CHIPPENHAM BOARDGAMES CLUB - 09/12/2010

1.    Despite the continuing low temperatures we had 8 players in attendance this week. On Table 1 Paul led a game of the new release “LONDON” and introduced Allister to the game.  Because of the need to explain the mechanisms to the new player it took over 2 hours to complete but once again all the players enjoyed it. Luke kept his building stacks to mainly 4 in number throughout, a clever strategy. Roger and Paul struggled to get rid of poverty points so they were always in trouble. Luke managed to get rid of all his poverty points near the game end, which meant that Roger and Paul lost many VPs. On his debut Allister was surprised to finish second, but this shows that the game can be played at different levels of knowledge. There was much analysis made at the end and all agreed that the game was a good one and it will be played a lot in the future.

2.       On Table 2 Mike introduced Lucy to ”INDUSTRIAL WASTE” which Tony and Geoff had already played. It is basically a card game about acquiring resources for your factory, fulfilling an order and gaining money for it. Each time you do this you generate pollution and this is recorded on your individual factory board. At the end of each turn you need to pay for the workers you have employed. Money is tight in the game and there is the opportunity to take loans but they must be paid back before the game end, otherwise they count as lost VPs. By playing certain cards a player can introduce innovation to either use less resources, less workers or generate less pollution. This is important as there is just one ‘Accident’ card in the deck and when this is discovered the players examine their current standing for pollution and get heavily penalised financially for being in either the Yellow zone or even worse, the Red zone, and they also reduce their earning power for fulfilling orders by 1. A neat series of mechanisms that has a variable game end condition so it’s difficult to predict who the winner is. A good business management game, which Geoff won, with Lucy second. Mike and Tony had too many unpaid loans at the end so they suffered for this.

3.       As Table 1 had still not finished table 2 turned to another clever auction/set collection game  this time “NEFERTITI”. This game is about players visiting different markets on the board with their servants in the hope of securing the right to acquire cards with different artefacts shown on them, and sometime a Royal Seal for use later in the game. The players are trying to build up sets of the same types which will bring them VPs at game end, but other players sometimes start collecting the same type and that devalues the set. Those who have acquired a Royal Seal can spend it to employ one of the 12 characters in the game which give special one-off powers, such as enhanced interim scoring, have 2 turns in succession, stealing a card from other players, gaining extra money etc. The way in which the markets are scored is novel and the whole game plays neatly in around 45-60 minutes. Tony and Lucy fought out a close finish with Tony just edging ahead in the last play as he had one Royal Seal left and this gave him 3 VPs, enough to take him past Lucy. Mike was a distant third, with Geoff trailing in 4^th.

 
Games played and Winners were:

Müll & Money Geoff Williams;

Nefertiti Tony Simons;

London Luke Williams.