1.
15 members attended this week, so we played a
record number of games, and had 4 tables in play at one time. This session
report will only give a brief mention to certain games as I was unable to get
detailed feedback due to the congested nature of the evening. With the welcome
return of Tim after a long absence on table 1 Mike led a team of 4 playing “OLTRE MARE”, which was reviewed
recently. Time and Lucy scored well with their Prestige points gained for
trading with the Active player, and they didn’t want to trade with either Roger
of Mike. Roger did the most sailing and gained lots of Harbour tokens. Mike
suffered from picking up 6 Pirates just before game end and this cost him 6
points! In the final scoring Mike set the target, Lucy just failed to overtake
him, Tim finished close by but Roger, with his 6 points for most Harbour
Tokens, plus some good sets in his Cargo Deck swept through for a fine victory.
2.
Table 2 saw 6
players playing “7 WONDERS”, a new
game that is very popular at the moment. Players are given at random a display
board which depicts a particular ‘Wonder’ to be constructed, each requiring
different resources to do so. They have 3 rounds of play in which to do this,
gaining extra points if they complete early. At the start of each round players
are dealt a number of cards and they depict several factors of influence, such
as Military Strength, Trading Expertise, Discount on certain resources, Buildings
and the like. They play one card to their display in front of them and then
pass the reduced hand to the player on their left, and therefore receiving a
new hand of cards from the player on their right. They then play a further card
from this new hand and repeat the process until all the hand has been played.
The various elements are scored with tokens when a round ends with the twist
being that a player’s score is directly influenced by the holding of his 2
neighbours. So if a neighbour has more Military Strength than you, he will gain
points in that resource and you will lose points. This means that when handing cards to your
neighbour you have to study what their display is looking like and
not pass on ‘good’ cards if you can help it ! There are so many combinations
that this provides a real challenge. To ‘even’; things up in Round 2 you pass
the cards to the neighbour on your right, and then in Round 3 it reverts to
passing to the left. For a game that lasts under an hour this provides a great
gaming experience and it was rated highly by the players I spoke to, and they
look forward to playing it again. In a close contest the final scores were
Allister 47, Ben 44, Tony 44, Matt 36, Kevin 35, Paul 34.
3.
Table 3 saw Geoff,
Robert and Luke in the 3-player game of “SHARK”,
which was played and reviewed a few weeks ago.
Luke reported that he had a lucky break near the end which gave him his
first victory for weeks.
4.
Table 3 then
played “INFINITE CITY”, which was introduced to the club
recently. Geoff, playing for the first time, likened it to Carcassonne. On a
night to remember Luke scored his second victory, proving that his gaming
famine was well and truly over.
5. Table 1 played a game of “MANILA”, another club favourite. Just to show that things hadn’t
changed Lucy won yet again.
6.
With
games in progress on the other 3 tables we introduced a table 4 for Mike to
show Jerry, Poppy and Matthew the game of “THEBES”,
an attractive game about visiting famous archaeological sites and digging for
treasure, but this is to be undertaken in a specific time frame, in our case 2
years or 104 weeks. The game starts with 4 cards displayed which show a city
location and the benefit to be obtained from visiting that city. This might be Detailed
Knowledge of a particular site, fast modes of Transport, Extra Digging power
etc. Players move their player piece between cities and pick up the card for
use later on, with the display of 4 cards being refreshed each time. The neat
feature of the game is that turn sequence is determined by which player is at
the back
of the time track. Now to move from one city to another costs 1 week for each
section moved, and then to pick up a card there is a ‘cost’ in weeks to obtain
it. The better the card, the more weeks it takes. So the order in the time
chart is constantly changing and a player at the back can often have several
turns in succession if they don’t move very far!!. Having acquired knowledge,
and digging ability, eventually the players will travel to a site and another
decision has to be made. The strength of their knowledge is ‘dialled up’ on a
special device. The player then decides how many weeks they want to spend on
the dig , consult the matching number in a result chart and this indicates how
many tiles they will draw at random from a bag for that site. Each bag contains a variable number of
treasures, in a range of values, plus,at the start, 14 tiles which indicate
dirt, i.e. no luck with the dig. Players count out their tiles, retain their
treasures and put the dirt back in the bag. As more cards are added to the
display further cards show ‘exhibitions’ which are to be held in the various
cities. If a player has the required number of treasures in the correct colours
they can travel to the city, spending weeks to do so, and then show the exhibition,
which takes up further weeks but does grant victory points which are useful at
game end scoring. Once all the players have completed their work for 104 weeks
the game ends and players count up their treasures and victory points. The
player with the most is the winner and on this occasion it was Poppy , her
first victory. Well done Poppy !!
7.
Table 3
finished their evening with the card game “STREET
ILLEGAL”, in which a ‘track’ of 8 cards is displayed indicating the legal
speed limit which is allowed in each section. Alongside this ‘track’ are placed
the cards representing the players, plus a number of Pro Drivers who start the
game at the front of the pack. Players will be playing cards from their hand in
various combinations such that they keep to speed limits where possible and
then in a subsequent phase they can attempt to overtake then car in front of
them to move up the race order. Players play 3 cards from their hand that
depicts various speeds and a roadside symbol and the sum of these is compared
with the current limit. If they are in excess they can pay in chips to reduce
their speed. If the cards they display match the symbol on the track section being
played they receive 2 chips per matching card. With regard to overtaking, the
car in last place goes first and after comparing speeds of the two cars and
adding chips if necessary the manoeuvre is successful or not. If it is
successful the player must reduce their speed by 10 mph at least by replacing
one of their 3 cards and then they may, if they wish attack the next car in
front. Luke had just the right cards in hand at the end to pass into the lead
and won his third game of the evening.
8.
Table 1
played 2 quick games of “SUSHIWOK IM
GOCKELWOK” whilst they waited for other players to finish. Both games were
won by Allister, giving him a total of four victories for the evening.
9.
Table 1
were joined by Geoff and Robert for a 5-player game of “POWERBOATS”, in which players use dice to indicate their speed as
they try to guide their boats between the islands and around the buoys which
depict the race track. A clever mechanism for adjusting your speed by adding or
subtracting dice, sometimes re-rolling them, makes this an interesting race
game. The eventual winner after 2 heats was Geoff.
10.
Table 2
were last to finish, having played the classic “AGE OF STEAM”, a favourite of Tony, and it introduced several other
players to the game. Most thought it was a hard game to play ‘first time out’ but
most enjoyed the experience. As was to be expected Tony was the winner.
Games
played and Winners were:
Oltre
Mare Roger Scull;
7
Wonders Allister Gittins;
Shark
Luke Williams;
Infinite
City Luke Williams;
Manila
Lucy Newbury;
Thebes
Poppy Jabelman;
Street
Illegal Luke Williams;
Sushiwock
Im Gockelwok game 1 – Allister Gittins;
Sushiwock
Im Gockelwok game 2 – Allister Gittins;
Powerboats
Geoff Williams;
Age
of Steam Tony Simons.
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