes incl. rules.

Results: Alex: 32. Richard: 30. Brian: 21.
Alex celebrates his win:

Sherlock Holmes: All six of us came back together for this crazy card game of hunting down villains and depleting one's hand of cards. To compliment your hand, a round starts with "the game is afoot" - I wonder if the designers thought of this?
Alex's generous use of Thick Fog was most amusing, as was Pat's Scottish accent whenever Scotland Yard appeared. He didn't really need to be reminded that Scotland Yard wasn't actually in Scotland...
We ended up playing three rounds, with Richard winning deservedly. Although you are at the mercy of the random card draws and the unpredictable actions of other players, he did consistently make the right plays.
53 minutes with 6 of us.

Results (lower is better): Richard: 3. Pat: 12. Paul: 45. Brian: 76. Alex: 108. Brad: 131.

Game Session, May 21, 2006

2006-05-22T15:46:00.000+10:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Andrew, Brad, Alex, Richard, Ken, Paul.
Played: Acquire, A New Hope, Mississippi Queen, Res Publica.

Thanks to Brad for the pics!

Acquire: Andrew, Alex, Brad and I jumped into this while Ken and Richard played A New Hope. Brad had never played Acquire, so the first 10 minutes were spent on rules explan.
Andrew and Alex got off to good starts with some early payouts, and this continued. At about the halfway point, if not earlier, I turned to Brad and simply said, ''Brad, we're screwed."
75 minutes of (what some might describe as) fun, watching my share values go nowhere while Gordon Gekko got richer.

Results: Andrew: 61.3K . Alex: 37.9K. Paul: 19.2K. Brad: 17.8K.

A New Hope: A quick playing of Ken's creation. About 80 mins incl. rules explan.
The evil emperor Ken defeated Richard's rebels, despite a successful mil campaign by the latter.

Mississippi Queen: The six of us all in for this, with the Black Rose expansion. This add-on includes sandbars and floating logs, although someone started calling the latter 'fish', and by the end they had evolved into manatees - I think this was an Alexism.
This playing also involved a warping of the rules, and the laws of physics, at one point. This was kinda apt, because one curious feature of this game is that the path of the Mississippi River is actually undefined until a paddle steamer gets far enough down river to trigger a dice roll that determines which way the river turns next.
(Side note: Of course, this type of mechanic is not unique to MQ, and certainly not a fatal flaw! The Spiele des Jahres 1997 award must be an indication of that...)
Anyway, at one point the river flowed back onto itself, because the game leaders were so far out in front, and the game trailer (Brad) was so far behind. In fact, the game rules have a way of dealing with this - you're simply supposed to re-roll the direction die. However, it was decided that if Brad was still stuck so far back and the next direction roll produced a river segment overlying him, then the play would be made anyway, and Brad would be washed away in a maelstrom of quantum impossibility. Schrödinger's paddlesteamer was therefore no more.
(Side note: If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Schrödinger's Cat on Wikipedia. Or not. (But not both.))
It was also decided that to give Brad something else to do for the rest of the game, he could control the Black Rose as if it were his own. So he did this, much to his own amusement. Of course, he wasn't allowed to pick up passengers, and he was ineligible to win, so the only thing worth doing was to ram others and cause as much disruption and confusion as possible. And this was achieved quite effectively.
In the end, Andrew stormed home quite comfortably. A rather ironic moment was when Richard crashed out "inches" before the finishing line, with no coal left to slow down enough to make the last corner!
Timing: 15 mins rules explan, 75 mins playing time.

Results: Andrew: 1st. Alex: 2nd. Paul: 3rd. Ken: 4th. Richard, Brad: DNF.

Res Publica: A card game about melding and trading. The unique aspect of this is that on your turn you can offer, or ask for, one or more cards, mentioning 2 (or fewer) specifics only. This is a bit hard to describe here, but it works - one wouldn't expect a Knizia game not to work!
So it works, but was it fun? Well, speaking only for myself, I can't say so this time. Play seemed awfully slow, and I wasn't able to make a meld until halfway through the game, which set me back on the card accumulation front. Was this just bad luck, or was I making bad offers and requests? Probably both.
65 mins, incl rules.

Results: Richard: 30. Brad: 20. Ken: 18. Paul: 16. Alex: 13.

Game Session, May 14, 2006

2006-05-15T13:52:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Richard, Brad, Paul, Paula.
Played: Carcassonne, Geschenkt, Settlers of Catan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Nexus Ops, Ursuppe, Zendo.

Thanks to Brad for the high quality pics!

Carcassonne: In possible preparation for the Australian Games Expo, I suggested Paula should play someone (other than me) in Carcassonne. Pat and Brad were the first to turn up, so a three-way battle ensued, while Alex and I played Füssball with Sean and Aidan. It was all over in about 20 mins.

Results: Pat: 109. Paula: 73. Brad: 65.

Geschenkt: A very quick card game that I didn't even see because I had to take care of some domestic duties.
Brad won.

Settlers of Catan: Brian was keen to play this because he never had before. Pat, Richard and I joined in while Brad and Alex played Caesar and Cleopatra. Let it be known that at no time in the game (apart from at the start until the first 7 was rolled) was the robber placed on a hex that didn't have an effect on me! In other words, although l was not always the target of the card theft, it was always placed on land where I had a settlement, and at no time could I roll a 7 myself!
But I'm not bitter.
50 mins playing time and another 20 for rules explan.

Results: Pat: 10. Richard: 9. Brian: 6. Paul: 4.

Caesar and Cleopatra: Alex and Brad in this 2p game. Time: 50 mins +/- 5.

Results: Alex :14. Brad: 13.

Nexus Ops: A new(ish) title from Avalon Hill (WotC) in which players form competing factions of strange aliens to fight for and hold lucrative territory. The currency- producing land is important to help you buy more monsters and spatially position your forces for attack. The centre spot on the geomorphic board also provides special advantage cards, and Pat managed to monopolise this position for almost the entire game. Victory is gained through points, which are accrued by completing a number of 'special mission' cards - at the end of each turn you draw a new card, and if on a subsequent turn you achieve the condition listed, you get to reveal the VPs, which are usually 1 or 2 points per card. Winning battles also gives you a victory point.
The playing pieces in this are great - all translucent plastic little creatures, with nice detail. Although I didn't examine them too closely I think the quality was quite high; I usually notice when pieces have visible 'flashing', ie., leakage of plastic from the edges of the production mold.
I really enjoyed this game, despite losing by a significant margin. No doubt my tactical game play was not as good as either of my opponents, but in general I found the draw of the VP mission cards highly luck-dependent; many were just not reasonably achievable. On a turn-for-turn basis I was as equally successful as my opponents in battles I initiated, so I did feel a bit ripped off by the cards! I wonder if a way to address this might be to allow each player to draw two cards at the end of their turn and choose the one they like the best, returning the other to the bottom of the deck?
Just coming back to tactics, one impressive play was made by Alex, in which after expanding his front line troops to meet mine on one side and Pat's on the other, he withdrew them to solidify his strength closer to home. A few turns later, despite some minor combat losses to both me and Pat, he punched out to take three pieces of territory from Pat and make a nasty dent in his forces in a single turn. It very nearly won him the game, and perhaps would have if it had gone another round; instead Pat was able to fight on a few more battles in a single turn and convert enough mission cards to get himself over the line decisely.
This can accommodate up to 4 players, but worked very well with 3. I'd be keen to give this another whirl sometime soon! Total time taken: 90 mins exactly, incl. rules explan.

Results: Pat: 12. Al: 9. Paul: 6 (I think).

Ursuppe: Feeding, defecating and spawning amoebae. Richard helped to victory by the Longevity gene. Time: 90 mins.

Results: Richard: 42. Brian: 34. Brad: 33.

Zendo: This is the game that I have a love-hate relationship with. On the one hand, I like the watching other players' thought patterns emerge as they try to determine the rule from the examples. I like the challenge of trying to pick out patterns with each turn, and the satisfaction of getting Mondo guesses right.
But compared to everyone else playing this, I really suck at it.
And for that, I hate this game.
Yet more house rules were added in an attempt to improve scoring and to keep the game moving. Some of these rules were added as we went along, but that's OK - we can do that! In addition to the rule that all guesses after the first round must be 'Mondo', was the new rule that if all guessing players (for a 6p game) choose the same coloured guessing stone in a Mondo, then the Master is 'insulted', says nothing about the pattern (which is destroyed and returned to the stock), and gains a point for the trouble! Another to be implemented for next playing, is that once a player has more than x green stones from successful Mondo guesses (x probably = 5 or 6), then they must spend a stone to guess the rule in their turn.
Back to me. The fact that I do so poorly at this is particularly frustrating because whenever we've played that other well-known inductive reasoning game, Eleusis (eg., most recently in February this year), I've done OK at it.
But I'll move on and won't beat myself up over this. I'll leave the self-abuse instead to Pat, who had a good rule, but screwed up with his own black stone exemplar, not realising until his round was over and I pointed out his mistake.
Sorry to mention this, Pat. It's OK to let it go now; after all, you still came equal 1st...
Playing time: ~ 105 minutes.

Results: Pat, Richard, Al: all on 22 points. Paul: 20. Brian: 16. Brad: 13 (but he had to bail a few rounds before we finished. Despite Brian's bad luck in the last Master turn, I don't think Brad would have beaten him had he seen it out until the end, unless he guessed Al's rule.)

Further Commentary on SoE

2006-05-14T16:13:00.000+10:00

Here are some further conversations on last week's Struggle of Empires game, initiated by Brad and continued by Richard and Brian.

Text by Brad in green.
Text by Richard in purple.
Text by Brian in blue.

===================

Brad:
====

OK, I've had a bit of time to give the Sunday night game of SoE some thought & here they are.

The idea of the game being a "bash the leader" is accurate enough, but this didn't happen on Sunday!!!!

Brian basically gave the game to Richard on a platter by being content to accept the silver medal in the Americas & all attempts to force Brian to attack Richard amounted to nothing even though in the alliance phase he was forced to be on the other side, the gentleman's agreement ensured no animosity & allowed Richard to pedal influence away from the Americas without having to watch his back.

I personally could not understand why Brian allowed this state of affairs to continue but I must say I admire his loyalty & willingness to be the 2nd banana instead of the big kahuna, Brian, you can be my wingman anytime :D

I compare this to the gentleman's agreement between myself & Alex which was entirely different in nature. I had the upperhand in Germany & Eastern Europe & so there was little to gain by punishing Alex into 2nd place, he was already there & because Al had a strong presence in India he was not in a position to challenge my dominance there.

However, the situation with Ken was different, he was contesting the Germanic States & had the upper hand in Scandinavia, so while he hoped for a gentleman's agreement when we were on opposite sides to allow him to pedal influence elsewhere, it profited me little to allow that state of affairs to continue, I was strong enough to challenge for dominance in Scandinavia & did so though my power play was delayed by Pat's military resurgence towards the end.

Basically, it's a game where it's OK to play 2nd fiddle to someone IF you have an interest elsewhere in the world, if not, you have to stick the knife in sooner or later, or you give the game to someone else uncontested.

The comments in style play were also interesting.

Ken's "I'm playing to improve my score" contrasted strongly with Al's "I can't let Richard win" & when Richard, with his back secure in the Americas contested the Ottomans, Al came in strong against him.

Interesting indeed..... :D

For myself, when I play any game for the first time & are learning the nuances, I like to keep an eye out for the main chance & if it profits me to hit someone, I will. If I am out-classed, I will try to play a spoiling role, confusing the issue as best I can (even if to my own detriment) & then, who knows what will happen??

Interesting game, I'd play it again in any 4+ player situation. (Knowing the effects of the tiles will help next time as well)

See you all Sunday

Cheers
Brad

Richard:
======

> The idea of the game being a "bash the leader" is accurate enough, but
> this didn't happen on Sunday!!!!
> the gentleman's agreement ensured
> no animosity & allowed Richard to pedal influence away from the Americas
> without having to watch his back.
> I personally could not understand why Brian allowed this state of
> affairs to continue but I must say I admire his loyalty

> I compare this to the gentleman's agreement between myself & Alex which
> was entirely different in nature. I had the upperhand in Germany &
> Eastern Europe & so there was little to gain by punishing Alex into 2nd
> place, he was already there & because Al had a strong presence in India
> he was not in a position to challenge my dominance there.

I think it is actually the same story. Brian was in 7th place (i.e. last) after the 2nd war. Hurting me in America would make no difference to his score (he was winning in North and Central) but focussing his efforts outwards would reap new points. Gaining points is always better than taking someone else's unless you are second and they are first.
The strategy seemed to pay off as Brian scored 21 points in the final round, which is the highest score by any player in any war, and was enough to catapult him to third.

I basically had to play a squashing game of trying to sit on everyone and make sure no easy points were grabbed by Brad. Fighting with Brian in the Americas would have probably put me 2nd, but would probably have put Brian lower than 3rd.

> Ken's "I'm playing to improve my score" contrasted strongly with Al's "I
> can't let Richard win" & when Richard, with his back secure in the
> Americas contested the Ottomans, Al came in strong against him.

I reckon Al said that 'cos he knew he wasn't a contender ;) Had he been a point behind Brad and me, things might have been a bit different.

There is a genuinely unreconcilable gulf between those who play only to win (place first) and those who play to place as highly as possible. There is no right or wrong here unless you're playing for money (i.e. divvying up a pool by points, you play for points; if the whole pot
goes to the winner, you take the outside chance).

My preferred method of choosing the next game (2nd place in previous game) is an attempt to reward play for position plus avoid the dire veto of games. Generally our group seems to accord some kudos to placing in addition to winning.

> If I am out-classed, I will try to play a
> spoiling role, confusing the issue as best I can (even if to my own
> detriment) & then, who knows what will happen??

Sounds fine - again there are few absolute right or wrong. Pursuing metagame vengeance is wrong, as are metagame favours and pre-game agreements. In-game vengeance ("I'm going to destroy you 'cos you destroyed me") may be warranted (in my book) depending on the game. I
never break pacts - I can't see the point of making one otherwise. You do however need to be careful about the wording of pacts with me ;-)

> Interesting game, I'd play it again in any 4+ player situation. (Knowing
> the effects of the tiles will help next time as well)

Agreed, though a break to savour my victory would be welcome :)

Richard

Brian:
====

Well, well, well.

In defense of my rather sullied honour, I must comment.

My reason for sticking to my agreement with Richard was fully in self interest (although it was rather enjoyable to play the ‘Gentleman’ card). Given my situation on the board, attacking Richard may have reduced his point total, but more likely would have significantly reduced my own at the end, as he had placed a few significant impediments to my attacking him successfully. This would have improved the fortunes of other players, and probably given them some entertainment too, but not moved myself forward. I decided my best strategy was to attempt to maintain my position and try to get extra points elsewhere, although I didn’t see opportunities for me (and a few were rather rudely taken away from me). I knew it was unlikely for me to position myself to win. I guessed the bronze medal was better than not placing at all so that Richard wouldn’t take first. From the other players point of view, this probably wasn’t such a great deal for them, but I wasn’t playing to have them win.

I also have learned from experience that whenever Pat, Al & Paul insist I should do something (like attack Richard risking my VP’s), it is probably more in their interest for the game rather than for my benefit. J

SoE is a very challenging game, as I don’t have much experience with these sorts of things. I quite liked the aspect of being able to negotiate deals.

Next time I’ll try to be more of a bastard. I just wish I knew how to speak French.

Cheers,

Brian

(Gentleman Player)

Brad:
====

Ah, no offence intended Brian, I was most impressed with the sticking of your compact!!! Indeed, were I in Richards place, I would not have trusted you enough to make the forays outside the Americas that he did, to take this to it's natural extrapolation, I would have just nibbled at your heels to keep the balance of military power (not influence where Brian had the upper hand) in an even keel & then hammered you had you shown any fight back with a civil war in the Americas. That is what I expected to happen but it didn't.

Nothing wrong with that at all, just different styles coming into play :) Part of the mix that makes the games interesting.

Oh yes, I should also mention, I was glad the game clicked over at a nice pace, no real messing about deliberating, so little downtime for a player when it's not their turn.

Sorry this discussion is not the blog site, I like to read the blog but commenting on it means I have to register & so on.

Cheers all

Brad

===================

Martin Wallace on Portugal

2006-05-11T09:16:00.000+10:00

In our game of Struggle of the Empires the other night, there was some ambiguity on the privileges provided by the Portugal alliance tile. We did end up playing the correct interpretation, but this is now resolved without ambiguity by the designer himself. I sent Martin Wallace an email and he replied within two days. The following is his reply, quoting my original question:

=============

Hi Paul, Thanks for the kind comments about my games.

Q: I have the Portugal alliance tile. In a given round of actions, I go first and use its advantage for naval support against a defending opponent in the East Indies. In the same round of actions, the next player attacks me - my Navy and my Fort (I have no army) - in India. Can I still take the +1 advantage of Portugal to help me defend in the naval combat?

Yes, you can use the tile to attack and defend in the same turn.

Here is another scenario:
Q: I have the Portugal alliance tile, army and naval units in both India and South America. In a given round of actions, I use my first to attack an opponent in India, and add the Portugal bonus to my attacking naval strength. In my second action of the same round, I attack another opponent in South America, also involving naval combat. Can I use Portugese naval support in this attack also?
Can I choose (instead) to use Portugese army support in the land combat in this action?

Yes, you can use it more than once. The only restriction is that you cannot use the army and navy modifier in the same combat.
Hope that is clear.

Best
Martin Wallace

=============

The same continuous alliance privelege rules would obviously apply to the Ottoman Empire alliance tile.

Game Session, May 7, 2006

2006-05-10T16:13:00.000+10:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Richard, Brad, Ken, Paul.
Played: Runes, Struggle of Empires, Die Heisse Schlacht.

Thanks to Brad for the high quality pics!

Runes: A word deduction game from the publisher Eon, who also produced Darkover; I gather they are now defunct. In this game, players nominate their own secret word of a given number of letters (5 in this case), and then take turns to guess individual letter elements from the others. Those letter elements are from a set of 4 different pieces, being a long stick (eg, the side of an D, N, H or A), a short stick (eg, the crossbar of an A or H, the tail on a Q), a small tight curve (half an S, the curves in B, P and R), and half of a large circle (used in C,
D, G, O and Q).
I arrived well after Pat, Brian and Richard had started playing, but joined in anyway. In fact, within one round these three were past the score threshold for winning, and the first to correctly guess anyone else's word would win. Brian managed to guess Richard's word "BRINE" in quick time, after Pat successfully added a number of letter elements first. Curiously, Brian's word was "BRAIN"!

Struggle of Empires: Although perhaps not setting a precedent for us to play the same big game two Sundays in a row, it was certainly unusual. The unique circumstances were that Ken was in Sydney and eager to play, a certain keenness of the part of some of last weeks' players (me and Richard in particular), and no strong motivation on the part of the others to play something else! So we had a full compliment of seven players, and given last week's fairly ordered proceedings with 6, every reason for expecting a good game with 7.
As the set-up was laid out, things began to look frighteningly similar to last week's game: Pat seeded into the German States, Brian in the Americas, and I drew three markers in the Med! Of course, there were cries of "he's got the game before we've started!", but I knew that actually the opposite was true - a concentrated set of tokens starting in a good 2nd-tier scoring region meant that I'd have little real choice but to defend them, at the expense of protecting the colonies (my other two tokens), or effective expansion elsewhere. The logic is simple: If I leave them undefended then they are the obvious lowest hanging and juiciest fruit. If I leave them defended weakly (after all, in the points reckoning I can afford to lose one and probably still be OK), then I am also inviting a whacking because even 4 points for 2nd in the Med is nice. But then having lost that battle I am sufficiently weakened to prompt one or more additional attacks (especially with 6 other players), and within a few rounds I'm gone. So no choice but to defend with a force that should look just strong enough to deter any attacks.
I ended up erring just on the side of being too weak in the Mediterranean, eventually losing two tokens by the end of the second war to Ken, which also cost me significant casualties along the way. Because organic growth from this position will be highly constrained, I really should have bid highly for the privelege of going first or second in the turn order. Again, with so many players I was put off by the rapid price laddering of the alliance aution, knowing that to be successful in round one I probably would have had to bid above 10, and therefore 4 or 5 unrest up on everyone else from the get-go. I ended up coming last in turn order, which I thought I could use to my advantage by having the final battle. Alas, this was a mistake, and if I were to find myself in similar circumstances again I'd be bidding high...
I also didn't position alliances very effectively in this game compared to others past. And there were a few 'gentlemen's agreements' that arose throughout that were a little unsettling. In particular, these were between Brad and Alex in Central Europe, and most effectively in the last turn between Brian and Richard in the Americas. Brad and Ken also appeared to have some agreement in the first war which Brad re-neged on at the end to take one of Ken's tokens!

Pat made the point - and I have to agree - that once you are beaten down by multiple opponents in the first half of the game, it is difficult if not impossible to recover any reasonable standing by the end. Craig discovered this last week, and to a lesser extent Pat and me this time. I'd be interested to hear any stories or strategies to the contrary that didn't involve frank negligence or stupidity on the part of the other players. The problem is that you've suffered multiple military losses and therefore had to spend population just to keep pace with those losses and protect the precious tokens you have left on the board. Each token loss takes away revenue generation (in addition to points!) at the end of each war, as well as ramping up your unrest. If you do manage to catch your opponents off-guard through clever play and (re-)capture valuable territory towards the end, you've almost certainly accrued so much unrest that your score will be headed south in the final reckoning anyhow!

Richard and I had a brief email discussion on chaos and loss of control in a game with many players. He commented that with 7 players, this game was still remarkably unchaotic, in that from one turn to another the on-board shift in pieces was minimal. In many games when there are a lot players, the shift in the pattern of pieces on board is so great between successive turns that it becomes impossible to plan ahead.
However, there are other phenomena that did arise in this game due to a large number of players, in particular, loss of control. R identifies two forms of this: 1) minimal influence, in which the actions available to you are not strong enough to impact significantly your position, and 2) straightjacketing, in which there really is only one or a few actions available to you in a given turn, regardless of their impact. As this game proceeded I suffered progressively from the minimal influence syndrome, with one exception: The decisive capture of one of Brian's tokens in South America. I gather Pat felt minimal influence also for much of the second half of the game. Towards the end, straightjacketing was also a factor for me, with the only reasonable way of gaining victory points being to attack soft targets, and India was about the only one left. Brian had earlier fought for and captured my sole second-place token there in an earlier turn, and this was the easiest and most lucrative target for me in the final round. Having said that, I gather that for many if not all of us the course of meaningful actions available within the last few rounds would have been significantly restricted. The most successful would have been those planning for their last big push a few rounds in advance, perhaps Brad and Richard.

