CHIPPENHAM BOARDGAMES CLUB – 31/05/2012

1.       With 8 players in attendance we split into 2 tables. On table 1 Freya introduced her new purchase from Expo, this being “THUNDERSTONE ADVANCE”. Described to me as “Like Dominion” the 4 players set about trying to build a party of heroes, with the ability to defeat the Thunderstone Bearers. The game seemed to take around an hour to play and was enjoyed by all the players. The eventual victor was Jerry, by a margin of 2 points.

2.       Table 2 saw Mike leading a group of 4 in another game of “TRAJAN”, which was played last week. With 3 players new to the game there was the necessary 40 minutes of explanation to describe the board, the bits and the mechanisms, so it was 8 o’clock before we started playing.  Roger started scoring points early on and John soon drew level with him. Mike tried a shipping strategy but failed to draw any matching pairs of cards, so he lagged behind the rest. Alister then started to improve his position with some useful Trajan tiles being resolved. Mike finally got some victory points via Construction but lost some again by being short of some of the Demand tiles when the first quarter ended. Mike then took the lead with some shipping and construction actions, with John in pursuit. Roger dropped behind so Alister took closer order. In the final quarter John broke away and looked certain to win but then Mike and Alister overtook him. Mike thought he had done enough to win but failure to satisfy one of his Bonus cards meant that 9 VP’s went missing. Alister won the final vote in the Senate, gaining the Bonus card which gave him 3 VPs for each Bonus card yellow side up, and as he already had 2 of these, with the new one he gained a further 9 VP’s to pass Mike and win by 5 points. The 3 players new to the game all liked the mechanisms.

3.       Table 1 now had Jon in attendance so 5 of them played “SCREAM MACHINE”, a card game about building an amusement park with various rides and attracting the punters in. It was played on 29/03/12 so see review for that date. Jerry won the game easily for his second win of the night.

4.       On Table 2 Mike introduced 2 of the 3 others players to “FINCA”, the game about growing fruits and getting them to market to gain scoring tiles. The game was reviewed on 16/09/2010 so is not repeated here.  In a close finish the final points were Roger 46; Alister 45; Mike 42; John 37. 

Games played and Winners were:

Thunderstone Advance – Jerry Jabelman;

Trajan – Alister Gittin;

Scream Machine– Jerry Jabelman;

Finca – Roger Skull.