1.
With 9 players in attendance tonight we
split into 2 groups. On table 1 Mike introduced Jerry, Poppy and new member
Jeremy to “ROYAL PALACE”, the game
about enlisting nobles from a courtyard to construct a palace, i.e. Victory
Points. Briefly the mechanics are to place your courtiers onto the board at the
gate; use your current movement points to move courtiers to various rooms, from
a choice of 8; then do the Action associated with those rooms in any order you
choose. The various rooms give you gold, or prestige cards or more importantly
the seals of the King and Madame Pompadour. Players use these ‘resources’ to
enlist a noble for the appropriate cost and they gain VPs for doing so. Some
nobles also grant temporary favours (one-off) or permanent favours (each turn),
so the choice of which noble to take is important. Players continue with this
process until there are 12 or less nobles left in the courtyard on the starting
players turn and then one final round is played. A very clever and different system which was
enjoyed by all the players. Jeremy enlisted nobles of low VPs but they gave him
increased movement; Mike enlisted those with high VP’s but not too many; Jerry
enlisted the most nobles and vitally he gained 2 nobles in the last turn to
gain a close victory from Jeremy, with the final scores being Jerry 66; Jeremy
62; Mike 55; Poppy 49.
2.
Table 2 saw Roger introduce 4 players to “FISCHE FLUPPEN FRICKADELLEN”, which was
played last week. With only limited knowledge of the game this proved difficult
and when Chris Cook arrived the players abandoned it in favour of “EKETORP”. There seemed to be lots of
laughter emanating from the 6 players as they elected to battle against each
other to gain stone. In Eketorp,
players build Viking strongholds upon the Swedish island of Öland. The goal of
the game is to collect the most valuable blocks to build your own fortress,
either by winning battles on the resource spaces or by stealing blocks from
other Vikings. Each turn, new resources appear and the players secretly plan
their Viking movements. After all the placements are revealed, the Vikings
battle each other for blocks (with the losers sent off to the field hospital to
recover). The game ends after a set number of rounds, or when one of the
players has succeeded in finishing their fortress. As the owner of the game
Chris soon took the lead but he became the target for all the other players. He
looked a certain winner with one round to go but Paul sneaked in with a great
last round to claim victory.
3.
On table 1
Jerry and Poppy had to leave but Rob arrived so a 3-player game of “SUSHIZOK IM GOCKELWOK” took place. The
dice-rolling, domino-collecting game has been described before so is not
repeated here. Suffice to say that in a close contest debutant Jeremy won his
first game in which the final scores were Mike 5, Rob 6 and Jeremy 7.
Congratulations Jeremy and welcome to the club!
4.
Table 2
reduced to 4 players to play “NIAGARA”,
as it was a quick game to play. The game is about sailing your canoe down the
river to collect various jewels. However the flow of the river is unpredictable
and canoes often overshoot their intended target and are swept over the
waterfall, much to the amusement of the other players. Alister had a cunning
strategy (which is not revealed here) and won the game easily.
5.
As Table 1
were still involved in their game the same players played another game of “NIAGARA”. Alister employed the same
strategy as before (no longer a secret) but still claimed an easy victory.
6.
On table 1
Mike introduced 4 other players to “TRIBUNE”,
based in ancient Rome. For each game a Victory Condition card is chosen and for
our game we used the easy beginner option that listed 7 conditions of which any 3 had to met. These include
things like 4 different faction markers, 3 legions, 25 dinari, 8 laurels etc.
Players place their followers on various parts of the board so that they perform
actions to obtain cards, and maybe take over control of one or more of the 7
factions in the game, taking the spoils from doing so, and try to reach their
objective. Some very clever mechanisms are involved in this process and the
quality of the components and the game play are first class. In a close finish
most players had achieved at least 2 of their objectives when Paul claimed a
win by getting his third objective. All players agreed that it was a good game
and worth repeated play.
Games played and
Winners were:
Royal Palace –
Jerry Jabelman;
Eketorp – Paul
Bulpin;
Sushiwock im
Gockelwok – Jeremy Hurault;
Niagara Game 1 –
Alister Gittin;
Niagara Game 2 –
Alister Gittin;
Tribune – Paul
Bulpin.
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