Overall I found this second playing of SoE less satisfying than the first, but I put this down to too many players and the minimal influence effect. I'm still keen to play again of course, ideally with 3 others for a 4p game, but I'd also be happy with 2, 3 or 5p. I do think a 2p game is worth a try, although the alliance aspect would be totally removed of course.

Timing for this game was faster than the first, with 30 mins setup and rules explan for the noobs (Brad and Ken), then both war 1 & 2 coming in at 60mins (exactly) each. War 3 was about 67mins, for a total of 3hrs 37mins (217 mins).

Score data, in the format Player (Nation): 1st war progressive score (position), 2nd (position), final (position).:
Richard (United Provinces): 18 (1), 37 (1), 55 (1).
Brad (Britain): 17 (2), 34 (2), 53 (2).
Brian (Prussia): 12 (6), 24 (7), 45 (3).
Ken (Russia): 11 (7), 26 (6), 39 (=4).
Alex (Austria): 15 (=3), 29 (=3), 39 (=4).
Pat (France): 15 (=3), 28 (4), 38 (7).
Paul (Spain): 13 (5), 27 (5), 39 (=4).

Die Heisse Schlacht: After a tense and intense sitting of SoE, this was the perfect way to wind down the evening. Richard dug up an extra token from another game to make it accomodate 7p. The theme of greedy patrons racing around a buffet table pushing in front of one another is a bit thin, but actually quite fitting. One of the great moments in dice rolling came in the very last turn. With just the lobster (7 points) left available, and a string of opponents lined up to take it in their next turns, I was back on the starting space, requiring a roll of exactly 7 on 3 dice to take it. Following Ken's lead, I just picked up all 3 and rolled. But unlike Ken's bust result, mine scored the perfect 7, to much celebration. Pity it was not enough to win the game!

Results: Brad: 23. Richard: 12. Paul: 11. Alex: 8. Pat: 6. Ken: 5.

Did I lose that fort in a tie, or a natural 7?

2006-05-04T09:16:00.000+10:00

I've been re-reading the rules of Struggle of Empires, and just came across the following which I hadn't fully absorbed before, relating to combat:

"...In the case of a tie both sides lose a unit but the defender does not lose a control token. A fort is never lost in a tie, no matter what the circumstances are..."

Now, I remember in the last turn of our game the other night, Craig attacked my one token in the German States. The result was that my control token stayed in place, but I lost my defending fort. I can't remember now whether this was because of a tie or a natural 7. But if the former, the outcome of the game could have been quite different because of a misunderstanding (ie; forgetting) of this rule.
A tie should have meant that I retained my fort. In this case perhaps Alex would have been deterred from attacking here, and instead chosen a different and less lucrative target. Or even better, he might still have attacked but actually lost - my Army Training would have been in effect to give me +3 on the original roll, not counting allied support from Pat. As a result, I might not have had to spend my last turn attempting to gain back this token, and instead would have been able to win domination in the East Indies as planned...

Yes, this is all history now, and falls into the "if only I'd...", and "could've, should've, would've..." files.
Arguably I should be doing something more useful with my time than re-hashing past battles and game rule details. Clearly I've still got SoE on the mind. You know, it'd be good to play this again some time soon! :-)

Game Session, April 30, 2006

2006-05-01T10:16:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Richard, Craig, Paul.
Played: Struggle of Empires, Fussball.

On Nokia 6610i pics again in the absence of Brad!

Struggle of Empires: After a month of eager anticipation this one finally gets a run and, (speaking entirely for myself of course) it didn't disappoint. I'm eager to play it again as soon as there's a willing group, now that there is some feel for the relative values of the various action tiles, as well as the significance of alliances and various other aspects such as movement and combat. I suspect Craig doesn't feel the same way after scoring a net -2 points in the final war, sliding horribly from 1st place to fifth! I think I'd like to play this next with any number of players other than 3, with a slight preference for 4.
I think it was Pat who described, or paraphrased someone else describing this as a "souped-up El Grande", and it's true that this is a game about gaining majorities in various scoring regions. For me there is much more depth and flavour than EG, most notably in the alliance auction system, the tile benefits and economic system, and combat, which is quite rich but still very simple.
On reflection there are lots of scenarios that begin with the phrase, "if only I'd... ", and I spent much time afterwards working through these in my mind! It didn't quite make for a sleepless night, but could have.
After the game ended I remarked that, despite having 6 players, the play was not nearly as chaotic as one might have expected - chaos being an emergent feature of many shorter, Euro- style games when there are more than 4 players. I still believe this, although there were definite, deliciously palpable player interactions throughout. I can only provide a 1/6th perspective on the whole game but the most significant interactions shaping my strategy and final score were Brian progressively overwhelming me in the Caribbean, and the final round battles for my tiny stronghold in the German States...
Since I was early in turn order in the first war (perhaps 2nd after Pat?) and slaves appeared in the Americas, I decided early I might leave most of Europe to other players and focus instead on a colonial policy, so I planted a fleet in Africa and grabbed cheap slave markers in Sth America and the Caribbean. But Brian, and eventually Alex, decided they too liked the climate in that part of the world, and Brian in particular chased down my control tokens here with zeal. Even before the third war rolled around I could see that fighting hard to maintain a few measly VPs was wasted effort, and I began what I thought was a nicely-planned migration strategy away from America, through Africa (to claim some small, but easy end-game VPs) to the East Indies, while maintaining significant strength in 2nd-tier European placements (Ottoman and the Med). At the end of the 2nd war, however, I effectively wasted a turn with the Pirates tile in an attempt to finesse Richard's control token in Africa. I maintain that this would have worked if he wasn't able to call upon his reserves!
However, my new plan was appearing to work - as expected Brian did overwhelm my tokens in the Caribbean (which at least kept him away from the Ottoman until it couldn't affect my score). But I gained the majority in Africa quite cheaply and then established a nice foothold in the East Indies against and to equal with Alex. Hence I was ready to gain an equal majority with Richard there on the very last turn. But then along came Craig in a beserk (although quite game-logical) rage, taking away my fort in the German States, leaving a lone control token, unprotected. Of course, Alex swooped on this, leaving me with a simple decision: Try and take it back for the 5 VPs it was worth, or stick to the previous plan regardless, for an easy net of 2 VPs in the East Indies. Well, I chose the former, since it amounted to an equal match-up with alliances etc. all considered - ie., a 50-50 chance on dice rolls. Unfortunately these went against me, and that last turn ended up being the difference between 2nd and fourth place for me! "If only I'd..." recruited an army in the German States instead of buying the Navigation tile in an earlier turn!
Just recalling this makes me want to play the game again as soon as possible! I might have to lug this around with me to the various non-Thornleigh gaming venues on the off-chance that 3 others are in the same mood as me on any given Sunday night!!

Timing data: Rules explan: about 30 mins. Fortunately the only one who had done no rules prep was Alex, who always picks this stuff up quickly! Time taken to work through the first war was about 80-85 minutes, but this necessarily included coverage of most of the tile benefits. 2nd war took about 55 minutes, and the third took about 80 minutes, although the alliance auction phase in this case took a good 10-15 minutes!
Total time was therefore about 4 hours with 6p, which in my estimation could be shorter by up to an hour with all-round rules and tile familiarity. Proportionally, a 4p game with this group should take about 2.5 hours.

Score data, in the format Player: 1st war progressive score (position), 2nd (position), final (position).:
Pat: 21 (4), 43 (2), 63 (1).
Alex: 14 (=5), 33 (5), 57 (2).
Richard: 20 (=2), 34 (4), 51 (3).
Paul: 20 (=2), 35 (3), 48 (4).
Craig: 30 (1), 45 (1), 43 (5).
Brian: 14 (=5), 26 (6), 37 (6).

Did I mention that I can't wait to play this again...?

Fussball: Another 40th birthday gift, this one from my wife! It's a major struggle keeping the kids away from this, particularly the 20-month-old, so we let them play with it as much as we reasonably can rather than fight too hard with them, with the expectation that the novelty will eventually wear off.
Pat, Craig, Sean and I had a quick go on this before the other guys turned up, and then at the end of the night it was Richard and I vs. Pat and Alex. This was a great game actually, which came right down to the wire - A&P eventually scoring the 10-9 decider against me and Richard. Brian was happy to sit out and be the guy from Channel 4.

Family holiday gaming, April 22-23, 2006

2006-04-26T23:01:00.000+10:00

Paula and I took the kids up to Katoomba for a long weekend escape, and invited my family up for a barbecue on the Sunday. This was the fourth weekend in a row celebrating my 40th birthday, this time including my family! Even more presents, including Alhambra, from my brother Graeme. We finally got around to playing this at about 8pm, with playing time extended to about 2 hours because the youngest just didn't want to go to sleep!
Final results on this were disappointing for me, but impressive for both my Mum and Dad, who both scored respectably. Paula won convincingly in the last 1 or 2 scoring rounds: 87. Mum: 77. Dad: 73. Paul: 54. Graeme: 50.

Game pics this time see a return to the old Nokia 6610i, and while they aren't too bad, I do see a bit of blurriness around the edges... the lens probably needs a good clean!

I was keen to play Ticket to Ride Europe, but Graeme left to go home and everyone else was too tired. The following afternoon, with all else gone and the kids having an afternoon sleep Paula and I spent a few hours on a bunch of two player games:

Ticket to Ride Europe did get a look-in, although again a disappointing result for me. Paula: 132. Paul: 107.

We also played the two-player rules for Alhambra, and finally I was victorious: Paul: 131. Paula: 98.

We also played Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers, with Paula again snatching victory from me in the hunting fields - Paula: 173. Paul: 168.

ConTrail, part 5 of 5: Game results and pictorial summary, day 2

2006-04-13T09:28:00.000+10:00

Games played: Euphrat and Tigris, Lost Valley, Perpetual Commotion, A New Hope, Conquest of the Empire, Roma Aeterna, Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

Pics, here and in all ConTrail '06 reports, again of course courtesy of the keen eye and lens of Brad.

Euphrat and Tigris: This seemed to be open before breakfast. About 1 hr and 15 minutes long, with a narrow victory to Pat.
Pat: 8. Richard V: 7/8. Craig: 7/7. Brad: 4.

Lost Valley: 80 minutes long. Alex killed this, with 19 gold. Paul miles behind in second place on 7. Mikey: 5. Rick D.: 0.

Perpetual Commotion: Crazy real-time card game in which you try to deplete your deck of cards by building on the shared stacks in the middle of the table. Brad and Alex "shared" turns in this; the rule sheet deceptively implies up to 8 can play, but there are only 6 decks in the set! 20 minutes.
Richard V.: 87. Paul: 32. Alex/Brad: 31. Rick D.: 25. Pat: 20. Mikey: -22.

A New Hope: Ken's creation based on the Star Wars universe. Marcus as the evil empire defeated Ken's rebel forces in 90 minutes. Here they are in a corner behind a pile of games that didn't get played!

Roma Aeterna: This is Alex's home-brew and now quite mature after several years in the vat with occasional tasting.
Time taken = 2hrs 45mins, but I gather this includes some rules explan and perhaps some post-game analysis too.
Pat declared the winner, then Al, then Richard, Ken and Marcus.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill: I was surprised to see this one rolled out again, and I gather that from Pat's celebrations at the end that it was quite an experience! My notes here say that Pat was the sole survivor of the winning team of investigators against the evil 11-year-old Richard. Pat's earlier observation seems to indicate that this was against all odds!

Conquest of the Empire (again): A 4-player round this time with Paul, Michael, Rick D., and Brad. 290 minutes from start to finish, including significant rules-explan time.
Paul and Brad formed the early alliance against Mikey and Rick, but unfortunately Brad couldn't recover from the occasional but significant beating! For the next two turns thereafter, Paul manipulated (legally through bidding) the turn orders and alliances to force Mikey on his side, preventing invasions from the red menace and positioning around Rick (yellow).
On the last turn, Brad helped me out by bidding him and me as opponents, which I didn't quite understand, but nevertheless I was cool with it. I then weighed up out of Michael and Rick who I most wanted on my side and whose territories I most wanted to invade, eventually deciding that Rick was a juicier target, although probably a tougher opponent! So I bid to try and retain Mikey on my side, while Rick bid "against" me, trying to force me to ally! Around the $30 mark I decided it was too expensive, and figured the saved money would help me instead gain some good ground from Mikey, so I passed on further bidding.
And that's when Mikey surprised me! He took up the bidding against Rick, deciding to play for position and figuring he'd be pushed back to 3rd with both Rick and me as enemies! In hindsight I guess it wasn't such an unexpexted play, but at the time it was classic gamey goodness. I loved it - it was like these guys were fighting over me!!
Of course, it was the right end-strategy for Michael, who did successfully come in 2nd. Paul: 250. Michael: 220. Rick D: 195. Brad: 100.
So I won again, perhaps setting an unbeatable precedent, in which I've actually won an economic military expansionist epic game, not once, but twice in a weekend! I expect this is the zenith of my gaming lifetime. It doesn't get any better than this...

ConTrail, part 4 of 5: Game results and pictorial summary, day 1

2006-04-11T10:11:00.000+10:00

Updated entries from Craig, April 19 2006.
Games played: Trias, Blink, Klunker, Citadels, Army of Darkness, Saboteur, San Juan, St. Petersburg, Humm Bug, Ca$h 'n Gun$, Titan, Age of Steam, Mexica, Puerto Rico, Conquest of the Empire, I Doubt It, Lupus in Tabula, "Categories", Hearts, Darkover, Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

Brad was keen to get a mugshot of everyone to prove they were there. Unfortunately at no stage was his picture taken, leaving some room for doubt about the photographer himself...
Here are Ken, Paul and Alex to start with.

First game: Trias: Alex: 22. Brad: 20. Ken: 18. Paul: 17. 80 minutes. A nice game about dinosaur population expansion and continental drift. I do like this - it should come out more often.

Blink: A little hard to read the handwritten account here. The last sentence reads, first to play all cards (~30 ea) wins. The first sentence says either, Craig had 5 cards left, or Craig had scads left. Either way, the outcome implies that Marcus won. Two minutes long, if I'm reading that right...

Here also are the mugshots of Craig and Marcus (Craig is a little camera-shy).

Here also is the view from the balcony where both Trias and Blink were played. Can you make out the kangaroos? Try zooming in on the middle left.

Klunker: Ken: 34. Alex: 17. Brad: 16. 30 minutes.

Hamburger and chips break for lunch.
And now you can see the kangaroos! (Below.)

Citadels: Craig: 25. Marcus: 22. Paul: 20. Brad: 19. Alex: 16. Ken: 11.
85 minutes. Nice game with this many players - keeps you guessing! In the very first round I was assassinated by Marcus, and I thought it was October 30 all over again! However, that was the last time I was anyone's target in this game, and I finally ended up with a middling score.
That beer cup in the middle distance contains some of Mark S.' lime and chilli home brew...

Richard and Michael soon turned up. Michael came with a nice looking bottle of Johnny Walker (black) as a birthday present. Thank you, Mikey!
Richard came bearing Martin Wallace's Struggle of Empires - Thank you again, Richard!

Unfortunately time didn't allow this one to get played, but it is booked in for playing at the first return of the regular Sunday night sessions that Richard participates in.
Pat and Rick D. then turned up soon after, while we were still playing Citadels. This completed the weekend's compliment of gamers. Pat was promising the revelation of yet another special birthday gift...

Army of Darkness: Marcus wins, with Rick D., Michael, Pat and Marcus along for the ride. 45 minutes.

At the conclusion of AoD, Pat revealed the special gift from him and Craig: Conquest of the Empire! Including an extra rule set for CotE II, by Martin Wallace! Wow!! And an interesting coincidence getting two games by the same designer.
Well, I made a commitment there and then that I would study the rules for this while everyone else gamed on. It had to be played!

Everyone else then moved on to Saboteur: Richard V: 9. Rick D: 6. Craig: 5. Al, Pat, Marcus, Ken, Brad: all on 4. Mikey: 3. 40 minutes.

Updated entry from Craig on San Juan: Pat: 34; Craig and Rick: 31.

Updated entry from Craig on St. Petersburg: Pat: 105; Craig and Rick: 68. Apparently Pat was getting around 20VPs per round for buildings which "made all the difference..."!

Humm Bug: Richard, Michael, Brad, Alex, Marcus and Ken played this on the table next to me while I continued poring over the CotE rules. They placed another token on the board for me, so that I could call out answers too. This was cool, since I came equal second with Richard and Michael, behind the winner, Marcus, without officially being in the game! 40 minutes.

The same guys then moved on to Ca$h 'n Gun$: Loads of silliness, with some deaths this time! Marcus won again, with $120K, then Ken: 110; Mikey: 50; Richard: 40. Al and Brad both pushed their luck too far and "bought it", taking 4 and 3 bullets respectively (so Brad was less dead than Alex, perhaps?).

Age of Steam: Was this with the Korea map? Craig: Yes; this variation sees you shipping cubes to any other city tile where that cube colour already exists (ie., ignore the city tile colour) and ship to a 'like' cube. Lots of expensive mountains and interesting play because you not only worry about the cube you want to ship, but also the one you want to ship to - thus 2 chances of being pussed! Also, the urbanisation tiles bring out extra cubes as usual, but they can play havoc by shortening your routes (eg: a blue cube ends up in the middle of a previously long blue run, thus cutting your income!)
Updated results: Pat: 132. Rick D.: 96. Craig: 93. A walk-over for Pat, I'd say. 90 minutes.

Titan: 1: Richard V. 2: Brad. 3: Al. 4: Marcus.
5hrs and 15mins, but there is a dinner break in the middle of that.

Here is a picture of a conflict taking place on one of the battle boards (jungle)...

Conquest of the Empire: The epic rolled out, after rules reading and explaining, and setup. Yes, a big upfront investment in learning, but worth it!

A total of about 4 hours playing time, taking out our dinner break and my initial study of the rules, but leaving in the rules explanation to Michael and Ken and the setup.
Results: Paul: 215. Ken: 170. Mikey: 130. Hooray! A rare victory to the (new!) owner of an epic!

Mexica: Updated report from Craig: Craig 116, Pat 107, Rick 103.
Craig had early lead and survived a big play by Pat who tried to section off the remaining board at game end and then block everyone from gaining access through cunning placement of water... only he forgot the tiny detail which sees any player able to teleport to any space on the board by using 5 action points :-) Craig hung on...

Puerto Rico: Updated report from Craig: Rick 45, Pat 40, Craig 36.
Rick used the coffee, large market, office to great effect. He ramped up the money and built, built, built to end the game by filling all 12 building spaces before Craig and Pat could really make a profit from their wharfs.

I Doubt It: Marcus v. Richard. Marcus wins 4 in a row!
I don't even know what this game is, but obviously it is quite light if 4 games can be completed in 10 mins.

Lupus in Tabula: This was the funny, 'werewolf' end of the night. Total game time: 25 minutes.
Dealt character cards tell you whether you are a werewolf (n=2), a seer (gets an anonymous guess at any player each turn), a medium, or a normal villager.
The werewolves kill a player each night (all eyes closed, except for the moderator and the werewolves), then the villagers decide who they're going to lynch.
The process continues until the werewolves are killed, or they equal in number surviving villagers!
Lots of pics here - see Alex avoiding the lens (early guilt, perhaps?), Paul happy to be here, a very calm Marcus faces a lynching party, a spectacular werewolf mutilation death for Alex (he wasn't guilty after all), and Pat as the moderator.
In the first game, unfortunately Marcus did get lynched first up. Following the death of Alex (see above), Ken faced the noose! Then Paul (me!) woke up dead, and Rick D. copped the blame! Then Craig copped the claws, leaving the true werewolves, Mikey and Brad, the winners, since Richard was the last surviving villager.
In the second game, Richard became the moderator and therefore the first victim of the werewolves by default. For some reason everyone turned on Craig, and he was the first lynched! Then Alex once again died spectacularly at the hands of the werewolves, and Marcus, the true seer in both games, was lynched again!
Brad became a target this time since he so artfully dodged in the previous game, so he found himself mauled on the next day turn. Pat, one of the actual werewolves, was lynched as a result. But there was still one surviving werewolf, and Rick D. was his next victim.
Yes, it was me, and Ken with the casting vote successfully picked me out for the lynching! Mikey was another survivor, and was the only one to see out both games to the end alive!

Since this was the weekend marking the end of daylight saving, we allowed this to kick in at this point, and suddenly 12:45am Sunday suddenly became 11:45pm Saturday.

"Categories": This was made-up by Alex, requiring a nominated category (eg., European nations), and each player writing an example of each on their slip of paper. Points were awarded if you chose a unique item, or if you chose something that a lot of other people also picked. I think actual categories tried were 'popular games', 'cuts of meat', and 'containers'. We also tried a variant in which the starting letters of your selected example were pre-determined, making things a bit tricky.
Unfortunately, this good idea for a game was abandoned after 20 minutes or so, following difficulties with interpretation of answers and consistent scoring.

Hearts: Yes, that simple trick-taking game in which you try to avoid winning any hearts and the Queen of Spades, or you try to win them all. The lower your score, the better.
Results: Mikey wins with 93. Craig: 129. Paul: 135. Rick D.: 164. Brad: 205. Pat: 268.

Darkover: Another game that apparently had to be abandoned, after playing for over 90 minutes, because of not playing correctly by the rules! Richard V., Alex, Ken, Marcus.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill: Pat, Craig, Michael, Brad, Paul and Rick D.

The 'haunt' started early in this game, and in fact Craig became the traitor before he had even taken his first turn! Michael's character eventually died of fright upon seeing a hanging man in some basement room. Craig's traitorous character was eventually killed, and the good team eventually won by destroying the evil, noxious plant!
45 minutes, and the end of this game (1:45am in the 'new' time) marked turn-in time for all players. This is Rick D., studying the floorplan of the House on the Hill (or, maybe he's looking at something else..?)

ConTrail, part 3 of 5: Personal accounts

2006-04-06T16:37:00.000+10:00

From Richard:
Well I am at work, feeling weary, but very relaxed.
Paul: thanks for the concept, the organization and a lot of the labour; pass thanks on to Paula too please.

Rest of you: thanks for the companionship.

