1.
When Mike arrived 7 players had just started
a game of “7 WONDERS”, a club
favourite. Mike ‘helped’ Kelly and John as they were new to the game but this
proved to be of no benefit at all as they finished 7th and 6th
respectively. Jeremy built an impressive number of science cards which gleaned
him 38 points in that category, whilst Paul had amassed 35 points in Civics.
The final victor by a margin of 4 points was Jeremy.
2.
We then split into 2 groups of 4. On table 1
Mike led on a game of “FINCA”, the
game about growing fruit and transporting it to market using your donkeys. The
game was reviewed on 16/09/2010(yes
that long ago) so see detailed review there. Despite delivering less loads than
the other players Jeremy always seemed to have the most fruit in his farm when
the Finca bonus tiles were allocated upon an area being emptied, even though he
didn’t deliver to that area. He gained 3 of the 10 tokens for a score of 15
points. Mike was first to complete a set of all 6 market tiles for a bonus of 7
but this was not enough to win the game, in which final scores were Jeremy 52;
Mike 43; Roger 37; Kelly 36.
3.
Table 2 played a retro game from Paul’s
loft, “SIGMA FILE” dated 1973. The
game was re-issued in 1982 under the title of CONSPIRACY and that is the image that appears with the review. The
game is about bluff and the following description is lifted from BGG. There are four capitals, four
bankbooks, one top secret briefcase and eight greedy spies that anyone can
control. The object is to move the briefcase to your headquarters. Players can
either secretly pay off or openly move a spy one space on their turn. Each
player has an account of $10,000 and can bribe spies in increments of at least
$100. If you move a spy, another player may challenge the move. The two players
then slowly reveal how much money they each have on the spy in question. If the
challenger wins, the move is rescinded. If the defender wins, the move stays
and the challenger loses his next turn. Players need to cooperate against
whichever player is closest to victory. You can conspire openly to swipe the
case or murder a spy and turn the tables on a player who is a mere one space
away from winning. No dice, no cards, no luck involved. Learn to work
together or games will end in a hurry. The first game was won by Kevin.
4.
Table 2 decided to play another game of “SIGMA FILE” having got familiar with
the rules and this time the devious Lucy was top spy !!
5. With
the arrival of Richard table 1 had 5 players so continuing the retro games
theme Mike introduced the others to the 1986 game of cycling called “6-TAGE RENNEN”. Players use cards to
move their cyclist around a single lap of the velodrome, gaining Sprint Points
and Race points based upon there eventual finishing positions. The game is
played over a series of races, in our case 3. The important thing to point out
is that when a race is complete some cyclists will be ‘dropped’ by the pack and
end the race a certain number of ‘laps down’. This counts against them but they
might recover this deficit in subsequent races. A couple of unique things about
this game. At the start players are dealt exactly the same series of Green
cards in values 1,2,3,4,5,7..notice there is no 6, and you do not have
enough in total to complete a lap. Movement is a neat mechanism as when a
player plays a card they move their cyclist that number of spaces but if they
alight on a space occupied by 1 or more other cyclists they advance by a number
of spaces calculated as the value of the card played x number of cyclists in
the space. So if 2 cyclists are 4 spaces ahead of a player and they play their
4 card they will move a total of 12 spaces that turn….nice !!. Of course they
could be setting up similar moves for the other cyclists so it’s not exactly
straightforward. A clever player will play a card which moves their cyclist 6
spaces ahead of those following to prevent such slipstreaming. The trick of the game is not to get dropped
by the pack, as Roger found to his cost, as it’s difficult to get back. You
have to co-operate with each other to maximise your cards. There is a special
space on the track where if you land on it you hand in all your remaining
Green cards and take a random draw from 2 decks of white cards.
In our 5-player game you drew 4 cards from the deck which contained cards of
4,5,6 and 7 cards from the deck which contained 1,2,3. This can be useful for
you to slipstream the others as they run out of cards near the end of a lap.
One other space to mention is the one where the player alighting on it misses
their next turn. That might seem a strange thing to do but if the other
cyclists pass them then they are ahead and the player can slipstream them,
maybe with a high value 5 or 7 and burst to the finishing line. Once 1 player
has finished a race all the other players get one more turn to get as close to
the finish as possible. Each 4 spaces they are short of the line counts as ‘1 lap
down’ and this is recorded on the score sheet. I mentioned that the Sprint
Points and Race points are important and that proved to be the case. Richard,
Jeremy and Mike all finished the first Race with Kelly and Roger 1 lap down.
However Mike was the leader at this point because he had got 13 points to
Richard’s 10 and Jeremy’s 5. In Race 2 Jeremy was the winner and gained 16
points in the process, Richard was 2nd and gained 11 points and Mike
was 3rd gaining only 7 points, so Now Richard and Jeremy were tied
on 21 points and no laps down, with Mike back in 3rd place on 20
points. Sadly Kelly finished 3 laps down and Roger got dropped in this race and
finished 5 laps down, so they were out of the running going into the last race.
In a very close finished to the final Race Jeremy was 1 space short of winning
when Mike had just enough to get over the line with Jeremy 2nd and
Roger 3rd. The points gained by Mike enabled him to win with final
scores being Mike No laps down and 34 points, Jeremy No laps down and 27
points; Richard 1 lap down and 27 points; Kelly 4 laps down and 17 points;
Roger 6 laps down 14 points.
6. Table 2 played the card game “FLUXX”, which your correspondent is not
familiar with so once again this review has been taken from BGG. Fluxx
is a card game in which the cards themselves determine the current rules of the
game. At the start of the game, each player holds three cards and on a turn a
player draws one card, then plays one card. By playing cards, you can put new
rules into play that change numerous aspects of the game: how many cards to
draw or play, how many cards you can hold in hand or keep on the table in front
of you, and (most importantly) how to win the game. There are many editions,
themed siblings, and promo cards available.
7 Wonders –
Jeremy Hurault;
Finca – Jeremy
Hurault;
Sigma File game
1 – Kevin Ward;
Sigma File game
2 – Lucy Newbury;
6-Tage Rennen –
Mike Oakes;
Fluxx – Kevin
Ward.
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