Bets and backstabbing

This Thursday we were five, with the Professor absent and there being no need to split this week we all debated what to play together. Despite some games having been brought along by MaOldie and Crabro, for some reason I can't remember, we ended up playing two old favourites from my own collection beginning with Citadels.

This was a favourite with the Goldstone Gamers too, incorporating as it does some nice opportunities for backstabbing. Each turn players adopt a character and either take money or cards and "build" one or more of the cards in front of them if they wish. The game ends when someone builds their eighth building and then score the value of their buildings plus a bonus for having all the colours represented and one for being first to build eight. Complexity is added by the powers of the adopted characters who can, for instance, do extra builds, rob or assassinate other characters or destroy an opponent's building.

 

I spent a rather frustrating time with only duplicates of buildings I'd already built, in my hand (you can't build more than one of one type) and only red and green buildings. Eventually I did manage to build eight including all the colours but still came last (I think Mrwendell won, with Crabro second, Petra Pan third, and MaOldie fourth).

I could have managed one place better if I had finished the game one turn sooner. As it turned out allowing the game to run this extra turn did me no good at all. Despite last place I enjoyed the game and for once didn't get robbed or assassinated. I wouldn't mind playing this one more often.

The same could be said of the second game "Winner's Circle", a game by the famous Reiner Knizia which I had only played once before despite it being simple and fun.

Once of the reasons is the choice of realistic colours for the horses in this race betting game. The range is white to black via grey and several very similar shades of brown. In some lights this makes the horses frustratingly difficult to distinguish from one another. This was not a particular problem at my table and the game moved at a good pace, fitting the remaining time nicely.

 I had a terrible first two rounds, in both cases backing, and being penalised for backing, the last horse. I made up considerable ground in the third race ending up with about seven hundred and fifty dollars...everybody else was by now on over one thousand, however.

A golden oldies evening that I enjoyed a lot. I hope some more of these games we haven't played for a while get the chance of an outing in coming weeks.

Carolina in the morning

...is a tough, unforgiving place to be if you didn't sleep very well and are playing the Southern Carolina expansion of Steam against a very aggressive opponent, intent on stopping you building track into any of the most lucrative areas.

Crabro won both games by a good ten points or so with me being unable to make runs or worthwhile track builds in the last couple of turns.


Nevertheless, I could see that it was a well thought out game and satisfying to play. Despite being a little irritated by one rule, which required us to pay a dollar for each run requiring us to to arrange our builds so as to be left cash in hand all the time, we both rated it highly . ...which is more than I can say of our last Steam game of the day.

After lunch, we played another expansion which was based on an Age of Steam map of Jamaica and rules for a two-player variant. This small island was very tight with difficulty getting long runs, particularly for me. We had pretty much sewn up one of the extreme ends of the island each. In the end this was a narrow victory for me but neither of us rated the variant very highly or could imagine wanting to repeat the experience. At times we were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy (it is very costly to build on all the hilly and mountainous terrain) which is not something we've had to worry about in any of our previous games of Steam.

We were both ready for something familiar and not too demanding after that and settled on finishing the day with a few games of "Ingenious" or, as my version is called "Mensa connections". I think we played three in the end, although "best of five" was suggested at one point. At any rate the deciding match ended in a draw which seemed to be a good place to finish.

For such a cheap game (I think it was in the region of six or seven pounds) this is a very nice experience. Designed by the famous Reiner Knizia and with satisfyingly solid components, this is a tile laying abstract game which is highly recommended. It plays well and fast, can be played solo, is simple to learn and teach and seems to me to appeal to a wide cross-section of gamers.

There is an online version on Matthew Marquand's "Memoirs of a Board Gamer" site which is recommended if you want to try out how the game plays or have a quick solo game. For the full experience you need to buy those nice plastic and cardboard bits though [Note Matthew says there is a bug in a recent Firefox release which is causing problems with Ingenious - so play  it in Chrome... :-) ] There are other games on Matthew's site too: Coloretto is also recommended for a quick, enjoyable solo play. 

A Little Light Gaming

No ProfessorMudlark this week but the return of Petra Pan and mrwendell made us five. Although five is a useful number for a lot of good games it turned out to be an evening of light, simple gaming.