I had a great time. Highlights include Hummbug - the song that everyone knew when they saw it, but could not recognize, and Paul almost winning despite being rules reading at the time.
Titan: a hard fought game, with memorable moment of Alex's appeal to Lucky Jim and then rolling some obscene number of hits, followed by Marcus' reply with a 1 in 512 chance of no hits which allowed Alex to survive.
Euphrat and Tigris: constant conflict but little damage left every empire vulnerable, and Craig as perceived leader being hammered at every opportunity while in reality just limping along.

From Pat:
I had a great time. Thanks all.

Highlights for me were:
- finding the "empire breakup move" in E&T involving a river sacrifice. I said at the time that even if I came last, I'll be pleased and satisfied after that, but it turned out to be the key to victory after all.
- overcoming the last Betrayal, requiring a 2/27 shot (I believe) to escape the abyss after all around me, including my Ox, had perished (oh, Ox). Cue the helicopter coming in with a winch during the closing credits to lift me out of there ...
- admiring the repartee whilst playing Roma Aeterna
- Alex's werewolf death scene
- Being income positive in round 2 of Age Of Steam (which, if you've ever played ...)
- Watching Mikey valiantly attempting to be in perpertual commotion
- Getting a night's sleep without kids climbing into bed at some stage.

ConTrail, part 2 of 5: Raw data

2006-04-06T16:31:00.000+10:00

Games played, in approximate chronological order; players; times:

-- Day 1 --
Trias (AF, KF, B, PM); 80 mins
Blink (CB, MF); 2 mins
Klunker (B, KF, AF); 30 mins
Citadels (AF, CB, B, PM, MF, KF); 85 mins
Army of Darkness (RD, MK, PB, MF); 45 mins
"Blink 2" (AF, B); 5 s.
Saboteur (RV, RD, CB, PB, AF, MF, KF, B, MK); 40 mins
San Juan (PB, CB, RD)
St. Petersburg (PB, CB, RD)
Humm Bug (RV, MK, B, MF, AF, KF); 40 mins
Cash 'n' Guns (B, AF, MK, KF, MF, RV); 25 mins
Titan (RV, AF, MF, B); 315 mins
Age of Steam (PB, CB, RD); 90 mins
Mexica (PB, CB, RD)
Puerto Rico (PB, CB, RD)
Conquest of the Empire (PM, KF, MK); 315 mins
I Doubt It (MF, RV); 10 mins
Lupus in Tabula (RD, PB, CB, MK, MF, KF, B, RV, PM, AF); 25 mins
"Categories" (RD, PB, CB, MK, MF, KF, B, RV, PM, AF); 20 mins
Hearts (RD, PB, CB, MK, B, PM); 50 mins
Darkover (RV, AF, KF, MF); 95 mins
Betrayal at the House on the Hill (PB, CB, MK, B, PM, RD); 45 mins

-- Day 2 --
Euphrat & Tigris (PB, RV, CB, B); 80 mins
Lost Valley (AF, PM, RD, MK); 80 mins
Perpetual Commotion (PB, MK, B, AF, PM, RV, RD); 20 mins
A New Hope (KF, MF); 90 mins
Conquest of the Empire (PM, MK, RD, B); 290 mins
Roma Aeterna (PB, KF, AF, RV, MF); 165 mins
Betrayal at the House on the Hill (PB, KF, AF, RV, MF); 75 mins

Total no. games per player:
Pat:15
Alex: 14
Brad: 14
Rick D: 14
Ken: 13
Marcus: 13
Craig: 13
Richard V: 12
Michael: 12
Paul: 10

Longest games played: Conquest of the Empire (1) came in first at 7hrs between start and finish times, but that included 1 hr 45 for my studying of the rules, about an hour dinner break, and another 30-60mins rules explaining and set-up. Therefore total playing time would have been less than 4 hrs, although the extra rules time should probably be acknowledged.
The next longest would be Titan, at 5 hrs 15mins, also with a dinner break in the middle, and technically longer playing time than Conquest, since players were already au fait with the rules.
After this, the 2nd game of Conquest came in at 4 hrs 50 mins, but again another chunk (>30mins) was rules explanation to the "newbies"!
Al's Roma Aeterna clocked in next at 165 mins, with some extended discussion afterwards.
No other game ran > 90 minutes.

Shortest games played: "Blink 2", really just a staring competition between Brad and Al, was over in about 5 seconds. Brad won. This games hasn't actually been counted in other statistics!
The next shortest games was Blink, a card game between Marcus and Craig, recorded as 2 mins.

Average players per game: 4.68

Average time per game: 88 mins.

ConTrail, part 1 of 5: First entry and epilogue

2006-04-03T09:11:00.000+10:00

Our private weekend boardgaming mini-convention is now over and declared a success. The only regrets are not having played enough games with everyone! And perhaps not taking the opportunity to stroll around the location at the Del Rio Resort at Webbs Creek, near Wiseman's Ferry, which was in perfect early Autumn weather for almost the entire time.

Over the next week or so I'll try to report on all the results recorded - over 20 games played in all. Hopefully these will be alongside pictures, amply and capably taken by Brad.

I finally dubbed the event ConTrail for two main reasons; the first as a hint that this was a Con(vention) held at a somewhat remote location, and second, the area is near the site of the historic Great North Road, built from sandstone primarily with convict labour, hence a true Convict Trail. See here if you are at all interested in this history: http://www.convicttrail.org/about.php.
I also liked the association with jets even though there was no real relevance, until either Ken or Alex found one: The resort is right alongside the Hawkesbury River and is a popular spot for water-skiers, their boats being the only thing upsetting the serenity of the location. Occasionally one could see plumes of water spraying up behind the skiers, perhaps an analog of the cloudy wake left in the sky by jet planes!

But by about 4:30pm on Sunday we were all driving back to our respective homes, most of us via the Old North Road through Glenorie and Dural. I swear that as the sun was getting low I could make out true contrails high in the western sky...
I don't know - perhaps they were just long thin clouds by coincidence. But as the sun set behind them while they slowly dispersed, to me it was a metaphorical tribute marking the end of an outstanding weekend.

Thank you gentlemen: Alex, Ken, Brad, Marcus, Craig, Pat, Rick D., Richard V., and Michael.

ConTrail 2006 Preparations

2006-03-29T16:18:00.000+11:00

ConTrail is our very own "private" boardgames convention, being held this coming weekend at a budget retreat location northwest of Sydney.
All of the major preparations have been made; the hall is rented, the beds are booked, and the games have been dusted off, ready to be packed into the car.

Number of participants will be 10 or 11. Games floated include Age of Renaissance, Roads & Boats, Apocalypse, Republic of Rome, Lupus in Tabula, Spacefarers of Catan, Tikal, Powergrid, Age of Steam, Goa, Cash 'n Guns, Puerto Rico, and lots of others.

Everyone's looking forward to ConTrail - especially me. I can't wait..! The next entry here should include a report; perhaps multiple reports will follow...

Game Session, March 26, 2006

2006-03-28T09:05:00.000+11:00

Venue: Pat's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Brad, Paul.
Played: Zoff in Buffalo, Tower of Babel, Il Principe, The Watergate Scandal.

Three new games this week. Thanks to Brad for the pics.

Zoff in Buffalo: This is apparently the precursor of Vino and by the same designer; facts which becomes clear in the game play!
In this case the theme is grazing your branded cattle in fields of various sizes. When a given field is full the most populous occupants get a bonus, which is the free placement of one or more cows into another field. As in Vino, the trick with most of the bigger fields is that second and even third most populous get bigger bonuses. The aim is to get more cows out than any other player, and another twist is that at no time may your herd be equal in size to any other player's in the same field.
There are lots of obvious similarities to Vino, although this game is much simpler, with no cash or commodity varieties management. There is also a small element of luck, in that you can be somewhat at the random mercy of other players' decisions. This effect is in Vino too, but may be slightly more significant in this game. But that's fine; it's not a spoiler and may even add to the chaotic tension.
Time = 40 - 45mins, incl. rules, for 5 of us.

Results: Paul: 40. Pat: 38. Brad: 36. Brian: didn't get your score, but I think it was in the 30s. Alex: 29.

Tower of Babel: Pat warned us that this one was slightly weird, and he was right. This took a few turns to get a feel for what were better plays than others. The theme is building of the 8 wonders of the ancient world, including the Alexandria Lighthouse, hanging gardens of Babylon, Statue of Zeus, pyramids, the mausoleum of somewhere (Maussollos, according to Wikipedia), Colussus of Rhodes, the temple of Artemis and the Tower of Babel (which is not on any official list of the 7 wonders of the world, and like the Hanging Gardens, probably didn't really exist in any true physical form).
Players are subcontractors to help complete one of three task types (discs) for any given wonder. Points are awarded on wonder completion to the contributors of that wonder, at game end for collection of sets of discs. You can also pick up little points along the way for offering to help but having that help turned down.
The trick is to offer your trader card at the right time in each job, so the main contractor will take your offer of contribution markers in return for the job disc. So this is a game of majorities, with some curious subtleties thrown in. It felt a little bit like building ancient wonders, but not a lot. The theme really only comes through in the artwork, which is nice, but not the best I've ever seen (I seem to be noticing this more these days!). Play time: 63 minutes for 5 of us, incl. rules.

Results: Pat: 59. Alex: 59 (no tie breakers). Paul: 55. Brian: 47. Brad: 42.

Il Principe: Frankly this was even weirder than Tower of Babel, and Pat warned us about this too! He walked us through the rules (which took about 20 mins), and by the end of them I had little sense of how to play each turn, ie., what constituted a good game decision versus a poor one. In fact, the guess-work approach persisted for me for at least half the game!
The theme here is about establishing cities in Rennaissance (or later) Italy, with players being competing aristocratic houses with certain shifting 'specialites' in given building types (just simplified to colours). There is a lot of auctioning, but the game play is rather abstract and removed from this theme.
By about 2/3rds through I finally felt like I was starting to get a handle on it, so another playing might be order! Despite the 'weirdness' factor I think this could be an interesting game experience, so I'd happily sit in this one again.
About 65 mins in length.

Results: Brian: 63. Pat: 50. Paul: 49. Brad: 46. Alex: 40.

The Watergate Scandal: Twenty minutes of silliness with which to end the evening. This was just us funny as last time we played, although it was over and done with a lot sooner because Pat's score reached 500 in each of two successive turns. He seemed to accuse me frequently, and all I could do was to say "I'm so sorry...", and reveal my non-corrupt play...

Results: Brad: 20 (ie; the least corrupt, or more correctly, the least caught). Paul: 200. Alex: 300. Brian: 450. Pat: 1000.

Game Session, March 19, 2006

2006-03-22T09:05:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Brad, Dave, Paul.
Played: Cash and Guns, Army of Darkness (Card Game), Carcassonne Neues Land, Coda, Take it Easy, Manila, Carcassonne Neues Land (again).

A good evening of gaming; I managed to play four new games!
Thanks again to Brad for the pics.

Cash and Guns: This is apparently inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Resevoir Dogs, which I have never seen, much to my discredit as a follower of pop culture for two decades or more. This game has much to recommend it if you keep in perspective what it was designed to be - a piece of light and lively entertainment in half an hour or less.
The components are a bit of a paradox - on one hand you have rather weak character indicators (dodgy sketches in plastic stands) and bang/click cards, while on the other you have the cool cash tokens, and the most unique element, foam pistols that fit neatly in the hand like a real gun, which you use by pointing at your opponents. Hold and point horizontally for authenticity!
I reckon 5 or 6 players is about right for this for maximum hilarity. A lot o' laughs - this one will get some good usage, and best played at the start of an evening rather than at the end of one. I can't help thinking those guns could be incorporated into certain other games somehow..

Results: Pat: 70. Brad: 65. Dave: 60. Alex: 60. Brian: 55. Paul: 25.

Army of Darkness card game: Another based on a piece of pop culture with which I was unfamiliar. Brad, obviously a fan of the movie, brought this one along so he, Brian and I played. This one is a gory horror spoof, complete with outrageous quote text on the cards. Game play is simple. You are a character from the movie, fighting off undead monsters with the help of various allies, items and events that might come your way. Defeat your own monster pile while visibly carrying the Necronimicon to win. The twist is that if you deplete your hand of cards you flip your character to its evil side, and then try to accumulate, rather than combat your monsters!
Very silly, but quite funny if you read out the quote text on each card as it is played. I expect this would be even funnier if you actually saw the movie!

Results: Game 1: Brian wins, in about 20 mins incl. rules.
Game 2: Paul wins in about 25 mins.

Carcassonne Neues Land: Dave, Pat, Alex.
Dave's introduction to the world of Euro games.

Results: Alex: 92. Pat: 89. Dave: Not as much.

Coda: Dave, Pat, Alex.
Alex won.

Take it Easy: A quick game to bring all 6 of us back in before Dave had to bail. I usually don't mind this game, but I'm finding the more I play, the more I realise I really suck at this. I won't be suggesting this ever again I don't think - not that I did this time - but you can expect more groaning from me next time this one floats up!
Eighteen minutes for 2 games.

Results: Game 1: Dave: 173. Alex: 160. Pat: 156. Brad: 150. Brian: 140. Paul: 121.
Game 2: Alex: 180. Brian: 126. Brad: 116. Pat: 112. Dave: 88. Paul: 74.

Manila: Brad, Pat, Alex, Brian, Paul.
Another new game for the night, and this didn't disappoint. The theme is about delivering black market goods by sea, 'gambling' on outcomes (ie; delivery or non-delivery), avoiding pirates, etc. Turn order privilege is determined by auction, which also gives you a share of one of the four commodities. Three of these might or might not then be shipped home to earn cash rewards for whomever is prepared to back them. Players then allocate markers to indicate what they are betting on, such as individual boats making it home, any boats making it home, any boats not making it home, or pirates succeeding.
The choosing of options in turn order reminds me a little bit of Big Kini, and even Princes of Florence and Puerto Rico in a more distant way. However in Manila, selection of 'actions' is much more of an overt gamble than in those other games. Skew the odds in your favour by winning the turn order (and commodity share) auction, or by being to the immediate left of the player who does. I thought the prices bid for these was on the too-high side generally, but particularly in the later part of the game. Winning bids ranged between about 17 and 25 every turn. But I suppose if you have confidence in your chosen commodity reaching the end value of 30, the additional bonus of being first on the boat that is most likely to make it home could justify the expense.
Nice game that works well with 5 players, over in 65 minutes, incl. rules explanation.

Results: Pat: 103. Paul: 99. Brad: 93. Alex: 88. Brian: 75.

Carcassonne Neues Land (again): The playing of this gave me the fourth new game played for the night. Yet another variation on the Carcassonne mechanism, this one designed by Leo Colvini, of Carolus Magnus (et alia) fame. Neues Land plays on a grander geographical scale than the others, which somehow gives it a more empowering feel. Tile art is simple but elegant, with absolutely no visual ambiguities.
The game mechanism tweak that Colvini has introduced is that players may place an available meeple or remove one at the end of their turn, and it is only upon removal that full points are scored.
I could see this becoming my favourite version of Carcassonne, so certainly more playing required! Five players, 41 minutes, incl. rules.

Results: Alex: 64. Pat: 58. Paul: 39. Brian: 32. Brad: 30.

Game Session, March 12, 2006

2006-03-14T11:41:00.000+11:00

Venue: Brian's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Liming, Alex, Brad, Craig, Andrew, Paul.
Played: Ricochet Robot, San Juan, Princes of Florence, Ticket to Ride Europe, Klunker, Around the World in 80 Days, Jekyll & Hyde.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics. This first one is apparently a chess game between Alex and Brad. I don't know the background to this, but Brad asserts that he won...!

Ricochet Robot: This was being unrolled just as I turned up; one can always tell that Andrew is in the house when this one appears!
Good logic pattern fun for as many players as you can fit around the table.

Results: Someone kept track of scores, I think...? Alex, Andrew, Craig and me: 3 tokens. Everyone else except Brian: 2 tokens. Brian: 1. (requires confirmation)

San Juan: Andrew, Richard, Brian, Brad.
No info.

Princes of Florence: Craig, Liming, Alex, Paul.
The usual auction madness. Despite thinking I was going ok with this, I still ended up as good as one completed work behind the winning score. Perhaps I'll never crack this one!
95-100 minutes.

Results: Alex: 53 (5 works). Craig: 52 (5 works). Paul: 45 (5 works). Liming: 42 (4 works).

Ticket to Ride Europe: Brian, Andrew, Brad and Richard.

Results: Richard: 126. Andrew: 120. Brad: 114. Brian: 86.

Klunker: Craig, Alex, Paul and Liming.
Schaufenster and vaulting madness! It was obviously Alex's night tonight.
48 minutes for this one, including rules.

Results: Alex: 18. Paul: 13. Craig: 11. Liming: 8.

Around the World in 80 Days: Andrew, Paul, Liming.
This was described by Andrew as "a race game with a twist", and by Richard as "fluffy". While race games usually don't do much for me, especially if they are "fluffy", I was still keen to play this since a) it was new (to me), and b) the cover art looked nice. The period art work was also reflected on the game board and the card components, with key route locations indicated by old postcard -style images - extraordinary detail and very nice to look at.
The game itself was simple, but elegant. The score track is the number of days you have spent travelling to your current location, and the goal is to return to London with as low a score (number of days) as possible. On your turn, you take a visible train or boat travel card, and take a special action (such as take a special card, take a coin which can give you a dice roll mulligan if needed, take a hot air balloon, which can reduce your travel cost in days, or move "Mr Hat", obviously Mr Fix the detective from the original story, who will penalise you 2 days if you end your turn in the same space.)
I can see that adding an extra one or two players would make this more interesting and tense; our game was a little anti-climactic at the end. But it played well in just under an hour, incl. rules, and was not brain-burning. I'd happily play this again in the right circumstances.

Results: Andrew: 60 days. Paul: 62 days. Liming: Stuck in New York on 59 days.

Jekyll & Hyde: Brian, Brad, Richard and Alex.
No data. This was still being played when I left...

Game Session, March 5, 2006

2006-03-10T09:37:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Liming, Pat, Alex, Marcus, Brad, Paul.
Played: Take it Easy, Coda, Ra, Prairie Railroads, Cartagena, Too Many Cooks, eBay Electronic Talking Auction Game, "Scottish" Balderdash.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics.

Take it Easy: The opener, for me, Liming, Alex, Richard, Brian and Marcus.
Better than Bingo.
At scoring time I was engaged in domestic duties, but Pat turned up and scored my game for me. When I asked later what the scores were, I was told that I didn't want to know. Don't know who won (it wasn't me).

Coda: Pat, Liming and Alex played this while the remaining four of us had dinner.
Pat won.

Ra: Liming, Brian, Marcus and Paul. It's been a while since I've played this, but it was a first time for Liming and Brian, and as good as for Marcus. I'd forgotten all about the tension of waiting for the good tiles to come out before the last Ra tiles were drawn in any given epoch.
Although it had been some time since I last played this, I thought I would have some experience edge over the newbies. In particular, I was expecting some over-aggressive bidding from the others, and there was some. However, this was all consistent and mostly successful.
In the end, it was me who made the most gross errors, by being too conservative in the bids, missing out on good tile collections before epoch ends rolled around! Brian cleaned up on Pharoahs, and Monuments in particular, Marcus also did well on Monuments and Civilisations.
About 75 minutes.

Results: Brian: 51. Marcus: 47. Liming: 29. Paul: 19.

Prairie Railroads: Pat, Richard, Alex and Brad.
Nearly 2 hours.

Results: Brad (romped it in!): 600. Pat: 446. Alex: 435. Richard: 414.

Cartagena: Marcus, Brian, Liming and I played this with the intention of being a filler while we waited for Prairie Railroads to finish, but we ended up playing twice.
A new favourite for Marcus, perhaps, who really enjoyed this.

Results:
Game 1: Liming wins. Paul notionally second, with two guys on the boat. Marcus: 1. Brian: 0. About 30 mins.
Game 2: Marcus wins. Brian close with 5 on the boat. Paul & Liming both with 2. Twenty-seven minutes.

Too Many Cooks:
Results: Alex: 29. Pat: 17. Richard: 16. Brad: 11.

eBay Electronic Talking Auction Game: Brian asked what that eBay game was in my cupboard, so out it came! It runs as a timed, electronic auction. The centrepiece is the auction device, and set around this are 3 bays holding cards indicating items of apparent value. On the reverse of each item card (which you don't get to see until you win the item) is the item's actual value.
Each player has a set of bidding cards of different values ranging from $10 to $300, and a proxy (which beats anything, including earlier-played proxies). The game commences and the auctioneer announces, apparently at random, who (which player colour) may place a bid card against any of the items available. You then have a few seconds to place a bid card against one of items and press the corresponding button, or you can pass. The auctioneer then announces another player colour to bid, and so on. After a certain (random!) number of bids, the auctioneer then announces the successful bidder for one of the items. Hence players try to accumulate valuable items, preferably in sets, since a set of three or more items of any one type is a collection and worth twice the recorded actual value.
This is light fun, but can get intense towards the end as you desparately try to beat the clock and the other players to win the last cards and add to your sets.
About 35 minutes playing time.

Results: Liming: $5400. Paul: $5300. Marcus: $4500. Brian: $2900.

"Scottish" Balderdash: A game to end the night for all players at once, based on the commercial party game, Balderdash.
Players take it in turns to be the "word master", and pick an obscure word from a dictionary, announcing this to the other players. Everyone then writes secretly on a slip of paper what they 'believe' is a dictionary definition of the word. The word master writes down the true definition.
The definitions are then all collected, and the word master reads out, in random order and anonymously, each definition. The players then vote on, or rather record, which they think is the best. At the end of the round players score a point for each person who thought their definition was correct, and an extra point if they guessed which was the true definition. In our game, we also made a separate vote for which definition we each thought was the cleverest or funniest. The word master scores a point for each person who failed to pick which was the true definition.
We added a twist to our game by using the Collins Scottish Dictionary as the source of our obscure words, although Marcus chose to pick his word, "lavabo", from a regular Scrabble dictionary.
45 minutes for all 8 players to have one round each of picking a word.
Who knew these?!
Faniver
Mawkit
Keech
Tackety
Clype
Lavabo
Shilpit
Precentor

Results: Pat: 26. Richard: 22. Marcus: 20. Paul: 19. Liming: 18. Alex: 16. Brian: 16. Brad: 15.

