CHIPPENHAM BOARDGAMES CLUB – 09/02/2012

1.       Despite the snow warnings 10 players turned up but we split into the surprising groups of 3 and 7 players. On table 1 Jeremy introduced Mike and Roger to the game “BURGUNDY”, in which players use the pips from their 2 die to execute various actions on the board. From a starting position of 1 castle on the riverbank they are trying to expand their princedom by the acquisition of  tiles representing various terrain types (farms, mines, river, buildings etc) and placing them on adjacent spaces on the board. Upon doing so they might gain various bonus placements or victory points or goods tokens, but like many games you can’t do everything. Although the actions available to the players are based upon dice rolling there is a feature whereby by playing worker tokens the player can add or subtract 1 to /from a dice roll to suit their purposes, so it’s not all down to luck. A very attractive board, nice components and a mechanism that is fairly easy to pick up after the first few rounds of play. Mike was the slowest to start scoring VP’s but then he had a storming round and leapt into the lead, with Jeremy and Roger some way behind. However by completing certain types of terrain first Jeremy was storing up VP tiles for game end scoring so it was obvious the lead would not last. Roger struggled a bit mid-game but was catching up near the end but Jeremy continued to outscore the other 2 and he eventually claimed the win. Definitely a game to play again.

2.       The reason for the unusual player split was that the other 7 players wanted to play “SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT”, the co-operation game about saving the kingdom of Camelot from the evil clutches of “The Traitor”.  The game was reviewed on 31/03/2011 so is not reviewed in detail here. The game resulted in a collective win fopr the team as eventually Camelot was saved from the Traitor, who turned out to be Kevin.

3.       On table 1 Jeremy had to leave early so Roger and Mike played a 2-player version of “DOMINION” whilst they waited for Camelot to finish. Mike gained the early VP cards but then struggled to get enough Treasure cards to buy more. Roger started to gather up the final few Province cards and looked likely to win but the final countdown showed that Mike was the winner, a rare sight indeed !!.

4.       At this point the group reduced to 5 players and we tried the new game “Hunting Party” but we hit what looks like a game flaw after about 20 minutes so we abandoned the game and chose the ever-popular “INCAN GOLD “ instead, as we all knew it. The gremlin cards came out early to make for some low scoring but Mike managed to stay in long enough in one round to gain a haul of 16. In another rare sighting Mike continued to gather treasure at a high rate and he eventually won with 50 points with Roger second on 48. 2 wins in one evening for Mike, no wonder the elements outside were of an unusual nature, the world’s gone mad!!

Games played and Winners were:

Burgundy – Jeremy Hurault;

Shadows Over Camelot – a collective win;

Dominion  – Mike Oakes;

Incan Gold – Mike Oakes.