We started with Qwirkle, which I didn't seem to be doing too well at but redeemed myself in the closing stages, taking the bonus for finishing the game and being second or third. Academic really since mrwendell was clear winner with a score streets ahead of the rest of us.

The second game was a light card game by Reiner Knizia called Poison. I had played this before at one of the Saltdean Games Days and it did come back to me. After a couple of rounds with no points (as opposed to minus points - there are no positive points in Poison) I took four in the final round but it still left me the winner.
Image via Wikipedia

We finished with another game of Maori, which was new to Petra Pan and mrwendell. Both seemed to like it and mrwendell had a good win with two completed leis on his board. I took the scores for both shells and boats bringing me up to second place despite my rather poor showing in the island scoring.

A light-hearted and relaxed evening of simple games turned out to be very pleasant.

Gaming at a distance

Image via WikipediaOh dear Crabro and I have finally dipped a successful toe into the wide waters of board gaming via the internet while chatting on Skype. It's not quite the experience that sitting around a table pushing cardboard is, but it's an interesting substitute.

We were due to be at a small, rather exclusive Con locally but for one reason or another couldn't get away until almost lunchtime at which point Crabro suggested that, rather than driving there (quite a few miles for him especially as he would be coming here in the evening too) we make another attempt at linking up on-line for a game or two.

Image via WikipediaWe rang off for lunch and some software set up and when we spoke again it was via Skype and for the first time via a sensible headset in my case rather than the speakers.  For the rest of the afternoon we were chatting almost as though we were playing face to face.

The Vassal set-up took a little longer but eventually it fell into place even though I was on my Windows games machine rather than the main Linux machine while he was using Linux as always. We first attempted Memoir '44 as we had played my real copy several times recently and thought we knew the rules. It worked and looked quite nice but we had a few problems understanding the interface especially as some expansions had been included which we had never encountered before. Decks of combat cards?

It having been a reasonably successful start, we had a look through the extensive list of modules but eventually decided to have a game of something we both know and own (one shouldn't of course play anything on Vassal that one doesn't own a physical copy of and in some cases this is ensured by missing card decks etc.). We therefore, had a couple of games of Carcassonne which I messed up as much on line as I do with the cardboard version. I can never get the hand of where and when to place farmers.

Grabbed from the Vassal session

Some things about the interface where nice (the ability to "lay down" a meeple for instance) but it felt rather glitchy and several times we accidently picked up all the tiles instead of just one and had placed tiles go missing. We got used to synchronising on the person with the undamaged copy to correct these things though and overall it was a successful start for on-line peer-to-peer board gaming.

Later on the group arrived for the usual Thursday evening session and I played Strozzi with ProfMudlark, MaOldie and Crabro and then a second game with the full group after Petra Pan and mrwendell arrived.

As soon as I opened and started punching it I realised that I had in fact played it before and quite liked it. A simple game of grabbing a ship or three and placing it at a port to gain points and bonuses by having the best ship in the port (highest number) and the highest position on the trade goods track of that port. There is a little more to it than that but not much. I won the first game convincingly but found a six-player version a little more difficult, coming second.

After that and another round of hot drinks we decided to play Fast Flowing Forest Fellers again as it is quick to learn and should be fast playing. Of course the Professor can suffer attacks of Analysis Paralysis in any game but he quickly accepted that this game needs to "flow" in keeping with the theme and on the whole it moved fairly fast.

I spent several minutes trying to be heard of assorted conversations as I pointed out the the boards were the wrong way round, it being no fun to push someone into a current that is going in the direction they want to go. In the end I gave up and relied on it dawning on the others eventually... Which it did after the initial few moves. Unfortunately mrwendell had negotiated his way through a sea of logs into a clear lead by that point so he was not overly pleased to have the game restarted.

Justice was served though as his lumbermeeple raced over the finish line in a clear lead from my second place chap (which he had unkindly bumped into a stream heading backwards when I was in the lead). The usual mayhem ensued at the mid-point as people repeatedly sent their opponents (and the odd log) back up-river. I'm not sure the others were as enthusiastic about the game as Crabro and me but then for me it loses something with too many players. I like the opportunity to choose between more than one meeple for example.