Game Session, Feb 26, 2006

2006-03-03T09:16:00.000+11:00

Venue: Pat's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Pat, Alex, Brad, Paul.
Played: Fussball, Finstere Flure, Carassonne, Mesopotamia, Shadows Over Camelot.

Thanks again to Brad for the pics here.

Fussball: Brad, Alex, Pat and I played this while waiting for the other two to arrive, who eventually joined in also.
Ten minutes of fast, furious fun.
The winner: Well, football was the real winner on the day. As was Pat's team, the Central Coast Mariners, defeating Adelaide in the preliminary final, a Cindarella story, to make it to the grand final against Sydney next week...

Finstere Flure: Six players = 18 characters running madly through some crypt maze while trying to avoid the clutches of the monster Furunkulus. Of course he's not really evil, just misunderstood...
Fifty minutes of mayhem, made funnier with sound effects and actions as the monster caught and devoured his victims. I could see Robyn Williams (the actor/comedian, not the Australian science commentator) enjoying this game.
Arguably Furunkulus was the real winner here, but out of the player teams Alex won, Richard came second.

Carcassonne: Brian, Alex and Brad went for this, while Richard, Pat and I went to Mesopotamia. In fact, the Carcassonners got in two games to our one.

Game 1 results: Alex: 119. Brian: 105. Brad: 62.
Game 2 results: Alex: 107. Brad: 84. Brian: 77.

Mesopotamia: Pat's copy was an original German edition, hence Mesopotamien.
Outstanding production quality on all components; I particularly like the choice of little quartz river pebbles for the stones, and the interlocking hex tiles.
The game itself is quite neat, involving pick-up and delivery (ie; sacrifices and offerings) with your little tribe markers, on top of discovery and tribe growth. Special action cards add an element of chaos and interest. I found the whole game quite enjoyable with no down-time, but overall there is nothing outstanding or original in the game mechanics themselves. Furthermore, I understand the presence of volcanoes in this part of the world grates on the theme a bit for some (the theory is that this was originally themed around South American tribes), but maybe those tiles could be considered as cliff faces, or some other impenetrable terrain type.
Fifteen - 20 minutes for the rules, 50 minutes to play.

Results: Pat completed his offerings first, with Richard only two turns behind. I estimate I was further behind again by several more turns.

Shadows Over Camelot:
I couldn't resist writing a narrative for this story-game, but found I couldn't do it quickly enough - too much of a time-sink! So I've abandoned the notion of writing up the whole game session this way, just leaving the opening chapter. What follows this is then a more prosaic account of the rest of the game.

Dramatis Personae:
Paul ..... King Arthur
Pat ..... Sir Tristan
Richard ..... Sir Galahad
Alex ..... Sir Gawain
Brad ..... Sir Kay
Brian ..... Sir Percival

"I call this meeting to order," spake King Arthur, as the knights took up their seats at the round table.
"Good sirs, dark times are upon us. Enemies are at our borders and evil permeates our land. In confidence, Merlin suspects there may even be a traitor among us."
The knights looked suspiciously at each other, their beards twitching.
The King continued. "I fear that to restore balance and goodness to the realm, we must complete a number of dangerous and holy quests. If we succeed, our kingdom shall flourish, but if we fail..." Arthur could not bring himself to consider the alternative.
"I believe we all know what we must do, my lord'', cried Sir Gawain, rising to his feet.
"Yes," spake Sir Tristan, also standing. "I have heard that the most foul Black Knight approaches the Kingdom from the north west. I shall show him the sharpened edge of my sword, and the other side too, and despatch him from this world."
"Excellent," replied the King. "This is the spirit of the round table and Camelot. Who else here volunteers for a holy quest?"
"I," spake Sir Gawain, "shall recover Excalibur from that watery tart, the Lady of Lake..."
"Hmm," spake Arthur, pensively. "I was rather expecting to do that myself, I mean, after all, legend has it that the one true king of the land shall wield Excalibur..."
"I shall go and lead an army against the Picts!" shouted Sir Kay enthusiastically, holding his fist heroically in the air.
"That's marvellous, Sir Kay, but we're talking about Excalibur for the moment," said Arthur.
"I would do this quest for thou, and the kingdom, my lord," said Gawain, with all the gentle innocence of a child.
Suddenly Sir Percival leapt to his feet, ''And I shall fight alongside Kay!"
"That's great, Percy, but we're just trying to sort this out..."
"...And I shall go on the quest for Sir Lancelot!" cried Sir Galahad, also with gusto.
"Alright, Galahad, but I just - what?"
"I said I shall go on the quest for Sir Lancelot, my lord..." said Galahad again.
"Why can't Lancelot do his own quest?" queried Arthur.
"No, no, my king," clarified Galahad, "I'm not going on the quest on Lancelot's behalf, I mean I go on the quest to get Lancelot."
"Oh I see..." said Arthur, curiously. "But, I didn't even know he was missing. In fact, I was expecting to see him at this very meeting..."
"So, I'll just duck out and get this sword then," said Gawain quietly, gesturing towards the front door with his thumb while edging away.
"Err, Gawain...", spake the King, politely trying to manage three conversations at once.
"Yes, my lord," continued Galahad, "he went to fight the dragon some time ago, but hasn't been seen since."
"Well, I wish he'd tell people his plans before rushing off," said Arthur, irritated. "I suppose you better go help him, then. And tell him to come and see me at once - we've got important work to do."
"Yes, well...", replied Galahad, cautiously.
"Well? What is it good knight, have you something else to say?" probed Arthur, not noticing that Gawain had already slinked away.
"It's just that, well... Lancelot's probably dead, sir," said Galahad.
"Dead?!"
"Yes sir. Dead sir."
"Oh dear."
"Yes. Terrible business these dragons, sir." Galahad looked down at his boots, feigning controlled grief.
Arthur looked down too, stroking his beard thoughtfully. "Hmmm..."
Galahad nodded solemnly, still looking down, gently kicking the detritus near his feet.
"Well, your's won't be much of a quest then will it, Sir Galahad?" said Arthur, at last.
"No, my lord, but..."
"But what?"
"Well, Lancelot's armour, sir. It is said it has magical powers. Powers that could do much good for the kingdom."
Arthur thought for a moment, while Galahad waited patiently for his response. "Very well, Sir Galahad, thou shalt go on the quest for Lancelot's armour. Make haste, and bring it forthwith to Camelot."
"Yes, I shalt!" replied Galahad, with renewed optimism. "Now, your highness, I was just wondering..."
"Yes, brave knight of the realm?"
Galahad continued, tentatively, "well, my king, it seems my own suit of armour is, well... getting a little rusty around the joints, and I've had a bit of a growth spurt recently, so I really am due for a new suit. So I thought it would make sense for me to take Lancelot's armour once I recovered it from the clutches of the dragon..."
"Why don't you just go and see the royal armourer?" queried the King.
"Yes, well, I would, sir, but it seems he's taken a holiday to visit his aunty in Rome, and..."
"Rome?!" exclaimed the king, "hasn't Rome just been overrun by Visigoths?"
"Yes sir. Terrible business."
"Hmm... that armourer always did seem rather swarthy..."
Galahad could see that the king was having another of his many thoughtful moments. He stood perfectly still, waiting patiently for the king's verdict.
"Very well," resigned Arthur at last, noticing Galahad's gaze, "thou can have Lancelot's armour."
"I thank thee, my lord, " spake Galahad, springing with optimism again as he ran for the door.
"Now, where is Gawain?" asked Arthur. He looked around and realised he was the only one left in the room, apart from one decrepit and wrinkled old maid unmoving in the corner of the room.
"They all hedid off, me lordship," said the 29-year-old hag, in an unashamedly thick Cockney accent.
"Yes, I see," said Arthur, a little embarrassed. "Well... I'd better go and... fight the Saxons, then..." he said, boldly, but rather unconvincingly. The old lady just smiled toothlessly as Arthur strode out the door, his sword raised as if going straight into battle.

Days passed, and much fighting and questing ensued. Guinevere, bored and missing the level of male attention she was used to around Camelot, decided to practise some magic and summon the boys home, siren-like. Merlin, however, realised that distracting the knights from their quests now would have dire consequences, and worked triple over-time to cancel the effects of her spell.
Of course Guin was miffed, and immediately called for Simon, Camelot's gardener and general hand, to come and clean the royal swimming pool.

Things were going marvellously for our heroes, when the weather began to turn foul. The Mists of Avalon flowed in and covered the kingdom, making it impossible to concentrate on their sacred tasks. Again Merlin burned the midnight oil, using his magic haloptosis spell to blow away the mist and return daylight to the kingdom.
Feeling the stress of work and a complete lack of appreciation for his efforts, Merlin decided to take an indefinite leave of absence...

(More dull bit follows)
For much of the early and middle part of the game, Excalibur approached the evil side of the lake. But it was held just in play with hits for the team taken by Gawain, Arthur, Tristan and Galahad.
Tristan finally succeeded in defeating the Black Knight, bringing a white sword back to the round table. He then moved on to join Sir Kay in the fight against the Picts, while Sir Percival headed off to find the Holy Grail.
Very soon after, King Arthur single-handedly fought back the Saxons on his own, while Sir Tristan delivered the final blow to the Picts. The white swords were accumulating nicely...
Galahad scored equal with the forces of badness in his quest for Lancelot, but ''equal" is a loss, so this brought a black sword to Camelot and a cost Galahad a life point.
The Dark Forest then brought Percival's quest for the Grail to a full stop, requiring any other quest to complete before clearing. The appearance of Vivien then blocked any Merlin actions, again until we succeeded in completing a quest.
Enemy seige engines were beginning to multiply around the walls of Camelot, so Gawain moved to fight them off, and he succeeded in cutting their numbers by one.
Arthur and Tristan continued the recovery operation for Excalibur, and with everyone joining in this was eventually successful.
In the meantime, the Black Knight rode again, and with no one to slow his progress, he delivered another black sword to the round table unhindered. Then the accusations started. Convinced Sir Kay was the traitor, Tristan accused him. Wrongly, as it turned out. This then made it clear, as far as Arthur was concerned, that Percival was in fact the traitor. This was correct, the traitor revealed, and another white sword was brought to Camelot.
Sir Kay then turned his attention to the Grail quest, while everyone else (bar the traitorous Percival) fought against the Picts, desperate to complete this battle before darkness enveloped the kingdom.
Again, the siege engines mounted around Camelot, but Arthur managed to finish off the Picts and retrieve the penultimate white sword. However, because Sir Kay had just prior slipped him an heroic action card, the Picts battle was won with an extra heroic flourish and white sword, concluding the victory conditions. Hooray! Just in time, too, since the evil action about to be played on Sir Tristan would have cost another two enemy siege engines, and therefore victory to the forces of badness…
Total game time: 95 mins.

Game Session, Feb 19, 2006

2006-02-22T09:10:00.000+11:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Pat, Alex, Brad, Paul.
Played: David & Goliath, Coda, Powergrid, Deduce or Die, The Willow Game, Katzenjammer Blues, Ave Caesar.

Thanks to Richard for notes about Deduce or Die and The Willow Game.
Thanks again to Brad for the pictures.

David & Goliath: This is a straightforward trick-taking game with a twist. Cards in 5 suits are numbered 1 through to 18. Plays must follow suit where they can, but the player of the lowest card in the trick takes the highest value card, regardless of suit in both cases. The highest card in the trick, again regardless of suit, takes the rest. Taken cards are kept face up, so you never need remember what has been played and what hasn't. Of course, there is no record of who played what card, so you still need your memory for that.
Points scored are the face value of the cards collected, unless you have 3 or more of the same suit, in which case they are only worth one each.
A score pad was kept for this game, but the only result I remember was that I won. Hooray!

Coda: Pat, Brad and Alex played this while the other 3 of us had dinner. They played an Alex variant, which left out the blank tiles, but allowed the mis-placement of one of the four starting tiles.
I believe the result came down to a 50-50 guess for Alex, which he got wrong, hence giving Brad the game.

Powergrid: I was less keen on the prospect of Deduce or Die, and Brian was happy to join Alex and me in Powergrid. I always enjoy the growth and resource (incl. money) management of this game, and tonight was no exception. This game did seem to go a tad longer than usual, but I don't believe that was because we had a newbie in Brian. I certainly built in cities more conservatively than I have done previously, except for one turn when I had to break past an Alex blockade for more 'breathing room' (at considerable expense, I might add).
As usual, both Alex and I made our share of tactical errors during the game, only recognised in hindsight. For me at least I think these were less severe than mistakes made in previous games, although it is possible that without the likes of Pat playing as an opponent the whole system is a little more forgiving...
Brian went the 'garbage strategy', and for much of the game I think this worked well for him. It came unstuck in the final turn when, much to my surprise and Brian's, Alex trumped in and bought a big garbage power station, then took advantage of turn order to snap up all available resources.
Alex went wind and nuclear, although didn't take much advantage of the latter before discarding stations and expensive stockpiled resources in favour of bigger plants (including the garbage one in the last turn). I stayed mostly with resource-hungry coal and oil, before getting a windfarm (to be replaced by a nuke on the last turn) and the fusion plant at a good price of $80.
The end game was excruciatingly close, and did suffer a little from analysis paralysis as Alex and I spent some time going through 'what-if's to optimise station placement. Alex and I could both build and power 17 stations (with building sprees of 6 or 7 stations on the last turn), so the analysis was over how to build as cheaply as possible to win the tie-break with cash at hand. After several re-counts we had a definitive result! Total game time was a massive 2.5 hours.

Results: Paul 1st (17 stations, enough capacity to fuel all + 1; $28 in cash). Alex 2nd (17 stations, enough capacity to fuel all + 2; $20 in cash). Brian 3rd (16 stations, enough capacity to fuel all + 2; cash not recorded).
Whew.

Deduce or Die: Thanks to Richard for this account. Game design by Larry Levy.
The stripped back version: only cards 1-6 instead of 1-9. Played twice, each game taking about half an hour. Brad, Pat and Richard plotted, argued and deduced. In the first game, the secret question was used by each player a turn or two before the end. Richard called first but was
wrong. Pat correctly answered it two turns later. However Pat's written answer to Richard's secret question proved damning evidence of fraud, and quod est he was ipso facto the murderer cum non laude. Richard given the win on a technicality.
Game two saw a more confident start. Richard was hampered by holding no Hearts, and so had trouble pinning down the opponents. Pat called early, but had made an error. Brad and Richard raced on, but finally Richard got to the punch first.
Voted as "probably the best deduction game" by Richard and Pat.

The Willow Game: Thanks again to Richard for this account. Game design by Greg Costikyan.
Good guys Brad and Pat faced off against evil Richard. Taking advantage of newbie ignorance Richard rode the North Wind to swoop on poor little Willow with the Army of Nockmaar. Despite wielding his magic sword to considerable effect, the little chap was overwhelmed, and the baby Elora Danaan stolen from him.
The good guys, after some debate, took a relic from Cherlindrea's Forest before finally getting around to releasing Mad Martigan from his captivity. The bad guys went West away from Nockmaar Castle, causing some confusion in the ranks of good. But pretty soon the Freen ferrymen showed up and took Princess Sorsha far away to the mountains near Tir Asleen. Mad Martigan saddled his horse and gave chase. Willow went nuts and charged General Kael with a Lightning Bolt spell that fizzled yet again. Airk went to rescue Willow, but instead took a pummeling and the Army of Galladoon were routed.
Sorsha had to pull a few fancy moves to delay Martigan who, equipped with magic sword and armour was looking fairly formidable. A few foes to slow Martigan, an extra move, and a daring cross-country tobogganning ploy saw Sorsha at the gates of Nockmaar Castle bearing the baby. Richard was feeling a bit bad at this point - the game was going to be over after only 20 minutes, and the only experience Brad and Pat had had was of a good pummeling. That was all about to change....
Kael failed to find the heroes and they snuck away. The double move trick was pulled by the good guys, and they regrouped with Martigan. Extensive strategy consultations gave Martigan the Dust of the Broken Heart and a Haste spell, to give him four consecutive moves while Sorsha tried to prove her identity to the deaf and blind gatekeeper. Martigan attacked the fair princess as she stood alone, but a lucky arrow from her trusty bow knocked his sword out his hand. In desperation he threw the Dust of the Broken Heart and smiled his goofiest grin. Sorsha was smitten, the scene faded to a tumultuous sky over the sound of crashing waves, and suddenly Sorsha cried, aaagh I've had with living at home, I'm nearly 30 gooddammit and it's time to move on.
Without as much as a goodbye note to Queen Bavmorda who, as a single mother had struggled with a demanding job (oppressing an entire kingdom) as well as with raising a baby with no decent help, Sorsha was off to join the good guys. Kael struggled on alone, but his horse was a pathetic unregistered bomb, cast off when the "good" guys upgraded to the latest Pegasus model, so he could only watch from afar as the good guys rode off into the distance, woke the sleepers of Tir Asleen and crowned the new King and Queen of the realm.
He had a bad feeling Queen Bavmorda wasn't going to give him his performance bonus this month....

Katzenjammer Blues: A Knizia game if I'm not wrong...
Richard, Pat and Brad continued on to this quickie while Alex, Brian and I were still executing the final turns of Powergrid. I think I vaguely overheard the opposite of praise for this game when they were finished, although on post-mortem it was discovered that there were a lot of jokers left in the unplayed part of the deck (which is presumably significant...).

Results: Richard: 7. Brad: 5. Pat: 3.

Ave Caesar: Always a good way to end an evening, and the more players the better.
House rules played: The "Mackie Whipping Rule": If you are blocked by an opponent immediately in front of you and you have a 1 card, you can reach them with your horsewhip and exchange places on the track with them. (Of course, if they too have a 1 card, they will return the favour on their next turn!).
The first race was brutal, and done in 26 minutes. There were whippings and counter-whippings, and tactical blocks that saw two of us (Alex and me) forced to miss the Caesar salute. Pat crossed the finish line first. I crossed 2nd, but disqualified for having done no Ave Caesar! Brad next, then Richard and Brian. Alex ran out of juice before the end.
The second race was also horrible, although some of us could rise ahead of the pack this time! Using the alternative track option was a fraction more forgiving, and I believe all racers had enough gas to make all the way around. Time taken was 19 minutes. I crossed first, and I had managed to Ave Caesar. Brian crossed second, then Brad, Richard, Alex, then Pat.
Scores were allocated in each race as follows: 1st: 6. 2nd: 4. 3rd: 3. 4th:2. 5th: 1. 6th and DNF: 0.

Final results: Brad: 7. Paul: 6. Brian: 6. Pat: 6. Richard: 5. Alex: 1.

Game Session, Feb 12, 2006

2006-02-14T13:41:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Paula, Paul, Richard, Brian, Pat, Alex, Brad.
Played: Sleuth, Humm Bug, Lost Valley, Attika, Samarkand, Chiamo.

Thanks again to Brad for better quality pics this week. Click on 'em to see larger.

Sleuth: 6p deduction of the hidden gem stone card.
Richard won in an hour.

Humm Bug:
Hmm... For those that don't know, this is the music trivia humming guessing game. You draw a card with a song title from an era corresponding to the coloured space you are about to move to. Everyone else tries to guess the song before your timer sand runs out. If someone succeeds, both of you advance one space.
The playing of this one seems to have arisen because of metagaming between Pat and Alex. Hoping to draw out a game veto from Alex, Pat suggested this. For whatever reason, perhaps an enthusiastic response from the rest of the table (or perhaps general apathy), Alex called the bluff, and we were on. We had all seven of us playing, using an explorer character from Africa to make up the extra piece.
To reduce the pain for all, we also played certain house rules, some of which seem to have been decided after we started. Everyone got a handicap of two spaces, and you won by guessing someone elses hum on your second-last space.
Fortunately for all, this was over in 20 minutes - Pat the winner, Paula a close second. Actually, in the right circumstances I can really enjoy this game, despite the complaints and dissing!

Lost Valley: The game groups then divided into two x 3p, with Paula retiring to watch some winter Olympics action on TV. Alex and I settled on Lost Valley again, ahead of Hazienda, with the memory of last week's game with Pat still fresh. This time we brought in Brad, who hadn't played before, and who hence should have made things softer for us! Of course this wasn't the case, and Brad played competitively despite being new.
Brad followed the river and was responsible for uncovering most of this. He collected decent river gold strikes, and mined out some good mountain gold stashes, despite Alex claim-jumping a little of this. Alex on the other hand, mainly explored in the other direction, with his wagon loaded with whisky, hoping to take advantage of distance to give himself enough privacy to exploit the riches he would find. But he could see me hovering nearby, and therefore made his explorations and mines carefully to keep my interest down, which worked for a while. He also inadvertently slowed himself down by taking one shovel too few, and this possibly cost him the game indirectly. Oh well; we all screw up from time to time!
I ended up mostly following the river too, using a canoe to speed progress, but staying mainly on the opposite side to Brad in order to keep any discoveries as remote as possible from him. In fact, I was preparing to dig a mine when Brad explored out the remaining tiles, thus triggering the ice-flow end-game. Alex then opened a mine within two turns' range of my canoe, and much to his chagrin I parasitised two tokens from it, before returning up river to grab one last gold token from Brad's mine at the top of the spring.
I didn't properly time this, but it was around an hour, give or take 10 mins.

Results: Paul: 21. Brad: 19. Alex: 16.

Attika: Pat, Richard and Brian played this. I think Richard might have been keen to compare it with Magna Grecia, played a few weeks ago, since they have similar themes, although they are very different games.
I think Richard won this, but will have to confirm.

Samarkand: Simple caravan trading. Pat, Richard and Brian moved onto this while Alex, Brad and I were freezing our butts off looking for gold in the Yukon.
Don't know who won.

Chiamo: Paula came back to join Alex, Brad and me in a 4p version of this Italian trick-taking game.
This is played in fixed partnerships and has a few unusual features, which one soon gets used to. Points earned in tricks come from the highest ranking cards, namely, 3, 2, A , Re (King) , (C - forget, but like a Jack), and Donna (maid, not a Queen, ranked the lowest of the court cards). The A is worth 3 points (all other high cards 1) despite being only the 3rd highest card in a suit. Bonus points also come from winning the last trick, and melds of high cards made immediately after the first trick.
Another feature is the limited table-talk you are permitted. One call is "Busso", played on a lead, to tell your partner that you want them to win this trick and then lead the same suit back to you. "Striscio" means that you have coverage of low cards in the suit just played. "Volo" means 'this is my last card in this suit' (Brad kept saying "Volvo"!).
After about an hour 20 minutes, including rules work-through and coffee preparations, Alex and Paula had defeated Brad and me decisively.

