CHIPPENHAM BOARDGAMES CLUB - 20/01/2011

1.    We had a new member this week, Kevin Shaw, so on table 1 Mike took him under his wing and along with Lucy and Roger they played “ROYAL PALACE”, which was reviewed last week. Despite describing the game Mike made an early mistake by running out of servants to place in the palace, which hindered his progress. Roger had plenty of gold at one stage and started to build up points. Lucy picked the game up quickly as usual and was building up a useful supply of victory points and getting servants placed on the edge of the courtyard. Kevin was making good progress until he forgot about the end game condition and was unable to enlist a high scoring noble because he did not have enough money. The 14 extra points for scoring on the courtyard walls enabled Lucy to sweep through for victory, final points being Lucy 62, Mike 52, Roger 51, Kevin 36. A great game enjoyed by all the players.

2.       Table 2 played a 6-player version of “SHARK”, which was also played last week. Much cutthroat trading ensued but with this increased number of players the shares were traded regularly and the game took a long time to complete. The eventual winner was Robert.

3.       Table 1 then played “TRAUMFABRIK”, in which players represent movie chiefs trying to attract the best staff to create movies over a period of 4 quarters. They obtain these cameramen, directors, musicians, film stars etc via a neat auction system and place their staff on their different movies. When a movie is complete it is scored and the player receives a token of this value. The first player to complete a film of a particular genre receives an award of 5 points. At the end of each quarter the player with the highest scoring film gains an award for the best picture currently on show. When all 4 quarters have been played the total tokens for movies and awards are aggregated to determine the winner and this was Mike. As the game took less than an hour to complete all the players expressed an interest in playing it again next week.

4.       Table 2 reduced to 5 players with Tony’s departure so they played “AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS”, a good race game with clever mechanics. Players use cards depicting various modes of transport to travel around the various cities in a pre-defined sequence but they have to be careful not to be caught by the ever-present detective who is tracking them. For each movement taken players ‘expend’ a certain number of days and this is recorded on the scoring track. When a player returns to London the number of days they have taken counts as their score but they must NOT exceed 80 or they have lost. For the final journey Robert had the right transport cards to a value of 7 which meant he completed his circumnavigation in 70 days , compared with Geoff’s 71, so a very narrow victory for Rob, his second of the night.

5.       Table 1 finished their session by introducing Kevin to the simple dice-rolling game “SUSHIWOK IM GOCKELWOK”.  Much fun ensued with constant stealing of tiles from other players. The first of these games was won by Lucy for her second win of the night but she was denied a treble by Roger winning the second game.

 
Games played and Winners were:

Shark Robert Piesse;

Royal Palace Lucy Newbury;

Around the World in 80 days Robert Piesse;

Traumfabrik Mike Oakes;

Sushiwok Im Gockelwok game 1 Lucy Newbury;

Sushiwok Im Gockelwok game 2 Roger Skull.