A good day's gaming anyway, despite shunning the Con and its free cakes.

Wednesday Whinging

Tuesday games had to move to Wednesday this week and started much later to boot. We finished with Schotten-Totten, a strangely themed card game by the prolific designer Reiner Knizia which was later re-themed and made more complex as Battle Line. I have owned it for a while and was glad to finally get to play it.
 Image via Wikipedia



I have a German version of it and am unaware if there is any rational explanation for the odd theming of clan warfare between stereotypical cartoon Scots. I'm not sure whether the Scots are terribly happy to see themselves as bare buttocked, kilt-wearing beligerent bagpipe-stranglers but they know where to find Reiner if they want to take it up with him. Meanwhile I see it really as a nice little abstract filler.

One of our two games of it, which entails a string of "battles" for marker stones between groups of cards in sets of three, was the only game I won all day so I'm grateful to Dr Knizia for that at least. Is anything worn under the kilt? No, it's all in perfect working order, to quote the late Mr Milligan.

As in other recent weeks, the other games were Memoir '44 (both sides of an all infantry scenario) and A Few Acres of Snow. In the former I had some terrible luck as well as playing badly, in the latter I just played badly I think. At any rate I got trounced once again by the French despite trying a completely different strategy from last week. To be fair Crabro had stopped his stomping on Boston and tried a completely different strategy himself.

I need to do some homework before next time, although I did at least win one siege this time. The Memoir scenario pitted French resistance groups with the additional flexibility in their firing and retreating rules but only three figures per unit against ordinary German units. Unfortunately, given that there was no armour present, I kept rolling tanks, tanks and stars...lots of tanks...

A very enjoyable day again anyway.

Montelimar Memoir

 The inaugral hosting of the Thursday games group here last night, owing to my no longer being a car owner, and regular host Crabro having his own problems.

Most of the group had other pressing issues in fact, so initially the group consisted of just myself and The Professor.




After the obligatory cup of tea, we decided on Memoir '44 and chose a scenario by the scientific method of the Professor saying the first number that came into his head.  Accordingly we prepared to fight the battle for southern France around Montelimar (where I sampled some wonderful nougats in happier times). Coincidentally it was the 67th anniversary of the fighting in question.

Initally, The Professor's forces made a lot of ground, pressing forward in the centre with his panzers and elite infantry units in blitzkrieg style. He then found that the point of his advance was surrounded on three sides by my own, allied, infantry though. A couple of useful cards allowed me to double the use of my artillery, safely taking pot shots at range from behind woods and hills, and call in an air strike on his advancing infantry, including two of the elite units.

The Professor seemed to have acquired the skill of always rolling hand grenades (wild cards in effect) and with the score about 4 flags each of the six required, Crabro called to say he was on his way and he was a welcome sight as we broke for tea and a chat in the kitchen.

Returning to the fray. I spotted a winning move but it was the Axis turn and unknowingly he thwarted my initial plan. I had no specific cards allowing moves in the centre where his weakest troops were, but then acquired one allowing 2 units to be commanded in each sector. In the centre my remaining unit of Shermans had dashed to the North, ready to take the flag available for holding ground by the Rhone. It only remained to pick up one more flag by destroying an Axis unit. The plan was for the Shermans to fire from their position by the Rhone, at a unit which was down to one piece. In the event all they could do was force it to retreat and it was down to the intact artillary to wipe out what was left of a Panzer unit on the left flank for the winning flag.

Crabro then joined us for two games of Mensa Connections (perhaps better known as Reiner Knizia's Ingenious or even Einfach Genial).

The first went my way, with a not particularly impressive winning score of 8 or 9 and with the others within one or two points. In the second of the, quite agressively played, games I struggled to move orange  and was squeezed out by a rampaging Crabro who went on to win by a convincing margin.

I thought that the Professor and I had tied for second but he was at pains to point out that he had beaten me by virtue of his second lowest scoring colour being higher than mine. I was happy with two wins out of three though. :-)

No need for the new "Spieltisch" this week but I am inviting the group round again next week when I will perhaps be hosting something like a more normal turnout.