Results: Alex + Paula: 214. Brad + Paul: 151.

New, improved phone pics!

2006-02-10T09:48:00.000+11:00

I just discovered this morning that I can extract slightly better quality pics from my Nokia 6610i.
Until today, when I emailed pics taken from my phone, by default the images would be scaled, so the final resolution of the published pics was actually 148 x 120 pixels (ie., 0.018 megapixels)!
But, after casually flicking through the settings on my phone, I found that I could change this so that images would not be scaled. I can now have them published at 352 x 288 (ie., 0.1 megapixels; more than half an order of magnitude better res.)!
Hooray!

OK, the pics are still crap compared to the ones that Brad provided, but certainly better than previous ones.

I still have originals going back to mid Jan, so for completeness of the record I will gradually try to update the previous posts. I know, no one will ever look at them again, but it will bother me if I don't do it...

Game Session, Feb 5, 2006

2006-02-07T15:23:00.000+11:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Pat, Alex, Brad, Paul.
Played: Adel Verpflichtet, Lost Valley, Sunda to Sahul, Eleusis, Liar.

Adel Verpflichtet: This game was recently re-released in English as Hoity Toity.
Chaotic silliness with 6 of us playing, competing for opportunities at the auction house or the "Schloss" (castle). For all but about 2 turns the entire game Richard and l were cycling together - always picking the same play. I don't know if this really made it harder for both of us, but there was certainly an illusion of this if it wasn't actual.
Six players obviously reduces the chances of "monopolies" (or duopolies) in Auction house vs. Schloss plays, so there were very few cheap purchases or untampered exhibitions. But there were a lot of thieves and detectives, and much hilarity as each turn everyone tried to second guess each other.
Towards the end Brad just ran away with it - I'm not sure if he got lucky with a few good-scoring exhibits, but the rest of us were bunched up behind. In fact, the next three of us were on the same spot about eight spaces behind, with ties broken (in my favour - hooray!) by most valuable exhibits.

Results: Brad 1st, then Paul, Brian, Pat, Richard, Alex.

Lost Valley: Not Goldland.
Alex, Pat and I explored the gold-rush era Yukon, while Brad, Richard and Brian discovered the South Pacific.
So the first three of us went our separate ways up river in search of gold as our prime objective, also looking for other items and commodities (food, timber), to help us obtain the gold.
While Alex managed to put some good distance between himself and the other two of us, he was a little unlucky with finding sources of mountain gold. Pat optimised his moves to take advantage of my two mines, using whisky to take an extra token. This is the one theme detail in the game that is a bit strange; "...ok chaps, we need a 200% effort over the next few days. Break out the whisky immediately!"
I managed to score consistently, but hit some bad luck hunting, losing three turns on bad dice rolls trying to bring down a bear. Pat accelerated his gold haul with the purchase of dynamite. This nudged him ahead of Alex and me by the time the winter weather had frozen the river over to end the game. Exactly one hour for the three of us.

Results: Pat: 32. Paul: 30. Alex: 24.

Sunda to Sahul: Puzzling islands and tribes.
Brad, Richard and Brian two games of this in the same time it took us to play Lost Valley once (60mins). They played the timed, turn-based version, fitting the puzzle-like pieces to form islands, then populate them with their tribe markers to wrest control.
Final scores in the last game were:
Richard: 67; Brad: 62; Brian: 2.

Eleusis: That which eludes us.
I cringed when someone (Pat, I think) suggested Zendo to finish the night. Richard then counter-suggested Eleusis, which made me happier, but then made Pat cringe instead! He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he was actually happy to play Eleusis anyway...
We played several rounds of this over two hours, which included 30 mins upfront to arrange coffees and do the rules and examples for those new to it (ie., Brian and Brad). Pat volunteered to be 'God' first; not a huge leap for him. He came up with a good rule, at least I thought so since I got to be 'prophet' and was successful in this case, scoring more than 3x the points in this round than any other player (not counting Pat, since God's points for a round equals those of the highest scoring player).
Brian went next, but decided to abandon five minutes in because of an unforseen flaw! (His rule involved patterns of even and prime numbers or something; really hard to figure out...) This is actually one of the interesting challenges in this game - coming up with a good rule! It must not be too obvious, or as God you are unlikely to score highly. But, it must be simple: you want at least one player to figure it out while others fail to crack it.
Brad then stepped up as God, and had a nice rule that followed a simple pattern in a three-card sequence. Both Pat and I figured it out, and I got to be prophet first. However, I screwed up on the first prediction because of a careless counting error, and Pat then took advantage of the prophet position instead. Since Richard, Alex and Brian were still scratching their heads at the end of the round, I still did OK, being able to deplete my hand of cards. Of course, Brad had broken a house rule by having a rule involving played card history >1, but we decided to count it anyway, since two of us were able to figure it out easily enough.
Alex went next with his rule, although I don't recall what this was or how well it played. It took 25 minutes to play through.
Finally, Richard was God, and again Pat was able to crack the code and go prophet. Like the other 3, I was unable to figure this one out, but I could vaguely discern enough of a pattern to reduce my card count a bit more than the others.
So I did OK in this overall, and could play it again soon. I even have a new rule ready...

Results: Paul: 91. Pat: 90. Brian: 45. Alex: 40. Brad: 39. Richard: 25.

Liar: Pat introduced this 2p, 5min game to end the night. Three Kings, Queens and Jacks (discard, say, clubs) are shuffled and dealt four each. The players must deduce (or guess) the identity of the remaining card. In a turn a player must reveal one from their hand, and ask the other player how many they have of a certain suit or rank (matching the played card). That player must answer truthfully, except for once only in their maximum of 4 turns. If the asking player challenges the answer by declaring "liar!", the game ends immediately and cards are shown. If the liar is caught, they lose. If the challenger was wrong, they lose.
Quick, simple and somewhat interesting. I'm not sure that this is interesting enough to play all that often, but you never know.

Game Session, Jan 29, 2006

2006-02-01T09:10:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Richard, Brian, Marcus, Paul.
Played: Betrayal at the House on the Hill, Magna Grecia, The Watergate Scandal.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill: Marcus brought over this Avalon Hill title, a role-playing boardgame of discoveries and events in a haunted house. In our case, an abridged account of our proceedings would have gone something like this...

Our party of four entered the front door without hesitation. Ox Bellows (played this evening by Brian), the biggest and least subtle of the team, barged ahead over the creaking floor boards, apparently oblivious to even the possibility of danger. He was followed only slightly more tentatively by Missy Dubois (Richard), the precocious nine-year old who really should have been at home in bed, but who couldn't resist following Ox on yet another one of his escapades. This was partly out of her own sense of adventure, but also out of the macabre expectation that he might injure himself again, perhaps seriously this time, and she could practice her medicinal talents on him. This was her latest hobby; she had recently enrolled in the Medicine-by-Mail course offered by the University of Woolloomooloo, having used her father's credit card to pay the subscription fees online.
Heather Granville (Marcus) stepped through next. Heather was like a cross between the classic screen vamp of the 1950s, and Lara Croft, and she could give a look that could kill at ten paces. Unfortunately this was seldom effective, since her subjects' eyes were more often drawn to her chest than to her face. Heather made a bee-line for the staircase at the end of the corridor, and was out of sight of the rest of the party within seconds. At the top of the stairs she found herself in a retro-furnished bedroom. But before she could rummage through the closet in search of a free pair of shoes (with just that right look, but now impossible to buy anywhere), white flakes began to rain down on her. As she looked up the whole ceiling collapsed, and Heather Granville found herself buried under a pile of ceiling plaster. She tried to scream for help, but instead could only spit out mouthfuls of chalky powder...

The last to enter the house was Father Rhinehardt (Paul). There was little that could disturb the stoic priest - his faith had helped him deal with many a house-of-spooks in the past. Despite this his companions had little confidence in his abilities, since he had the physical prowess of bantam with bird flu.
Determined to be of more use in a fight this time, he came prepared with his favourite gardening trowel in his overcoat pocket.
"I think we should all stay together," he called out, and promptly headed in the opposite direction to everyone else.

Meanwhile, as Ox retraced his steps, Missy found herself separated from him, stumbling into into a tiny, dark-red velvet enclosed room. As she turned to make a quick exit from the claustrophobic corner, the door slid shut with a metallic clang. An array of polished bone buttons on the facing wall revealed that she was in an elevator, but the inscrutable markings on them provided no clue on how to operate the device with purpose. So she covered her eyes with her left hand, and with her right index finger she pressed one at random. The room shook violently, and as Missy held on to walls she felt the sensation of rapid descent...

Ox looked around for the girl, but saw no trace of her. He searched one room after another, and was soon distracted by what appeared to be a trapdoor in the floor.
'I wonder what's under here,' he thought to himself, as he tried to lift the panel open. It didn't budge, so he tried stomping it heavily with his right foot. Aha - he could feel it beginning to give - it just needed a little more pressure and it would surely open up.
Cleverness not being his best attribute, he stood perfectly centered over the square, ready to jump up and down with all his might. As he leapt into the air to deliver the first blow, the trapdoor opened quickly, and Ox disappeared quietly, and stupidly, into the shaft below.

Father Rhinehardt wandered aimlessly, and soon found himself in a gaudily laid-out games room. He was immediately drawn to an exquisite painting on the far wall, featuring half a dozen dogs of various breeds, standing in casual poses around a pool table, some of them smoking cigars, while one of them lined up a shot with his cue. The picture seemed a little out of place, since the rest of the decorations in the room were rather tacky.
A maniacal giggle behind him startled him back to the moment. He turned, to be met by a small, shabbily-dressed man, face frighteningly contorted in a ludicrous grin. Fighting back the sudden shock, Father Rhinehardt retrieved the trowel from his pocket, gripping it with his two trembling hands, pointing it at the stranger with all the menace of a bunny with a sharpened carrot, while backing himself against the pool-playing hounds.
But the madman just stood there staring and smiling at him, swaying from side to side. Actually, he reminded Rhinehardt of several of his clergy friends. Realising the man was no real threat, he soon felt safe enough to return his gardening implement to his pocket. He then introduced himself and asked for the stranger's name, but the madman simply giggled again, before pointing slowly at the priest's waist.
Rhinehardt looked down and noticed, for the first time, a small round object attached to the side of this belt. He touched it - it looked like a plastic pill box, fixed to his belt with some kind of non-removable clip. Where had this come from? Examining this in the dim light, he could barely make out that it had a small LCD display showing a series of numbers, changing by the second. It appeared to be... a count down.

Missy stepped out of the mystic elevator somewhere in the basement level of the house. Off to the side of the lift she found herself in darkened room, filled with disused laboratory paraphernalia. Fascinated, she rummaged through the bookshelves and cabinets, looking for any useful bits and pieces she might add to her collection of dissecting instruments, medicines and potions. She was soon rewarded with a small timber case, containing a needle and syringe and glass vial labelled 'adrenaline'. Cool.
Missy pocketed her find, and as she continued to explore her new environment, she became aware of a distant wail from somewhere above, gradually growing louder and closer. She recognised it as Ox's voice immediately.
Suddenly, a confused-looking Ox Bellows dropped through a shaft in the ceiling above and landed with a thud in front of her. Recovering quickly to his feet and dusting himself off, he looked around cautiously before declaring, nonchalantly, "there you are...".
"Indeed," she replied, studying him, as he tried to act as though dropping through a hole in the ceiling were a perfectly natural way to enter a room.
As Ox turned to look around, Missy saw an unusual round gadget snagged onto the back of his trousers.
"What have you got on your back there, Ox?" As she reached behind him, he noticed that she too seemed to have some object stuck to the back of her dress collar. They tried for a moment to remove the foreign items from each other's clothing, before realising that they could not. As Missy looked more closely at Ox's gadget, she could see the faint numbers ticking over on the display.
The truth washed over her in a sudden, frightening rush of terrible realisation. Of course! She, Ox and Father Rhinehardt had been lured to the house by Heather Granville, mere pawns in her devious, megalomanic urge to construct one of the most terrifying instruments of mass destruction the world has ever seen. The truckloads of Semtex, C40 and coloured party poppers out the front of the abandoned house should have been a giveaway, but she thought little of it at the time, assuming Heather must have been planning some kind of fireworks display to mark the old priest's birthday.
Obviously the personal time bombs were Heather's 'insurance policy' should the heroes try to thwart her evil plan.
"Quick, we don't have much time," Missy barked at Ox, as she reached for her new-found adrenaline kit.
"Well, how much time have we got?" asked Ox.
"I don't know, but it can't be much," replied Missy. "When you've got a time bomb on you, it's never much time. I expect we'll have to defuse these with about one second left to spare. Hold this box while I give myself a shot of adrenaline. It will help me work faster, thus saving valuable seconds..."
"As many seconds as it takes to give yourself an injection?" quizzed Ox.
"Shut up!"
She began to self-administer the drug slowly and deliberately as if she had done it all a hundred times before...

The truth washed over Father Rhinehardt in a sudden, frightening rush of terrible realisation. Of course! He, Ox and Missy Dubois had been lured to the house by Heather Granville, mere pawns in her devious, megalomanic urge to construct one of the most terrifying... Wait! This was no time for repetitive monologuing - he had a bomb to defuse.
Working confidently but carefully, he prised open the bomb casing with his fingernail, knowing that all he need do was to disconnect the red explosive trigger circuit from the power sourc - KABOOM!!
Rotten luck.
He had triggered activation circuit instead. In the dim light he failed to notice the little sticker inside the container:

NOTE TO INSTALLER: Removal of red wire will trigger the activation circuit. To defuse, remove the blue wire instead.

The priest and his newly acquired campanion were immediately blasted into smouldering fragments.
But a far worse tragedy was the masterpiece of the dogs playing pool. It was destroyed; scattered in pieces about the room with bits of Father Rhinehardt's brain embedded deep within the print.

As Missy worked on defusing Ox's bomb, they heard the explosion in one of the rooms above.
"I think Father Rhinehardt found his bomb," said Ox, matter-of-factly.
"Hmm..." agreed Missy, frowning as she read the little warning label inside the case.
"There!" she said with satisfaction, as the numbers disappeared from the little panel on Ox's device. "Now, go and get her, before she completes her dastardly plan!"
For about the second time in his life, Ox didn't have to be told twice. Despite never having seen the mystic elevator before, somehow he knew to run straight for it, and press the button to take him straight to the upper floor landing...

Heather Granville finally pried herself free from the plasterboard that had trapped her in the old bedroom, just as she heard the explosion from one of the rooms below.
"Damn!" She thought, as she got to her feet. "They discovered their personal time bombs already; they're sharper than they look. Well, two of them, I suppose. I'll have to bring forward my evil plans before they come for me."
Brushing white dust from her shoulders, she removed from her purse an unlikely device resembling a remote controller unit for a toy car, and pressed one of three red buttons at the top of the unit.
Nothing happened.
Bemused, she took out a small instruction booklet from her purse and flicked to the troubleshooting section on the last page. She looked the paragraph labelled "personal bomb does not go off when red button is pressed", and ran her finger down the list of possible causes and their remedies, before returning to the first: "Safety catch has not been disabled. Disable saftey catch."
She smiled malevolently and turned her attention back to the device...

Missy Dubois considered briefly the notion of removing her dress and its permanently-attached time bomb completely as a solution to her current dilemma, but decided that the embarrassment of wandering around a strange house in her underwear was a fate far worse than death. Moving to the kitchen next door with its better lighting, she began to disassemble her bomb. As she fumbled with the plastic cover, two floors above her Heather Granville pressed the button that would make her efforts moot.
Poor Missy suddenly found herself smeared like jam over the fridge door.
And, for that matter, everything else in the room.

As Heather Granville felt the second explosion shudder through the house, she readied herself to push the next button. Suddenly the heavy frame of Ox Bellows appeared at the bedroom entrance, ready to foil her evil plans.
"I'm here to foil your evil plans, Heather Granville," pronounced Ox, defiantly. "Drop that controller!"
To his surprise she complied, but then immediately assumed some exotic martial arts stance, ready to do hand-to-hand battle with the dumb Ox.
Belligerently he charged at her. As she stepped forward to block his advance with a high right kick to the head, he tripped on a heavy sheet of the fallen plasterboard, gracelessly ducking her stilleto. In a reflex action his hands reached out to catch anything to break his fall, and his fingertips found Heather's left leg pantyhose at thigh level. They came down with him, pulling the joined but raised right leg behind and over the top of his head as he smacked into the floor in a cloud of chalk dust.
Heather twisted above. Completely thrown off-balance with her pantyhose around her ankles, she fell backwards and with full force over the lowboy, her head whipping over its top edge. Ox scrambled to his feet, preparing to grapple again with Heather. But she lay motionless, her neck broken by the fall.

Moments later police sirens filled the night air, arriving on cue right at the end of the adventure, to drape a blanket over our hero's shoulders and hand him a steaming thermos of coffee.

That's about it. I don't recall all the details and sequence of events in the actual game, so some liberties have been taken here. The game took about 53 minutes to play. This synopsis took about three times that to write.
I'm not in a hurry to play it again, but wouldn't mind every so often to give me an excuse to write a bad short story!

Magna Grecia: I really like this game, but none of the others had played before, and it has been a while since I've played, so there was a 20 minute investment up front in re-hashing the details of the rules.
We decided to play the shortened, 8-round version since it took us so long to get going. As usual, all of us made some mistakes with the playing of some of our markets. Richard was most successful at the market plays, and had these and his cities well-distributed over the map by game end. We played pus- and counter-pus plays over one of the oracles, but by the end Richard had optimised his plays and maximised his oracles more successfully.
As Marcus observed, this is one you want to play a few times (relatively close together!) to get the right feel for the game.
Time taken: 95 minutes.

Results: Richard: 50. Paul: 43. Brian: 33. Marcus: 28.

The Watergate Scandal: Brian brought this simple card game from his collection, that seemed almost to date from the Watergate era itself.
Players are dealt a hand of seven cards from a deck comprising about 6 types (eg., White House aide, Sabateur, Campaign Contributer), a dozen or so of each type. The lead player (which advances after each ''trick") declares a type and plays this face down (but may lie! ie., play a different card). The other players then select this type from their hand and also play this face down, but they may lie also. The leader then challenges one of the other players that they are lying, or believes them all.
If he challenges, the challenged player may reveal their card, and cop a random penalty card (between 0 and 200) if they were indeed lying, or if they were truthful cause the challenger (leader) to take a penalty instead. The challenged player, if lying, may instead of revealing their card, counter-challenge the leader, who must show their card and cop a penalty if lying (or force the counter-challenger to take a penalty if they were truthful)!
If the leader chooses to believe everyone, the other players immediately reveal their cards, and if he is wrong he takes the regular penalty. If correct, he can halve his current total penalty score. In this case any of the other players may then counter-challenge his card!
So, simple rules, and even simpler components, giving rise to much silliness but, unexpectedly, a lot of fun over the course of 72 minutes.

Penalty point results (ie., lower is better): Paul: 458.75. Richard: 837.5. Marcus: 900. Brian: 1005.

Game Session, Jan 22, 2006

2006-01-23T10:47:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Craig, Alex, Brad, Marcus, Paula, Paul.
Played: Alles im Eimer, Rheinlander, Ticket to Ride Europe, Peurto Rico, Carcassonne, Canyon.

Note: New, improved pics courtesy of Brad!

Alles im Eimer: The ice-breaker for the evening.
Buckets.
Vessel-loads of 'em.

Results: Craig: 8. Alex: 5. Brad : 3. Paula: 0.

Rheinlander: Tokens and little plastic horses ridden by GruppenFührers.
Rivers of 'em.
About 80 minutes playing time for 5 players.
Results: Paula: 42. Alex: 34. Marcus: 24. Craig: 16. Brad: 15.

Ticket to Ride Europe: Cities, connecting lines, stations and locomotives.
Train-loads of 'em.

Results: Brad: 119. Paula: 118. Marcus: ~76.

Peurto Rico: Indigo plants, purple buildings, and 'racially-adjusted settlers'.
Yep, plantations full of 'em.
I actually played this one, so I should have something more to say about it. Well, I do, but not much. Gripping as always, perhaps even more so with 3p because on most turns one actually has real choice of actions. Also, the Governer seems to whip around between players, so it's important to optimise one's plays taking this into account.
Craig went the factory + harbour strategy, and I don't think he needed the wharf in the end. Alex executed frequent captained shipments, which I thought would win him the game. My hospice strategy (giving ''manned" plantations and quarries) seemed to work well and I had four active quarries well before the game end. I had an equal best buildings score, and with the special building that gives the bonus for settlers, this was a nice points earner.
Of course this is not sufficient against players like Craig and Alex, and my points for commodity shipments were way down compared to theirs. I had a harbour, but this was responsible for a total of 2 points for shipping for the whole game.
So I'm yet to find an effective counter-strategy to the factory-wharf-harbour build. Of course, this doesn't mean there isn't one! I think on another play of this I'd like to try some of the alternative purple building types, to break up this combination and perhaps find some new ones.
Playing time: 80 minutes.

Results: Craig: 56. Alex: 49. Paul: 48.

Carcassonne: Craig left the remaining five of us to this one, which is far more fun than rolling dice and adding up the numbers, but hardly less random for determining the outcome ;-)

Perhaps some of the players found some value in the draw and play of the more interesting tiles, while I pondered what fun I could have with yet another plain tile with a road on it. Ooh, look - that one has a bend in it...
Total playing time: 30 minutes - about 28 too many in this case.

Results: Paula: 78. Alex: 59. Marcus: 51. Brad: 50. Paul: 43.

Canyon: Whose idea was it to play this?! Again, dice would have been quicker! And this was despite playing the variant that skips rounds 6 to 9 (ie; deals of 3,2,1,2 cards respectively). For the noobs to this game we estimated about 50 minutes playing time, but we overshot this by 33 minutes.

Alex crossed the finish line first, but we decided to play on to determine positions, and whether he could lap any of us (he didn't). Marcus snuck past Paula, who was the only one to succumb to the falls.
Next playing of this must use the Grand Canyon components!

Results: Alex: 1st. Marcus: 2nd. Paula: 3rd. Paul: 4th (dnf). Brad: 5th (dnf).

Game Session, Jan 15, 2006

2006-01-18T11:07:00.000+11:00

Venue: Richard 's place.
Present: Richard, Andrew, Pat, Alex, Brad, Brian, Matthew, Paul.
Played: That's Life, Coda, Samurai, Taj Mahal, Hazienda, High Society, Modern Art, Coda (again), 6 nimmt.

