There were 7 of us to play this week. We were able to get a
couple of games with all of us together as well as splitting into a group of 4
and 3.
The evening was started with a game of Heck Meck with 4 players
while the others waiting for the others to arrive. Heck Meck is a game of Die and Dominos. The aim of
the game is to win as many worms as possible. Worms are found on the Dominos
and are won by rolling die (numbered 1 to 5 with a worm on the 6th
side) to get as high as score as possible to take the Dominos from the middle
or to steal from another player (but beware, you must roll at least one worm
otherwise the turn is lost). This is a
short fun party game where every roll of the die could potentially have an
impact on all players! This game was won
by Robert, after playing a vindictive game against his brother (there is always
intense, but good natured, rivalry between these two!)
After this everyone had arrived so we decided on another
quick game, this time Heimlich & Co. This is a slightly older game of
detective work and deception. A bunch of robbers move around a circular street
trying to get to the highest scoring house before the Safe is cracked. Beware,
you can overshoot from a maximum 9 points to a minus 3 in the space of one
move! Each player is rooting for one particular colour to get to 42 points
first, but all players can move all pieces, so try not to give the game
away! It was a tight race all the way to
the end as no-one wanted to let one colour get too far ahead. The eventual
winner was Christopher with the Red. How he managed to get his Red Robber home
first without hardly ever touching it we’ll never know!
We decided to split up at this point, with 3 going to the
classic, Settlers of Catan and the others going for a long game of The Pillars
of the Earth. Settlersof Catan is a game
about building up settlements by resources connected by roads. By careful
placement of settlements and a certain amount of luck you can be sure of a chance
of winning. I don’t know how the game
played out as I was in the other group, but I do know Robert managed a second
win of the night. Since the other game was longer, there was a chance for a
quick game of Penguin Parade and also Coloretto. Geoff was the lucky winner of both
of these.
In the meantime The Pillars of the Earth is a game based on
the Best Selling book by Ken Follett. It is game of resource management where
players are attempting to win the most prestige by adding the most to the
building of a Cathedral. Workers are
placed in Forests, Quarries or Gravel Pits to gain resources, while Master
Builders are used to choose which of the limited actions the players wish to do
each round. Master builders are pulled out of a bag at random, but the first
ones out also have to pay the most gold to place, and gold gets very tight in
this game towards the end. With the help of special privilege cards, extra
craftsmen and the market place points can be slowly accumulated. Richard started the game with an aggressive
move, blocking out Christopher from taking an important action, both players
are experienced players, so alls fair in love, war & board games!
Christopher never seemed to recover from this move as luck seemed against him
early on and then a stupid move mid game put the final nail in the coffin. Richard managed to play with a successful
wood strategy, with an ideal pair of craftsmen for this. Roger was going for
metal strategy (a rare resource, but rewarded with lots of points at the end),
and Tim went for a Gold strategy
(getting as much money as possible and then converting that to prestige
points). All strategies seemed to keep
the players very close together right until round 5 of 6, when Richard pulled
away a little. He was then able to massively cement that lead in the final
round with what we believe is a record score of 103!
We got together for one more game together, the group favourite:
Incan Gold. With so many players it was a low scoring game, but the final round
required two restarts as we couldn’t get anything other than disasters
collapsing the mine, before anyone had got any treasure at all! A very close game this time, with Christopher
getting a second win of the night.
To round out a game-packed evening, the 5 of us left at the
end got in a game of Boomtown. A gambling/bidding game to try and take mine
cards and produce gold. An interesting feature of this game is that players bid
the chance to choose a card from 5 face up first, sending the bid chips to be
distributed to the other players one way, and the choosing order going the
other. A players seating position can
have a big impact in this game! A good
game to round out the evening with the Richard/Robert rivalry re-hashed, and
once again Robert proved victorious with another massive score!
Well done Robert for making it a triple this evening!
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