CHIPPENHAM BOARDGAMES CLUB – 19/07/2012

1.       We had a bumper attendance of 16 tonight so 3 tables were in play. Rae Dunn and Rob Piesse led the latecomers on Table 1 with a series of short games for 5 players. The first of these was “MAORI”, a tile laying game where players try to complete islands of different sizes, some of which yield palms, huts, shells and boats, which affect game end scoring. The tiles are placed in a matrix which eventually fills up and then games end scoring occurs. Players score for their islands which contain the items mentioned above and there are bonus points for the owner of the largest collection of each. A nice little filler, and the eventual winner was Rae.

2.       Table 1 then played “ALHAMBRA” the game about building a beautiful palace with tokens bought from the marketplace, some with walls which also count for scoring purposes throughout the game.  The unusual thing about the game is that there are 4 currencies in it and as tokens are bought they are replaced by new ones so there are always 4 available but in different currencies and different prices levels,. Scoring occurs 3 times in the game and points are awarded to the player with the most of each type of building in their palace, plus the length of their contiguous wall. Lots of competition to gain control of a type to get those scoring points and the need to have the right amount of money in the right currency is the crux of the game. The eventual winner was Jerry.

3.       The group then continued with “SCREAM MACHINE”, the card game about a Theme Park, which was reviewed before so is not repeated here. As it’s one of Rob;s favourite games it was not a surprise that he emerged as the einner.

4.       Table 1 then played a club favourite “DOMINION”, about which little needs to be said, except that the winner was John.

5.       Table 1 completed their evening with another favourite, the ever-popular “7 WONDERS”, and this time the winner was Rob.

6.       Whilst all this activity on Table 1 was going on Mike led a group of 5 on Table 2 playing “HAWAII”. This game was reviewed last week so is not repeated here, Paul learned from his experience of the previous week by building Spear Huts and a God who rewarded Spear tokens so he kept scoring 6 points most turns, which gave him a healthy lead. Donna did her best to keep up by visiting the islands in her boats, whilst Richard managed to secure the fruit to score his irrigation tile. Lucy kept taking the tiles that Mike wanted so this meant that whilst she also kept in contention Mike was left hopelessly last…again !!  Paul almost lapped Mike and kept his lead to the end.

7.       With Lucy’s departure the group of 4 decided to play “HAWAII” again as we had it all set up and the new players knew the rules. This game was much closer and Richard scored well early on. Mike bought some boats this time and managed to visit the island which gave VP’s so he actually took the lead for once. The God tiles were always expensive and very few were used, with Richard the only one to do so. This proved to be a great benefit as he scored 30-odd points in the game end scoring and secured the victory from Donna and Paul, with Mike in last place once more.

8.       On table 3 Tony held court for the whole evening in another outing for “ECLIPSE”, this time for the full 6 players. All seemed to enjoy it but once again the game did not complete in the time available, so no winner was declared.

Games played and Winners were:

Maori – Rae Dunn;

Alhambra – Jerry Jabelman;

Scream Machine – Rob Piesse;

Dominion – John Binmore;

7 Wonders – Rob Piesse;

Hawaii Game 1 – Paul Pulpin;

Hawaii Game 2 – Richard Harris;

Eclipse – to be continued next week.