That's Life: This was the starter to ease into the evening, played by the earliest arrivals - Richard, Pat, Andrew, Alex, Brad and Brian. Twenty quick minutes saw Richard win with 18, Pat second with 14 points.

Coda: We split into two groups, with Alex, Brad and Andrew taking Samurai, and Richard, Pat, me and the "newbies" (Brian and Matthew) going for Hazienda. While we waited for Matthew we broke out Coda, a nice, challenging way to pass a short amount of time. So short, in fact, ( less than 15 mins) that we had to go again!
Pat won both games.

Samurai: Andrew, Alex and Brad.
Andrew's summary report: Alex 1st (1 majority + 5 spare), Brad 2nd (1 majority + 4 spare),
Andrew last (0 majorities).

Taj Mahal: Andrew, Alex and Brad again. They finished up shortly after our game of Hazienda finished.
Results (courtesy of Andrew): Andrew: 59. Alex: 44. Brad: 35.

Hazienda: A good game with five, I think, and easy to learn for those not used to boardgaming. As reported last week, I hoped to score better with a second playing, even though it wasn't an even playing field (Pat experienced, one previous playing for me, the other three new to the game). But there's still plenty of room for improvement, which I began to appreciate after paying attention to Pat. I started this game I thought not unlike the way Pat played the previous, focussing mainly on one long land chain, building out the animal herds, but not so quickly to be at the expense of valuable land, which is more at a premium in a 5p game. Pat did this in the current game as well, but also made sure he snuck in a good number of market touches, which increase in value logarithmically. After realising this I managed to make up a small amount of "ground", but certainly should have done so sooner in order to get a better half-way score. It was this halfway point where the obvious disparity emerged. Pat had soared ahead, and the remaining four of us were clustered together at about 2/3rds of his points value. By the final scoring round, this margin seemed to be at about the same scale.
Richard spotted one rules inconsistency that Pat had been playing until this game, concerning the Pampas land card. The written rule is that a token played with the Pampas card must connect to an existing chain of land tokens.
I could continue playing this game in later sessions, and would be keen to try some of the reproduced map boards that are available on the web.
Total playing time: 75 minutes.

Results: Pat: 145. Richard: 115. Paul: 115. Brian: 106. Matthew: 93.

High Society: Andrew, Alex, Brad and Paul engaged in this one while the other guys played Modern Art. This bidding game seems kind of silly, but there is certainly a strong element of bluff and counter bluff - who's going to flinch first?
Andrew won the first game in 20 mins (incl. rules), so we played another, and Andrew won again.

Modern Art: Richard, Pat, Brian and Matthew. No data.

Coda (again):This set was provided by Andrew, actuallly labelled as The Da Vinci Code Game. Andrew, Alex, Brad and I played this in 11 minutes, not using the dashes, which I won. We played again with the dashes and a starting hand of 3 tiles (rather than 4), and Brad won this in 13 minutes. Cool.

6 nimmt: Since a single night's game session with this many participants is such a rarity, and not seen for some time, years perhaps (not counting Pat's birthday party), it had to be marked with something involving everyone at once.
Rolling dice and adding up the totals might just as readily determine the outcomes here as far as careful and clever play is concerned, but certainly would not be as much tense fun as 6 nimmt. This game reminds me of Russian Roulette, which perhaps explains why I had a dream about a boardgame version of RR the other night.
Hmmm.
Either that or it reveals something dark and Dear Hunter-ish within my psyche.

We played three rounds (of 6 nimmt, not Russian Roulette) at an average of about 15 minutes each, with the following results (in seating order (because that's important, right?)):

[Player: hand1, hand2, hand3, total]
Andrew: 10, 11, 22, 43
Alex: 26, 9, 0, 35
Brad: 18, 12, 11, 42
Paul: 17, 0, 27, 44
Brian: 0, 12, 21, 33
Matthew: 18, 25, 16, 59
Richard: 20, 14, 8, 42
Pat: 5, 28, 10, 43.

~fin~

Game Session, Jan 8, 2006

2006-01-11T14:09:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Pat, Alex, Brad, Paula, Paul.
Played: Chiamo, Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers, Cartegna, Hazienda, Zendo.

Chiamo: While waiting for others to arrive, Paula challenged Pat to a quick 2p version of this Italian trick-taking game. I'm not sure if this was played seriously enough to consider who won or what the scores were.

Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers: I think all played this but me, as I volunteered to settle the kids down on this night.
Don't know the outcome of this.

Cartegna: I just managed to witness the tail end of this one after our eldest finally went to bed. Pat was the first to get his last pirate onto the boat, comfortably ahead of Alex, then Paula, then Brad.

Hazienda: A new title to most of us, introduced by Pat, featuring farming and animal round-ups in Argentina. Players use 3 turn actions to acquire terrain tiles and animal herds and place them on the map board to grow their empire and reach market spaces. Quite simple and quick to play, the challenge is to settle on a workable strategy and get your tiles down in the limited board spaces before your opponents do, and to do so in a way that will optimise your points return.
Board real estate gets tight through the second half of the game, especially with five players. This makes the emphasis shift a bit, from grand strategic plans at the start, to optimal tactical plays and finesse towards the end.
An enjoyable game in one hour, plus 15mins rules time. I'm eager to play again, since I think I can avoid making the same mistakes and do much better!

Results: Pat: 124. Alex: 101. Brad: 88. Paul: 79. Paula: 74.

Zendo: I feel like I should have known better than to suggest this, but I saw it poking through Pat's game bag, and I just couldn't help myself. We played with the following rules variations and scoring mechanism: After one round of player guesses, all guesses must be "mondo". Scores tracked are how many green stones are accumulated ie., correct mondo guesses. The master scores a given round equal to the greatest number of green stones scored by any other guessing player.
Paula's pattern proved impossible to guess after three rounds, despite looking simple, and demonstrates the hazard of making rules containing logical ''and" clauses.
I found it difficult to get in sync with any of the patterns presented by the other players, barely getting near attempting to guess any of them. My score is a reflection of the number of correct guesses made on my turn as master. Final scores shown here are after subtractions taken every round, due to the shortage of green stones; ie., consider only the points differences here, not the absolute values.
One hour and 10 minutes in total, including about 55 mins of humiliation and 15 mins of relative comfort (when I was the master).

-----
Scoring clarification remarks sent to me by Pat:
We played two bonus stones for getting it right and that the master received the max score anyone got (including the bonuses, although we could more easily scored it without the bonuses given each master went once and they'd all get the bonuses).

You can't *not* award stones to the master because he'll make it ridiculously simple.

However you also can't award stones to the master because he'll make it hard, hoping that people will rack up greens on the auto-mondo's for an hour and he'll score big.

I'm troubled by the nature of the koan, my children ...

Patrick
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Results: Pat: 11. Alex: 10. Brad: 3. Paula: 6. Paul: 6.
Correct guesses: Alex: 2. Pat: 1. Paula: 1.

Game Session, Jan 7, 2006

2006-01-10T08:53:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Alex, Graeme, Brett, Paul.
Played: San Juan, Ticket to Ride Europe, Star Wars Risk (Clone Wars edition), Cave Troll, Canyon.

San Juan: The patron saint of plantations and purple buildings.
This is the card game version of Puerto Rico, and although more abstract than its older cousin, this plays simply and elegantly. As Alex observes, it is a brilliantly designed game and package, worthy of frequent playing by both the serious and casual gamers.
With the four of us this ended up going a bit longer than expected at one hour and 20, plus 15mins for rules.

Final scores were remarkably close: Graeme: 27. Brett: 29. Paul: 30. Alex: 30 also, but wins on a tie break of surplus hand and production cards.

Ti cket to Ride, Europe: I had played this once the week before with Paula, and was eager to give it another run with more players. Apart from the map board, new features introduced since the original include ferries and tunnels, and more significantly, stations. The latter allow you to use a segment of an opponent's track to complete one or more of your tickets, but at a cost of 4 VP each reckoned at the end of the game.
Another simple game with genuine tension, which I enjoyed immensely - this is possibly my favourite game of the moment and I can't wait to play it again!
Two hours long, including rules.

Results: Alex: 144. Paul: 116. Brett: 112. Graeme: 102.

Star Wars Risk (Clone Wars edition): Make you laugh and cry, it will.
In lieu of an epic, we bit into this one expecting it to take us into late night. Because of recent experience, we decided to split the factions into Alex vs. me, with Graeme and Brett randomly joining one each. Brett and I ended up being the yellow-red Republic, while Alex and Graeme were the blue-black Separatists. We played the bid-for-start variant to reduce the typical starting player advantage. Setup and board allocation proceeds normally, and factions then bid how many armies they are prepared to remove from the board before starting their first turn (which still includes the usual plus-3 reinforcements). We (the Republic) bid three, and the Separatists allowed us this, not wanting to lose four armies for the privilege of going first. In hindsight I'm still not sure whether this was a mistake or the right play. The bid should take into account the state of the existing board placements, and a quick glance revealed we were up against it from the start. Alex had concentrated his forces into a single planet region. Mine and Graeme's placements had a bit more diversity, but were still largely concentrated. Brett's, on the other hand, were more broadly distributed, with a few medium-sized army groupings, and what seemed like a lot of twos. Up against Alex's killing machine they would surely eventually all fall.
There was one early play that left a path open for Brett to grab an easy separatist token (and thus a bonus risk card, or even two or three), but cruel dice rolls brought the move to a rapid halt.
The decline of the Republic was well in-train, exacerbated by the playing of multiple Alliance cards by the Separatists, which allowed them to count the planets occupied by both factions for reinforcements. Soon they were adding bonuses for whole star systems occupied, and the Republic was decimated. Order 66 was called about mid-way along the track, and in another turn or so the suffering was all over. The Graeme-Alex Seperatist combo had decisively annihilated the Brett-Paul Republic in fairly quick time. Historically accurate, perhaps.
End-to-end was 2.5 hours, but that included pizza break and rules run-down. From first piece placement to Order 66 was only 105 minutes, and then only another 15 to end.

Cave Troll: Grrr.
Simple fun playing adventurers and assorted 'support staff' (dwarves, barbarians, etc.) as you try to gain skull points from the various dungeon rooms, while being chased away by opponents wraithes, trolls and orcs.
I felt rather at the mercy of luck, both mine and that of the other players in this game, and hence not in control of my own destiny. However, this may be more a reflection of limited experience playing rather than a game design weakness. But I do think there are too many tokens to manage.
Sixty-seven minutes to play, with an additional 15 for rules, examples and coffee preparation.

Results: Alex: 41. Paul: 34. Brett: 29. Graeme: 17.

Canyon: Little men in boats, but no yodelling.
I was musing to Alex about the fact that this game had sat unplayed on my shelf for ages, and was frequently in view in Pat's games room but also unplayed for years, until recently. Since then it has been played more times than any other game, and I expect it to continue being rolled out frequently to close a night!
Remains a good trick-taking challenge, and was addictive enough to see us play a second game after we whipped throught the first! Next play might even see the 'Grand Canyon' expansion.

Results:
Game 1: Alex crossed the line first, after 50 minutes.
Game 2: Graeme wins after 45 minutes.

Miscellaneous Holiday Gaming, Late Dec 05 - Early Jan 06

2006-01-09T13:48:00.000+11:00

The longer public holiday periods, such as Christmas and Easter, usually present one or more opportunities for some gentle family gaming and/or the unwinding of a whole day epic (such as Age of Renaissance). For various reasons these opportunities didn't arise this season with the same frequency they have done previously. Despite two nights with the extended family all staying at our house, the best we could manage between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day was one game of Settlers of Catan. Excited 1-4 year-olds made sure attention was spent on them rather than anything else, and by the time they were finally asleep the rest of us were far too tired to do any gaming!
A three-day camping trip in a Central Coast National Park allowed four of us one game only of Canyon, for much the same reason.

A few days at the in-laws' saw us sneak in a few others, including a couple of Sudoku. In this case identical copies of a given puzzle are simply distributed to up to four players who race each other to complete the puzzle first. You score a point for each correct number (including starting seed numbers) and suffer a 9 point penalty if there are any mistakes. This is the most basic way to convert this puzzle into a game, and you obviously don't need a formal game set to achieve this. There seem to be one or two other multi-player Sudoku game sets on the market that involve some kind of tile-laying mechanisms. I'd be interested to find out how these work and how well they play.
Also played was Blokus, Carcassonne (once only for each), and a Rugby card game, which was a new Xmas present for a 10-year-old nephew. This is actually a thinly chromed version of "Grass", with each player tabling a Go/No-Go pile (= Grass hassle pile), requiring a kick (Market Open) card to get you started. You then add metres gained to your run (score) pile, trying to reach 100m to score a try. This ends a round (as opposed to a Grass market close), and the only other real difference is that the Rugby one also has an extra player pile for special attributes that provide immunity from some of the bummer cards opponents might play on you. The similarity is so striking that I assume, without checking, that the designer or company must be the same.

The following week Paula and l found a local games and toy shop that was having a post-Christmas sale on boardgames. Their selection was not large, but we did pick up Chiamo, as well as Ticket to Ride, Europe, at 20% off the regular price, which made TtRE about $66 - a bargain!
Chiamo is a trick-taking card game based on a 40 card Italian deck. Apparently best with three players, we had some fun with the 2p variant.
TtRE adds tunnels, ferries, and the all-important stations to the original, and plays well with two, as well as five players (see next game session report). I really like this game after 2 plays, which will interest both seasoned gamers and family groups, although more so the latter. The only challenge will be having the opportunity to play!

So no epic was played over this holiday season, despite trying to set up one for Saturday the 7th. Only Alex from the hardcore gamers was able to make this date. Instead, I invited my two brothers, including Brett, visiting from Argentina with his family until the end of January, to join Alex and me for an extended gaming afternoon/evening. This is the subject of the next game session report.

Game Session, Dec 11, 2005

2005-12-15T09:17:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Richard, Pat, Alex, Marcus, Paul.
Played: Blokus, Dune, Deduce Or Die!

Blokus: Pat brought his new birthday present over for its debut. He played first with Alex while we waited for the others, and Alex emerged the winner after some tense play.
Richard and Marcus soon turned up, but since I was still in dinner mode, they all played the 4p version first. The struggle was glorious, but Richard won decisively, succeeding in using all of his pieces, induding playing his singleton last for extra kudos. Following Richard with least pieces remaining in the hand was Pat, then Alex then Marcus.

Dune: The five of us launched into this, playing only with ''vanilla" components and rules (mostly) - actually a first for me. Pat, Harkonnen, was very quiet for the first half of the game, having overspent on cards on the first turn and the inability to reach or fight for any spice appearing on the board. At least his formidable on-board forces and intimidating hand size of 8 cards were an effective deterrant for anyone considering attacking him. Marcus, the Emperor, kept sucking in the cash from card purchases and the odd spice blow, and got into the occasional conflict with both Richard (Atreides) and Alex (Fremen). The Fremen spread themselves about the board, with some success at gathering spice. They even held Seitch Tabr for a time, before losing this I think to the Harkonnen in the second half of the game. I played the Guild, and while the perception was that my spice cash was comfortable (from the shipping costs of the other players), I was often fairly close to the bone given card purchases and churn.
Atreides (Richard) was the real threat, using prescience to track everyone's hand of cards and keep his own purchases to minimum cost / maximum value. And he optimised his battle plans by always discovering one element of those of his opponent (usually which attack/defense mechanism). And he walked all over the planet surface like he owned the place.
I was able to make a do-or-die play relatively early, holding my starting spot of Tuek's Seitch, successfully gaining the Habbanya one from the Emperor, and using Karama to prevent an Atreides landing. So I made a play for the Fremen-controlled Seitch Tabr. It was improbable, but in my assessment the best chance I was going to get for individual victory, and therefore worth trying. The only way I could win it was to kill Alex's leader and have mine survive. I achieved half of those requirements, but my battle leader chose to take poison antidote as a defence against bullets, and this was not effective. So the game continued, with me depleted of cards and spice.
The Emperor then blew the shield wall as the storm rushed through, wiping out the Atreides and the Harkonnen from their starting strongholds. A nexus finally occurred, overdue by one or two turns, and the Emperor, Harkonnen, and the Guild joined forces against Atreides and Fremen. A few battles later the geopolitical landscape had been completely altered, when another nexus split existing alliances. The Guild was ousted and Atreides forced their way in to form a new axis of evil with the Emperor and the Harkonnen. There was little to be done, and the game was over with a single battle.
This is still an interesting game although I only get to play once every two years or so. A significant characteristic of this game is what might be described as a "complexity of subtleties". What I mean by this is that although the game mechanisms themselves are quite straightforward, the impacts of the various cards and individual characters are broad and difficult to absorb for the newbie or casual player. This gives a distinct advantage to frequent players who understand much better all of the implications of the various powers and cards.
Of course, a veteran of any game is going to have an advantage over a newbie, so this is not unique to Dune. But it does seem to be amplified in cases where the game elements are many and have a strong story narrative element to them. This is an observation rather than a criticism, and I'd prefer to take the view that this one of its strengths. To fully appreciate it you should try to immerse yourself in the narrative. I expect one can get much more out of this as a fan of the original story, as well as playing frequently. I look forward to playing again.
BTW, total playing time was 3hrs 1min.

Deduce or Die!: Pat left the remaining four of us to this one. Newly-introduced by Richard, this game has no components other than 3 decks of standard playing cards and a pencil and paper for each player. Here is a link to Larry Levy's original web page with rules: http://www.thegamesjournal.com/rules/DeduceOrDie.shtml.
As in Black Vienna (and Cluedo, or Clue if you are American), you must deduce the identity of hidden cards by determining those held by your opponents. In this case your choice of questions to ask an opponent about their hand is constrained by the turn of three random cards from the other two decks combined.
The deck is not complete; it consists of only 27 cards (A-9 x three suits). However, even this seemed to be too many! Everyone had their own bookkeeping system, and in fact both Marcus and Alex had to call for more paper part way through. I thought I had a fairly reasonable system, but by the end it looked so scribbly and convoluted that I could no longer read it all properly.
It was certainly more difficult than any of us had anticipated; thinking we were in for a 30 minute night-ender, it took us 95, without a 'clean' resolution. Richard was the first to go, shooting a guess when I barely had half the cards worked out. But, he got it wrong, and was therefore out of contention. Alex was next, although I don't recall him actually having a guess. My bookkeeping let me down in the end, my sheet so confused in one section that I could no longer read it properly, and I leapt to a wrong conclusion about one of the hidden cards. So Marcus won, by default. There were a few suggestions about to improve this for another playing, but I think the most obvious is to reduce the number of cards. And if anyone has worked out the ideal bookkeeping mechanism, it could come in handy - we didn't use Larry's deduction sheet, but the four of us probably used the same kind of mechanism anyway.

Pat's Surprise Birthday Party, Dec 8, 2005

2005-12-13T09:40:00.000+11:00

Venue: Pat's place.
Present: Various Thursday night and Sunday night gamers, and their families.
Played: Lots.

To mark a certain significant birthday milestone (which technically is not until Saturday), Fleur decided to surprise Pat by turning his regular Thursday night gaming session into an extended birthday party that included the Thursday and Sunday night regulars and families. A fun time was had by all and the evening was a great success - well done Fleur for making it all happen.
We gave Pat a joint present from the three of us - Richard, Alex, and Paul - namely Blokus, plus a box of chocs (which could substitute as gaming pieces in an emergency). This choice was Paula's idea, and a successful pick, since a gaming related present for Pat needs to meet two criteria: 1. Not be owned already, and 2. Not be crap.

I was reasonably confident he didn't already have Blokus, but only because I hadn't noticed it on his extensive library shelves. Richard confirmed also that it wasn't on his list recorded at the Boardgame Geek. So a good outcome, and Pat himself confirmed that he had come close to buying it (and having played it previously, confirmed that it wasn't crap by his standards). The little snapshot at left here shows the haul, and piece of chocolate mudcake in Pat's hand.

The first part of the evening was party-socialising and trying to keep an eye on children as they ran amok in the backyard. At one point our one-year-old decided to go for a dip in the paddle pool, which was half-filled with rainwater. Never mind; we did have a spare pair of shorts for him.
There was an eventual and gradual migration inside by some of the gaming hard-core, and soon there were audible groans and shouts emanating from the lounge room. FussBall was in play, with six or seven simultaneous players spinning their little rod-bound fussballers so furiously you could feel the air currents from metres away.

Crokinole also made an appearance, at least partially due to Alex's prompting, who was keen to play this miniature hurling since he had never seen this in action before.

As the more common party acoutrements were tidied away and some of the guests departed, the shift towards more 'typical' board and card games began, albeit gradual. On one table, Rick D., Andrew, Jeff and Adam and I played King Lui, while Pat, Craig, Nick, and Alex started ''Hamster Wheel", or the German name equivalent. The former is light, fast card collecting; I've no idea now who won, except that it definitely wasn't me.
The latter is a relatively new curiosity that most of us hadn't seen before. Like Jenga or Villa Paletti, which are also suitable for family and party environments, this one involves careful movement or placement of wooden blocks while maintaining balance of some overall structure. In this case you have a cylinder, about 30cm diameter and 8cm wide, with irregular 'cog teeth' around the inside rim, spaced about 5-10cm apart. Each turn a player places one of his various shaped blocks above the last cog (or higher, ie., further round the wheel), being careful not to trigger the loss of any pieces already placed - you collect them if you do, and of course the winner is the player who succeeds in depleting their hand of blocks first. I'm not sure who won; I think either Nick or Craig.
The picture at left is hard to make out, but shows some particularly nasty, but completely legal plays. One player has managed to place a rod-shaped block suspended diabolically between two of the more vertical cog teeth (upper left). The following player has managed to place a different block between the next two, making it difficult, perhaps impossible, for the next player to place without losing some pieces from this precarious position. Craig and Alex look on in the background. I don't know who succeeded in getting these placements, but the sheer evilness of it all, and the look on Alex's face leads me to believe he was responsible for one of these!

Well before the Hamster Wheel was finished the other gaming table was underway with a 6p version of something new called Big Kini, which was brought by Adam. Players were the same as for King Lui, plus Lindsay. In this game the board consists of hex tiles each showing a group of three islands. Controlling each island confers some benefit, such as the ability to generate income or reproduce, expand, or collect special goods. At the start the hex tiles of the board are unknown (face down), except for the starting tile in your corner of the table. 'Discovering' unknown tiles costs $, but also gains victory points, irrespective of the feature value of the new tile. On each turn you aim to execute two actions to improve your position, which may be chosen from reproduce, collect income (if you occupy an island with that ability), move one of your dudes to or discover a new tile, take special action cards, collect special goods, or vote one of your dudes up to the position of channel meister for a given atoll, which lets you execute any of the island actions of the tile during your turn, and is also worth more victory points at the end. The twist in the turn options is that if you are the first player to choose a given option, you get to do it twice. If you are second, you do it once, and if you are third you must pay for using it once. Fourth is the same, but you pay even more.
About halfway through, we took a break to conduct the birthday cake ritual for Pat. In fact, rather than a traditional cake with candles, Fleur had brought in a massive plate full of profiteroles. These were eagerly accepted by all, but Pat snaffling the remainder to hide in his fridge didn't go unnoticed.
Back to Big Kini, this played well, although it was hard to track relative player positions with six players during the game. I could anticipate enjoying this more with 3 or 4 players. Lindsay won in the end, beating me by one victory point, but since I finished ahead of 4 other players, I guess my hoodoo is now partially broken. If only I could finish in first place at something...

The next round of people headed for home, leaving a hard core of Pat, me, Alex, Lindsay, and Rick D. Wanting something short-ish with minimal if any rules explanation, we settled quickly on Canyon. I managed to score an excellent start, correctly guessing I'd win a large number of tricks in the first hand. Progress then slowed a little relative to the other players, but despite being overtaken by Lindsay about 2/3rds around the track, I was maintaining a respectable standing. In fact, I actually managed to regain the lead in the final, falls section of the track, and was starting to believe I could actually win a game. But in one more turn Alex had caught up, and we were level at two spaces from the finish line. On the next deal I bid 1 and Alex bid 2 (I think), and the hand played was the most exciting one of the night, for me at least, all the way through to the last two tricks. Of course Alex won, and in the final wash-up there was little I could do with my hand of cards to stop it. I could not even claim second place since I was not able to pass the finish line at game end. Woe.
At least there will be games another day.

Happy Birthday, Pat.

Game Session, Nov 27, 2005

2005-12-02T09:04:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place.
Present: Richard, Pat, Alex, Paul.
Played: Lord of the Rings (with Sauron Expansion), Canyon.

Lord of the Rings (with Sauron Expansion): Paul, Richard and Pat formed the forces of good (well, Hobbitses), to battle the Dark Lord Sauron, Alex (fitting) with additional Dark Rider/Nazgul. So now there are two ways for the Hobbits to lose: The original way, wherein Sauron meets the ringbearer on the darkness track, and a new way, in which a Nazgul gallops along the track, meets the ringbearer, and makes it back to the dark end before the end of the scenario.
Alex played Sauron with disturbing zeal. Here is a picture, which unfortunately does not quite capture the full depths of evilness demonstrated, since the eye of Sauron was laughing (maniacally) too much at the time.
The Hobbits played hard, trying desparately to reduce movements of Sauron and themselves on the darkness track while progressing as swiftly as possible through the scenarios. Since we had no previous experience of the galloping Nazgul, he was dealt with inconsistently, but overall apparently too conservatively. Early in the game we had a scare when he ran a little too quickly for our liking, which we may have over-compensated for later. Sam seems to be the ideal ringbearer, being able to limit his movements towards the darkness. But we learned too late to get the ring in his hands, and Frodo succumbed to Sauron in Helm's Deep - interesting despite the historical inaccuracy. Kind of like the Axis defeating the Allies circa 1942. However, since we all had played the basic game before, we (the Hobbits) did decide to start this one at a handicap with Sauron beginning on position 12 of the darkness track rather than the usual 15. Kind of like Germany already occupying France, North Africa and a significant part of the eastern front by 1939.
OK, we had the hang of it now, so we decided to play again immediately, this time wiser and better prepared for Sauron, the Nazgul, and general Alex evilness (he really should grow one of those little upside-down-triangle goatee beards). And we started Sauron at the safer position 15.
But, the evil one triumphed again, this time capturing Pippin (the ringbearer) towards the end of the Mordor campaign. We certainly did get closer the second time, I reckon only two or three turns from being able to pitch the ring into the fires of Mt. Doom. This expansion certainly adds some complexity to the considerations of the Hobbits, but I think Alex did play the forces of darkness well. I didn't get any of his post-game analysis or opinion of playing Sauron, so I will be interested to learn whether he considered it a worthwhile gaming challenge, as opposed to a mere mechanical playing of obvious cards.
Richard made the point that he wasn't entirely satisfied with this game, the theming not working all that well, nor the components. On the Sauron evil eye, he points us to the following site: http://members.aol.com/ahtitan/private/sauron.htm.
I have lost my original game notes so I can't report timings for these games. Neither seemed particularly long, so I guess around an hour for each on average, not counting rules explanations.

Canyon: A variation of the trick-taking game Oh Hell (or, the Road to Hell) that uses a board with canoe-racing American Indians as a novel score track. Move a number of spaces equal to the number of tricks you win in a given hand, plus a bonus number of spaces if you correctly guess that number. The end game becomes exciting as movement over the top of the waterfall can be done with bonus moves only. If you fail to score a bonus here you head one step closer to going over the falls (thus being set back a significant number of spaces).
Unfortunately in our game no-one did go over, so I was left without a chance, despite a reasonable start in the game. I seemed to spend a lot of time nudging one space only each turn, the bonus awarded for correctly guessing that I would win no tricks!
Richard won comfortably and I think Alex rowed in second, very near to going over the falls. Pat was in 3rd place, me last. The hoodoo continues...

Game Session, Nov 20, 2005

2005-11-22T08:30:00.000+11:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Richard, Alex, Paul.
Played: Iron Dragon.

Iron Dragon: Almost classic crayon railroad-building-and-running game with a faint hint of Tolkien-esque setting flavour. Build tracks between towns, cities and ports, paying build costs that vary according to terrain type. Each player also has a chief engineer or foreman, one of about half a dozen or so different characters with a special attribute that will usually help with building in some way (eg., the dwarf reduces your cost of building track through mountains). Then you move your train between the towns and cities, picking up goods (for free) and delivering them for cash payouts to the places where demand appears according to card turns. You can also make money by having opponents run their train on your track, but in our game at least, this was barely significant.
From opening the box to game end took us four hours, almost to the minute. All three of us were engaged throughout the whole game ie; there was little or no down-time. And the time actually felt about right to me, although I know Alex would have been happier if it had finished perhaps 60-90 minutes earlier.
This is another example of a game that I'm sure all players would be better at after a few plays close together. There is an enormous amount of detail to absorb, not in the game mechanics, which are actually quite simple, but in the locations on the board, the terrain types, and goods. As with many railroad economics games, I found myself spending most time trying to figure out how to pick optimal routes through terrain and how to run my train to score a reasonable return with each load. As usual, this was at the expense of trying to keep up with what my opponents were doing. And as usual I made a number of early, dumb decisions that were costly in the short term and even more costly in the long term as I seemed to fall progressively further behind. Note to self for future games: Hang back on building track until you're sure you really need it. Better to upgrade a train than to build track that goes nowhere! For the record we played a few variant rules, including a doubler applied to ship ranges, which I took advantage of and I suspect helped me avoid complete humiliation in the game.
The volume of detail in terrain and locations, which one could become more comfortable with after a few plays, is consistent with the era of design - this one was published in 1994. But it would be a better game in my view if this were reduced and/or simplified. An example that comes to mind is Funkenschlag/Powergrid - the original of this was weighed by a crayon map system that was abandoned in the newer version for a "prebuilt'' map, and this game benefitted greatly. I doubt Iron Dragon is worth the effort to rebuild in even a vaguely similar way, and certainly part of its charm is the fact that you build your own railway tracks, but by today's more common tile-laying standards this is somewhat more cumbersome and fiddly. It was agreed (at least, by Richard and me) that this is worth rolling out every so often, perhaps every 18-24 months.
Alex won just comfortably in the end, Richard guessing he was maybe three turns behind. I was spared the indignity of not making the requisite number of city connections to at least qualify for a win, but I was way out of contention from about turn 2 in my estimation. I seem to be setting a new precedent, not having done better than second-to-last in any game since Trendy in late Oct, which barely counts!

Results: Alex: $260. Richard: $216. Paul: $22.

Game Session, Nov 13, 2005

2005-11-14T09:20:00.000+11:00

Venue: Craig's place.
Present: Craig, Pat, Alex, Richard, Paul.
Played: Starfarers of Catan, Zendo, Bohnanza, Puerto Rico.

Starfarers of Catan: Played by Craig, Pat and Alex who started early. Of course very annoying that I missed out on playing this, since this is one of my favourite novelty games; I just love strapping that extra stuff to my rocket - "pimp my ride, MTV!".
Craig reports that Pat just pipped him at the post; "...if I had managed to move my trading ship 1 more space on the previous turn I would have won."
Alex's remarks: Craig would have won if I had been a little bit smarter on the last turn, but Pat possibly deserved it more. I would have also won the following turn but that is neither here nor there (I obviously deserved it most). [...] I would have won if it had been to 11. It was a very close game already, much better than my previous experience. I think perhaps is designed to play to 15 points as a minimum, that was my last thought about it, even though that would have added much more to the time (well maybe only 2 or 3 turns) mainly because like the road building which I think is good in normal settlers, trade gets you a lot and it was won by the person who hit 2 out of 4, from a definite behind position otherwise. Anyway it was still kinda fun, but I would like to play it to 15 points next time I play it. [Alex does get a consolation prize for longest sentence submitted - Ed.]
Pat's remarks: It was a weird game. I felt like I was way off the pace all game. Then it was just a fluke of timing - the only time I had the lead was the leapfrog on the final turn. I'm thinking of it as Craig being the perfect gracious host!!
Final remark from Craig: "...3 games in a row - hey, I'm not that gracious :-) ..."

Results: Pat scored the mandatory 13 victory points, Alex: 12. Craig: 11.

Zendo: A neat little game of inductive reasoning as you aim to guess the pattern rule from example patterns of different coloured and sized pyramids. Good fun, but lacks an effective scoring mechanism. Next time we'll play with Richard's suggested scoring rules: a point for each green stone collected (awarded for correct right/wrong guesses of player example patterns), plus a bonus two for the player who correctly guesses the rule (and they get their guessing stone back). Not sure how you would score the master in this case - Richard? Perhaps the master wants to aim for as many green stones as possible to come out before a correct guess is made, so maybe one way to score this is that the master gets one green stone for every two awarded in their round (not counting the bonus two of the winner).
Total time was about one hour for four games times five players

Results, in game order: Master Alex, Pat wins after 1 round. Master Pat, Richard wins, 1st round. Master Richard, Craig after 3 rounds. Master Craig, Richard after 3 rounds.

Bohnanza: The family that plays together stays together.
Bean planting and harvesting, characterised by quick and constant inter-player trading. In fact, it's hard to imagine another card trading game, other than something like Pit, in which this is more significant. Craig was probably leading for most of the game, but was diverted to make us coffee, which may reasonably have cost him a few favourable trades. His tactic seemed to be to deplete his hand of cards as much as possible, although staying empty too often obviously reduces your ability to score good trades.
Time: 64 mins. Enjoyable game play, but I wouldn't call it one of my all-time faves.

Results: Pat: 17. Craig: 16. Alex: 14. Richard: 13. Paul: 12.

Puerto Rico: Well, this is one of my all-time faves, and I was glad of the opportunity to play again. As I usually do with this game, once again I played fairly cash-tight, spending whenever the builder was played although overall with a weak discount rate. A tactic I took advantage of early was frequent and favourable shipping, which earned me a decent lead in VP chips. With a small warehouse I managed to avoid production losses all game. This was successful until about 2/3 through the game, when both Pat and Craig invested in a harbor and a wharf, so they would always earn more than me upon shipping.
Alex made the point that I should let either of them use their turn on shipping, since they would benefit anytime someone else played it. This was probably true for one or two of these turns, but the problem as I saw it was that anyone else playing the captain would a) score the bonus point (rather than me) and b) potentially position the cargo to force down my shipping points and perhaps cause me losses (since I was diversified across 3 commodities). So do I take 2 prospector gold instead to buy a better building and suffer a bigger VP differential on next shipping...? Maybe that would have positioned me slightly better overall; hard to say.
Other than good timing on harbor and wharf purchases, Pat's position was clearly stronger on commodities, since he had the monopoly on coffee and stayed cash-rich (or maybe 'cash-flexible') with more measured building purchases. Craig and Alex competed in tobacco, to Alex's detriment since one (or in fact two) of my early captain plays resulted in losses over the side for him! Yes, I do feel bad about that, but hey - in a 5-player game you need to hedge with at least a small warehouse! Bad luck was suffered by Richard also, who either hasn't played this before, or hasn't played for a very long time, and must have been at a disadvantage with respect to subtleties, such as building types and other aspects tactical timing.
Total time: 1 hr 45 mins.

Results: (I tried to build a true HTML table here, which looked quite good, but Blogger ends up adding an entire screen of white space for some reason. Oh well.)
Scores: Craig Alex Richard Pat Paul
Buildings: 26 19 16 23 13
Shipping: 24 17 15 30 28
Bonuses: 6 9 7 7 0
Total: 56 45 38 60 41

Game Session, Nov 6, 2005

2005-11-07T13:38:00.000+11:00

Venue: Pat's place.
Present: Pat, Lindsay, Alex, Paul.
Played: Trendy, Nautilus, That's Life, Clans.

Trendy: Played by the other guys while they waited for me to show up, with the same rules as last week. Lindsay won comfortably.

Nautilus: This was a title I had been drawn to ever since I first noticed it in Pat's games shelf maybe up to two years ago, and here was a chance to play it at last. You build habitation and research lab modules on the ocean floor, disperse your researchers throughout the complex, then launch subs to discover various underwater treasures. I really enjoyed this game, but at the end I was left pondering about how important a game's scoring mechanism is to one's enjoyment of it.
In this case your final score is the arithmetic product of your mixed research progression value and the value of goodies discovered by your subs. Since we all had close to the same research value, and I think this should usually be the case, the discovery of treasures becomes the more significant factor in determining final scores. The game provides some mechanisms for optimising one's search for worthwhile treasure, but there was a tendency for all of us to be rather more opportunistic about this, and we were taking whatever tokens we could get. The consequence is therefore that the final scores are more a reflection of good luck than clever play. However, I think we all played competitively throughout the whole game, and I found satisfaction in the execution of hab module and researcher plays as well as discoveries by my subs. Only with the benefit of hindsight would I consider different plays, and certainly my overall strategy and pattern of play would be little different.
There are lots of games that can be enjoyable and satisfying even when you come last on the score track. If this were not true I would have quit this hobby years ago! So the fact that I got a rather mediocre score in this game is not that big a deal (nor unusual for any game in general). And of course I always play to win as the goal of a game, although the motivation to play is not about winning.
So what is my conclusion from all of this? Well, nothing much. Only a rather fuzzy notion that throughout the play of this game, while I was certainly concerned with optimising my turn play, I was never concerned with optimising my score, until the very last phase of the very last turn. And, I still really enjoyed this game.
I speculate that it might be improved by a rules change. In particular, the effect of sonars, which work currently by allowing you to reveal any number of tokens a given (short) distance from your sub. While thematicilly satisfying, this is only marginally useful since for most of the game as described earlier, we were picking up whatever tokens we could get to. Instead, if this power allowed you to reveal tokens at a larger distance from your sub, it might allow better tactical choice of direction and hence improve score-optimising play.
Two hours plus 30mins for rules.

Results: Pat: 100. Alex: 80. Paul: 79. Lindsay: 52.

That's Life: Ce la vie. Score value tiles worth between -10 and +8 are laid out to form the one-dimensional game track. You roll 1d6 to determine how far you move one of your three pawns. If you leave a space that is occupied by no other pawns or non-player "guards", you take the tile, and the track is adjusted to fill in the space. Your goal is therefore to avoid being stranded alone on the negative-scoring red tiles, but to achieve exactly this on the green, positive tiles. But, if you can pick up a special shamrock tile, at the game end this can be used to convert one negative into a positive; ie., you do want the -10 tile if you can also get at least one shamrock.
Challenging fun in exactly 30mins, with overtones of Cartegna.

Results: Pat: 21. Alex: 8. Paul: 8. Lindsay: 0.

Clans: Another Leo Colovini title I've been eager to play for a long time but never had the opportunity to. I like the look and feel of this one, but it was really only after about halfway through the game before I started to 'get it'. This is one that will require multiple goes before I figure out how to play properly! But I'd like to persist, and I hope Pat might include it in his games bag more often when he's playing away-matches.
35 minutes, including rules time, which I think can be shortened by more experienced players.

Results: Alex: 35. Pat: 34. Paul: 20.

Game Session, Oct 30, 2005

2005-11-01T09:05:00.000+11:00

Venue: Paul's place
Present: Paul, Andrew, Richard, Pat, Marcus, Alex.
Played: Palazzo, Die Magier von Pangea, Da Vinci Code (Coda) (R, An, Pat), Bean Trader (Al, Paul, M), Ohne Furcht und Adel (Citadels) (Paul, R, Pat, M, Al), Trendy

Pre-Session Remarks: It was good see rare appearances from Marcus, the first since his wedding about one month ago, and Andrew, the first since the birth of his new baby about three weeks ago. The incumbents (Paul and Paula) and the early arrivers (Andrew and Richard) shared some bubbly supplied by Andrew to mark the the latter occasion.
An uncommon group of 6, and no compelling options for this many players in a 3-4hr timeslot (Age of Rennaissance, Risk, and Joan of Arc did not get enough interest) resulted in a 3+3 split for games.

Post-Session Remarks below.

Palazzo: Pat's remark was that this is now reached his trade pile. After trying 5 times, he's not a fan. Richard has said that this is OK, but doesn't offer much over equivalent games.

Results: Richard 1st. Pat 2nd. Andrew 3rd.

Die Magier von Pangea: Richard has made some points in comments, and I would echo these based on my last few plays of this some months ago. I find this a bit disappointing for all the same reasons, but it might be fun to play with the kids when they get a bit older...

Results: Andrew 1st. Pat 2nd. Richard 3rd.

Da Vinci Code (Coda): Pat's remark: "The power of holding the dash proven in both games".

Results: Pat 1st. Richard 2nd. Andrew 3rd.

Bean Trader: A hill o' beans.
Alex, Marcus and I settled in for this despite some initial confusion with the rules. I began by adopting a strategy of trying to churn order cards as fast as possible, accepting low margins in order to generate cash quickly. For the record, this doesn't work well in a 3p game, and I suspect it won't work all that well with more players. The flaw in the plan became apparent when after about 3 turns I was net $1 up on my starting position, but net 3 beans down. Those darn Toll cards... I may well have fulfilled more orders than the other guys, but it is possible I also paid twice as many full travel tolls (compared to Alex at least; I'm not sure how well Marcus was able to minimise these). Marcus also got screwed up by our initial misunderstanding of the rules, which we all shared but which happened to be resolved during his turn.
In the end, I think Al's careful hand management, crafty trading and toll avoidance got him to a comfortable win. Not in a hurry to, but I'd certainly play this again anytime, although with more players to increase the chance of invited trades and moves between turns. Total game time was around 2hrs, but this included an inordinate amount on rules explaining and checking (at least 30mins).

Results: Alex: 260. Marcus: 206. Paul: 192.

Ohne Furcht und Adel (Citadels): Oh no, I'm completely furcht! Andrew had to retire for the evening, leaving the remaining five of us to roll out this one, which plays very nicely and perhaps should put in more appearances with this number of players or more. The other players might also feel that they had bad luck, but I can only tell the story from my perspective. Over the course of the game my character was assassinated (don't bother - joke already done by Al) no less than four times (three times by Marcus). On the last turn, Richard targeted Pat with his thief, assuming I would have taken the King, but instead hit me (I had actually taken the preacher).
The assassin was used effectively throughout the game by Marcus (mostly against me!), but I tended to agree with Pat's point that this is not a very effective strategy when other players are taking advantage of character bonuses that apply to certain building types. However, I also agree with Richard's point that the assassin will slow down an opponent by a turn while you still get to have a normal income and building turn. And of course, there is no better way to ensure you are not at risk of being assassinated yourself.
Towards the end, Pat seemed to be on the verge of winning a few times, but Richard was the quiet threat in the corner despite being successfully and significantly robbed by Pat in the penultimate turn.
One hour and twenty minutes, including 5-10 mins for rules.

Results: Richard: 25. Pat: 24. Marcus: 21. Paul: 15. Alex: 11.
Corrected by Richard: Both he and Pat had 21 points worth of buildings, with Richard attaining a 4 point bonus for ending with seven buildings, and Pat receiving a 3 point bonus for having all colours represented.

Trendy: Appropriate title, given remaining gamers at this time of night.
Thirty minutes for five hands of lighthearted cardplays so simple even a super-model could join in the fun. We added a variant rule (Pat's idea, I think), in which if you haven't drawn your hand replacement card by the time your next opponent draws theirs, you miss out. Alex trapped Richard this way once, which was very amusing to all present (except maybe Richard) - Al had obviously been thinking about it for a while.

Results: Richard: 149. Paul: 144. Alex: 138. Pat: 132. Marcus: 132.

Post-Session Remarks: Or, if the pressure in my BBQ gas cylinder remains close to constant (except for ambient temperature fluctuations), how does the indicator gauge on a "Gas fuse" work?
This discussion was sparked (hehe) by conversation about barbecues, and someone's remark about how annoying it was that you couldn't tell how much gas you had left in your cylinder. I said that I had a thing called a ''Gasfuse'' (currently unusable without a special adapter so it doesn't fit my new barbecue). This is provided mainly as a safety device to help prevent explosions, but also has an indicator window with a needle gauge that tells you roughly how much gas is left in the bottle. It was never terribly accurate, and certainly wasn't linear, but it basically worked, and you could tell when your bottle was getting near empty. I had always assumed that this was just a simple pressure gauge. But Richard and Marcus' argument was that LPG is mainly liquid and that the gas component in the bottle should always be at a constant pressure in equilibrium with the liquid phase regardless of the space (volume) left for the gas to expand into (and not withstanding ambient temperature differences). Physics was never my strong point, so I'm prepared to accept that there's someones law for the behaviour of a gas and liquid substance in an enclosed vessel that states the pressure of the gas phase remains constant independent of volume.
I had a brief look on Wikipedia to try and confirm the gas law thing, but I couldn't find the right one within 15mins of searching. I'm sure there must be a reference somewhere. I did however, find the gasfuse web site: www.gasfuse.com, and this confirms that the gauge is indeed a simple pressure gauge. My current conclusion, assuming the equilibrium-constant-pressure law above is true, is that as the gas is consumed, there is a point at which the liquid volume approaches zero, and then the gas pressure drops in a linear fashion. Perhaps then for the last few hours or so (or maybe the last 20mins) of gas remaining, the pressure gauge does indeed give an accurate and linear indication of remaining gas.

Game Session, Oct 23, 2005

2005-10-26T10:00:00.000+10:00

Venue: Richard's place.
Present: Richard, Pat, Alex, Paul.
Played: LOTR: The Confrontation, The Domino Bead Game, Merchant of Venus, Das Labyrinth Der Meister, Billabong, Tyre Change.

LOTR: The Confrontation: Pat and Richard just finishing up this short 2p game when I arrived, so I don't have much to say about this one. Richard (the forces of Sauron) discovered and defeated Pat's Frodo with his Warg in the mountains. There was some discussion on the comparison with Stratego, with Richard remarking that Stratego was better.

The Domino Bead Game: An invention of the late, great Sid Sackson that provides something far more interesting to do with two sets of dominoes than play Dominoes (or even lining them up and watching them topple, which is also far more interesting than playing Dominoes). Two randomly-chosen dominoes are placed side-by-side to start the patterns and the remainder are dealt evenly to the players. On your turn you must add one in any orthogonal orientation such that it legally extends at least two existing linear patterns. No doubt there must be a regulation definition of dominoes somewhere that states your domino dimensions must be in a precise 2x1 ratio. It's also helpful if your two sets are identical - not the case in our game, although close enough that the minor size difference didn't affect anything.
So a legal linear pattern is one that has no more than 5 different numbers, and it cannot repeat a given number within the "atomic" description of the pattern. So 4,1,3,5 is a legal pattern, but 4,1,4,5 is not. A legal pattern may also consist of a single repeating number. On each turn you score each line pattern you have extended with your placement, scoring 1 point for new total number of elements in the extended line. But here's the twist: You multiply the value of scored patterns together. So if your placement extends a 5-element pattern and a 7-element pattern by one element each, your score for the round would be a very good 48 (= 6x8). You can really clean up if you can get a placement that legally exends 3 respectable lines - common enough to occur maybe 2 or 3 times in our game. Another scoring twist is that if you play a double domino (eg, a 1-1, or a 4-4), you multiply your score for that turn by another 2. Unplayed dominoes at the end of the game count negative 25 points each against your score, or only 5 points for doubles (because they are harder to play).
Simple and good fun - a nice little item that will do the rounds again sometime soon I expect. Especially satisfying for Pat, who scored a massive 320 points on his last turn alone - 75 points more than the cumulative total of his 6 previous turns. I can't remember exactly how, but it scored 3 separate lines for 160 (eg; 4x5x8), and was a doubler. Disappointing for me, since I had been expecting a comfortable win for about the last three turns! Scores on the penultimate turn: Paul: 321, Pat: 245, Alex: 213, Richard: 190.

Final results: Pat: 565. Paul: 296. Richard: 262. Alex: 208.

Merchant of Venus: Oh boy you should have seen us. This was the heavy part of the night, buying and selling goods to make a profit as fast as possible. Once you've got the mechanisms working smoothly this is a fairly simple game. But in typical Avalon Hill style, one is burdened with excessive token management and book-keeping. We didn't play the options where you can blast each other, so for me this was a bit like 4-player simultaneous solitaire. And because your concentration is so fixed on trying to optimise your own play, it's hard to pay any attention to what your opponents are up to. At one point I suddenly became aware that everyone had upgraded their ships, apparently several turns before, while I was still zipping around in a Scout with its tiny carrying capacity.
Pat nudged around briefly (20mins) in a lumbering freighter and managed to pip Richard by one turn with a massive sell-off including a ship-downgrade at his last planet. As we reckoned our cash and factory deed assets, the fiddly book-keeping aspect again briefly came to the fore when Richard declared, "I think I'm $2030...", ie; he should have already declared his victory in his last turn. A second check, however, placed him at "about 10 under".
This game seems well-suited to a computer implementation to take away the burden of token and cash flow management, and as Pat remarked, perhaps it has already been done.
In summary, this was two hours of game time that arguably could have been better spent on something else. But, I'm not unhappy to see it get a spin every 12-18 months. And I always get a kick out of the commodity names. BTW, wtf is Chicle Liquor anyhoo?

Results: Pat: $2125. Richard: ~$1990. Alex: ~$1300. Paul: $860.

Das Labyrinth Der Meister: A moving maze in which you have to grab as many numbered tokens as possible, in the correct numerical sequence, in order to score. Bonus points if you collect any and all of those marked on your secret card. We played this in speed mode with a time limit of 30s per turn, which added a bit of 'desparation' to play, but not excessively so.
Ignore the theme. A good puzzle game that plays well in 20mins (in 'speed' mode) with four players. By the end I think Alex lucked out and had only scored two tokens. I had picked up my fair share of tokens, but unfortunately none of them matched those on my secret card, so I barely managed half the scores of Pat or Richard.

Results: Pat: 107. Richard: 102. Paul: 64. Alex: 22.

Billabong: A game I had vague recollections of playing only once some years before, but no memory of it being very interesting. This turned out to be quite good, perhaps made better by the fact that we used Richard's game timer again to limit turns to 30s. A curious choice of component colours; not your traditional blue-red-green-yellow, etc., but rather different hues of Australian outback earth - brown, orange, red, etc.
The game is simple in principle: Move your 5 kangaroo tokens around one circuit of a racetrack by hopping over other kangaroos, orthogonally or diagonally (if possible by chaining together multiple jumps Chinese Checkers-style), landing the same number of spaces past your target kangaroo as there were between it and your starting position. Legal jumps are constrained only by the board edges, and there being no other kangaroos between your starting position, the target 'roo, and the landing space.
After a few impressive early turns, I thought I was well-placed for a win if I could retain the consistency required in my hopping action. But I was soon overtaken by Richard, and eventually Alex, after landing one or two of my roos in awkward spots for lining up future jumps. Pat, however, had landed his trailing roo in an even worse position, having to suffer single-space limps far back in the field that effectively put him out of the game.
A good challenge for four (again with time-limited turns) in 15-20mins.

Results: Richard crossed 1st. Alex: 2nd. Paul: 3rd. Pat: 4th.

As second-place scorer in the final game of the evening, choice of first game played next session falls to Alex.

Tyre Change: Not actually a game, although perhaps it should be. On leaving, Pat discovered he had a flat tyre. We all helped him change it, which mainly involved standing around and watching. Mediocre fun for four in about 15 minutes. Would recommend avoiding in the future if at all possible.

Results: Tyre successfully changed.

Game Session, Oct 16, 2005

2005-10-18T09:20:00.000+10:00

Venue: Paul's Place.
Present: Paul, Craig, Richard, Pat, Alex.
Played: Hiss, Volle Hütte, Vino, Grass.

Richard was the first to notice an underlying theme here involving drugs and alcohol: Our night was based on games of going to the pub, growing wine and peddling grass. I'd be interested to see any comments mentioning other games we could have played that would have fitted in with this theme. (NB: Any game that has wine or ale as merely one tradeable commodity amongst many wouldn't count. Note also that remarks such as, "include blah, because you have to be wasted to play it," are also not helpful.)

About the pics: Consider them page decoration only. If you really want to look closely, consider that viewing has been optimised for the Nokia 6610i at a resolution of 352 x 288.

Hiss: Played by 3-year-old Sean, Alex, and Pat, so that the latter could get his numbers up for 2005. Fifteen minutes of random card drawing to make coloured snakes. Barely challenging, even for a 3-year-old, but the snake cards are nice to look at. Sean won.

Volle Hütte: An interesting curiosity not seen by most of us before. Everyone gets a player mat (a-la Puerto Rico or Princes of Florence) representing the indoor and outdoor floor space of restaurant/nite club - I'll call them 'pubs' from now on. This is gradually occupied by tiles representing different pieces of furniture or activities (eg; table for two, dance floor, pool table, etc.). Players try to attract patrons to their pub, ideally at the expense of their opponents. Early in the game your choice is one action per turn from the following: a) Select a new furniture/activity tile to place in your pub; b) Select a card that pulls in a number of new patrons (between 2 and 4) from 'off the street' into certain furniture/activities in your pub; c) Activate and discard a scoring card that scores for all players patrons, but gives the active player a bonus of between 30 and 70. Scoring represents patrons paying their bills, so is done simply with cash. An interesting dimension is that patrons come in three different types (colours) that are worth different amounts when they score (10, 20, 30) - Craig referred to them as students, 'Friday-night suits', and the buck's party.
After a threshold number of patrons were in play (10), an additional turn action was introduced: The playing of patron shift cards. These would cause a group of patrons to migrate from one activity to another. The cards themselves would instruct specifically the activity type they were moving either to or from, and with luck and care with these card draws you would have pawns moving out of your opponents pub and into yours. As they leave a given pub they 'pay their bill' to that owner, so having patrons move on is not necessarily a bad thing - unless the moving card has a no-pay icon!
Entertaining, and in my view, extremely well-themed. Good to play a reasonable game new to (most of) the group, fitting nicely into a one-hour slot for 5 players, including rules explanantion. But as Pat warned before we started, it was rather shallow and chaotic, and just not worth agonising for too long over individual turns! Published in 1997, it was remarked that the game artwork looked more like it was from the 80s. Game components and artwork have come a long way even in the last 10 years.

Results: Paul: 780. Alex: 610. Richard: 540. Pat: 520. Craig: 250.

Vino: The more gamingly-serious part of the evening. I can't think of any occasion that I have played this with five players before. A common observation when you settle in with five for a game like this is that the chaos element goes up significantly, which often leads to a frustrating and unsatisfying loss of control over one's strategy and destiny in the game. In this case the fifth player did lead to more chaos, especially at the start, and it also certainly led to frustrations around the table, but, for me at least, it was far from unsatisfying (even though I would argue that my starting position was affected the most!), and definitely an enjoyable 1.5-2hrs (incl. rules re-hash).
Random turn order selection at the start saw Pat placed as the fifth player for selecting starting vineyards, so his second vineyard was in his choice of regions already occupied by one other player. How does one select in this instance? Probably choose based on available grape varieties, one of the smaller regions (but almost certainly not one of the two smallest regions)? So Pat chose Campagna, and therefore robbed me of the opportunity to build my little monopoly in this 5-vineyard region! Then both Richard and Pat chose Sardegna to place their third, thus ending my chances of a reasonable oligopolistic position here with my one, cheap little starting vineyard (cue violins)! Can you protect yourself against the fifth player's choice in this setup phase? Perhaps rather than the obvious purchase of the cheapest vineyard in your randomly drawn regions, you could select a more expensive one. This might pressure the fifth player (and all other players when they choose their third vineyard), into purchasing an even more expensive vineyard, or settling for the cheapest and therefore a later choice when the regular game purchasing rounds take place. With the benefit of hindsight, sure. But I don't really think this makes a lot of sense at the time because there are far too many options for these choices.
Alex's hams were a somewhat strung because of his monopoly in the Trebbiano grape variety, which saw the bonus price for this almost always very negative. He thought of a possible variant rule to aid players who get screwed because of outright bad luck (or dumb play!) on grape variety: Use a game turn to substitute your crop variety for another, if available, in a given region. This could have some merit, and may be worth considering after another play.
With four or three players, a typical strategy is to use one of the smaller regions as a cycling cash-generator, allowing you to sell off and re-buy vineyards in your monopoly with little fear of competition. This occurred to a much lesser extent (or, at least it seemed to be far less significant) in our five-player game. It also seemed to play much faster than expected with this number, with the bigger regions getting seriously bitten into quite quickly.
Vino is always good fun, despite the curses of "I hate this game!" during the secret region bid round. At the end of it I think we were all unexpectedly positive and satisfied with how well this seemed to go with five, and there were remarks that it is worthy of getting more outings than once per 9-12 months!
I'd like to play this again soon, and in fact I would be more keen to play it five players than fewer, and see whether it works well like this again.

Results: Richard: 25. Craig: 23. Alex: 19. Paul: 19 (but $50 cash less than Alex). Pat: 18.

Grass: Haven't rolled out this chestnut for years, and maybe more like a decade....
A light-hearted, and in theme, possibly light-headed diversion for 45 mins (we only played four hands) incl. rules.
As observed by Alex, the cards could do with a little more explanatory text, although I do remember from plays years ago that it doesn't take too long to recall what they all do without having to reach for the rulesheet all the time.
I don't have much more commentary to add to this. This is not a serious game, but good for groups larger than four I think, who are prepared to settle in for something light, even for a few hours. Probably also better if you really are stoned.

Results: Paul: $120K. Richard: $95K. Alex: $70K. Pat: Value recorded at reckoning was actually $-9K, but this didn't take into account his Banker card, which certainly would have taken him positive, by at least 1, and maybe as much as $14K.

Mine Shaft Gap RAQ (rarely-asked questions)

2005-10-11T15:46:00.000+10:00

What is "the mine shaft gap"?
What's your point in using it here?
You've got something else to say about Dr. Strangelove here, haven't you?
Why don't you just use BoardGameGeek?
Why are the pictures here so crappy?
What is an RSS feed and how do I use it?

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What is "the mine shaft gap"?

The phrase comes from the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
In the second-last line of the film, George C. Scott's character, General 'Buck' Turgidson, declares, "Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!"

You probably know the story, but here comes a synopsis anyway. The background is that, at the height of the cold war, a rogue US Air Force commander has ordered a massive pre-emptive nuclear strike against Russia. The Russians advise that they cannot prevent this triggering a "doomsday machine", an automated retaliatory device that will extinguish all life over the entire surface of the Earth. The doomsday machine was built because they believed the Americans had already started work on one themselves, and the Russians were therefore afraid of a 'doomsday gap'.

Dr. Strangelove's solution to save the human race is to take a nucleus of prime human specimens (top government and military men, and a ratio of 10 'highly stimulating' females per male to ensure optimum breeding success) and rebuild civilization underground in mine shafts until the radioactive fallout clears.

This presents another opportunity for General Turgidson's paranoid arguments. The full quote follows: "Yeah. I think it would be extremely naive of us, Mr. President, to imagine that these new developments are going to cause any change in Soviet expansionist policy. I mean, we must be... increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge! Mr. President, we must not allow... a mine shaft gap!"
Source: http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0055.html

Alright, so what's your point in using it here?

Well, I'm a fan of boardgames, especially those in economic/military expansion genre. A common observation is that one's own expansionist strategy in a game is very much distorted by those of your opponents. You might like building farms and factories, but if your opponents are building nukes and empty mine shafts, you could be facing problems down the track.

The 'mine shaft gap' refers therefore to a particular gaming phenomenon in which there is an actual or potential significant disparity in the offensive or defensive capabilities of two opposing sides, to the extent that one player is compelled to change their original development strategy in favour of a more militaristic one. In the real world, this is scary. In the gaming world, at least in my experience, it can be very funny.

You've got something else you want to say about Dr. Strangelove here, haven't you?

Well, yes.
Another one of my favourite lines from that movie is rather more obscure:
Group Captain Mandrake: "...And if those devils come back and try any rough stuff, we'll fight them together, boy, like we did just now, eh? You with the old gun, and me with the belt and the ammo, feeding you, Jack. Feed me, you said, and I was feeding you, Jack!"

I can't explain why; I just like this line, "...feed me, you said, and I was feeding you..."
Sometimes I can't help myself and roll this one out, in circumstances when two game opponents might temporarily help each other, perhaps to collectively hurt a third opponent, or perhaps out of altruism. Did I say altruism? I meant temporary loss of sanity.

Why don't you just use BoardGameGeek?
A few reasons, and BGG did occur to me. BoardGameGeek is a great site, probably the best there is, for information, reviews, recommendations, session reports, player aids, variants, etc., on anything to do with board games. You can log on and post your own session reports there.

*The intention with this blogspot was to include mainly session reports, but also other game-related, and even more peripheral stuff.
*One of those related things could also be to track our designer sessions and follow-up remarks,
activities etc. - Not really suitable for BGG.
* Not sure about the level of flexibility of BGG entries, eg., can you add pics to their session reports?
* A blog provides more personal, 'territory ownership', even an element of seclusion/privacy. Having said that, I have no problem in it being visible to a much broader audience. The intention/expectation was a noise-free (or rather noise-reduced) spot mainly for us guys.
* Of course, these types of initiatives often die naturally when enthusiasm wanes. See the tagline in the title - "no guarantees that this lasts beyond the first week!" Mind you, the core of our little gaming group has been going strong now for about nine years by my guestimate...

Why are the pictures here so crappy?
Until I start using a "real" digital camera (don't yet own one at time of writing), the "toy" one in my phone will have to suffice. Consider then that picture viewing here has been optimised for the Nokia 6610i at a resolution of 352 x 288 (ie., about 0.1 megapixel)!

What is an RSS feed and how do I use it?
RSS provides a means to syndicate web page content that changes frequently. Examples are news headlines, blog entries, etc. You use a news reader or aggregator to get a 'live' display of the headlines of the new entries as they are published. The feed source is simply a url, and assuming the source provides its content in a form that can be syndicated, you just need to provide your aggregator/news reader with the url address, and it will do the rest.

The url for the Mine Shaft Gap RSS feed is http://themineshaftgap.blogspot.com/atom.xml.
If you use the Firefox browser, this has an RSS aggregator built into its Bookmarks function. Go to the Firefox menu and select Bookmarks -> Manage Bookmarks -> File -> New Live Bookmark... and enter this url into the Feed Location box.
If you use Internet Explorer, apparently RSS feeds will be supported in the next version (time of writing: Feb 2006).
Or, you could get serious and download one of the 100's of RSS feed aggregators available; just google RSS aggregator, or something similar.
I use Sage, which is a plug-in for Firefox.

Don't ask me what RSS stands for. I've heard it stands for "Really Simple Syndication", but I've also heard that it's supposed to stand for something else (more technical). Look it up on Wikipedia if you really need to know.

Game Session, Oct 9, 2005

2005-10-10T09:33:00.000+10:00

Venue: Richard's Place
Present: Richard, Alex, Paul, Ed (on a rare Sunday overnight visit in Sydney).
Played: Like a Rocket, Powergrid, Die Heisse Schlacht.
(Sorry about the pics here. The Nokia 6610i only has a 'toy' camera, of course!)

Like a Rocket: This was a new invention from Lauren, Richard's 7-year-old daughter, created for a school project. Each player starts with an open tableau of five planet cards. On each turn a roll of 1d6 determines the order all players must quickly arrange their planets: alphabetically, by size, or by distance from the sun. The six die faces are acccounted for by forward and reverse combinations of these factors. Players then call out when they think they have the correct arrangement. The first two to have called with the correct arrangement advance a space on the score track.
All players that called in the round, regardless of their success, then take a planet from their right-hand neighbour and add it to their collection. This elegant mechanism therefore had three game effects: 1. It discouraged rash play, since calling without the correct order could increase your hand of planets to manage without advancing your score; 2. It provided a weighting that allowed slower players (like me) to stay in the game and score regularly; 3. It provided a steady cycling of new planets for players to learn about.

Minor game details: In a 4-player game there are 2 copies of each of the nine planets in our solar system plus Earth's moon. The Earth and the moon are considered equidistant from the sun for game purposes. A nice reference table allowed quick assessment of correct orders for each die roll.
Great fun for four in 15-20 minutes. And I learned something new - who knew that Pluto was actually smaller than our moon? (OK, probably everyone I suppose.) At the end of the game we discussed variant ordering factors for more senior planetary astronomers, like planet density, emission spectra characteristics, etc.
Well done, Lauren!

Game results: Richard and Lauren team won. Alex second. Paul and Ed equal last (but only by 2 points!).

Powergrid:The 'meat' of the evening. We played the USA map, and a setup that eliminated the easy-building east cost. Because the building of new power stations was on average more expensive than if these map sections were left in, this had the basic effect of making the game go for more rounds - more than 2 hours, and possibly closer to 3.
Always interesting and fun, with the agony of decisions in every turn: Which plant to I try to buy? How much do I bid? What cities, if any, do I buy this turn? How can I manipulate turn order to get behind (and thus buy cheaper resources and prime city spots)?
Paul went the 'garbage' strategy again, which turned out to be an apt choice, since Richard also bought a garbage plant. Two heavy consumers of garbage - a resource with a desperately low replenishment rate (why is it so low? Would they have us believe that oil is a truly more available and cheaper commodity than waste??) - inevitably led to a "garbage battle", a conflict over expensive and rare resources that hurt us both! With the benefit of hindsight, yes, it truly was a garbage strategy.
Ed's early purchase (at an exorbitant price) of a 5-producing coal plant saw him emerge as early favourite to win. Unfortunately he got stuck with a few very expensive plant purchases and then had bad luck on new plant availability at auction time towards the late phases of the game.
Alex's crafty plant buying, some good luck on scoring zero-cost wind farms (allowing him to hoard cash like no-one else), and perfect timing on city buys to surge from about 9 or 10 to 17, and power them all up, gave him the game. The inscrutable picture here shows his final power station portfolio.
A general observation agreed by all: Tactical placement of cities on the map was not really regarded as strongly affecting the outcome. Rather, the timing and selection of power station type and strength seemed more critical. Early in the game, both Ed and I appeared to have good board positioning compared to Richard to Alex, but in the last 1/3 or so of game play, board placement seemed to become almost insignificant, and adding up the individual costs of connecting cities was more of an annoyance than an extra source of game tension. Richard's suggestion was that they might as well just round the connection costs up or down to the nearest 5 to make the building costs easier to calculate.

Game results (powered-up stations on the last turn): Alex: 17. Paul: 14. Richard: 13. Ed: 12.

Die Heisse Schlacht: Always a fun, light way to end the night in 15-20mins. The gambling aspect of the die rolls is just funny.
A tense last round emerged as a battle between Alex and me. A penultimate roll saw me only a few spots behind the end ready to take a 5-dish and give me the game, but was followed by classic Filewood arse, that saw a perfect-seven roll on 3 dice (vaguely visible here) to land back on the starting space and take the last two dishes. Goddammit!!

Game results: Alex: 34. Paul: 25. Richard: 8. Ed: 6. As Ed observed, the same order as for Powergrid.