"The Wiki Page for 'Physics Major' Redirects to 'Engineer'

“The Wiki Page for Physics Major redirects to Engineer”

A nice train game to get us going.

Steam

Three player Steam- Andy, myself and David, a new comer to the Isleworth Boardgamers. We played the American side of the map as recommended for three players. Broadly speaking Andy took the left-hand side of the map, I took the middle and David the right-hand-side, although both me and David diversified into Andy’s ara, which is a tribute to his skill in picking the best spot.

Andy took the correct early Locomotive decision and both he and I rapidly increased our Locomotive to size 6, with David being a little slower. I used the Engineer a few times to make longer connections and we were all fighting over Urbanisation towards the end as the cubes vanished from the map. I spent a couple of turns building a long rail link to Ottowa which paid off in the short term in terms of juicy deliveries but didn’t seem so smart later on.

In the final turn Andy and me were very close and unfortunately my best deliveries used his track, which contributed to his victory. Points are approximate.

Andy 55 Philip 52 David 50.

From trains to robots...

Robo Rally (thanks Jon)

And so it was that we sat down with a much-loved copy of this game, with only Jon and Paul having not played before. However, the rules are extremely simple, so even Jon and Paul picked it up in no time.

The game began with John and Jon shooting off across the board in search of the first checkpoint. Soren and Paul were a little slower off the blocks, and Alex just seemed to be deriving much pleasure from shooting James in the derriere. Thanks to some handy conveyor-belt assistance, Jon was fast approaching his objective, but a slight miscalculation combined with some none-too-subtle ramming from John, sent him off the board and back to the start. By this time, Soren had got his act together and was also approaching the first checkpoint, whilst Paul was still in a world of his own, and James was still getting shot.

By the mid-game, John and Soren were racing each other around the checkpoints, whilst Jon and Paul had James in a laser sandwich on a conveyor-belt, forcing him to power down to prevent total destruction. Paul then wandered off and dropped off the board in the same place twice running. Nice. Alex finally decided that he would pursue the actual goal of the game, as opposed to shooting James, but by this time it was too late – Soren had raced around the checkpoints and claimed victory. John had reached 2, and Alex 1, whilst Jon, Paul and James were still on the start board, after having lost lives and being in varying states of disrepair.

Soren 3 checkpoints; John 2; Alex 1; Jon / Paul / James II – 0

Train engineers, robot engineers, now urban engineers!

Sunrise City (thanks Jon)

Jon joined the Sunrise City veterans, Soren and John for a game to end the evening. The rules take a little explaining, but Soren did a good job, and Jon felt a lot less clueless than he did at the beginning of Power Struggle last week!

Soren and John were doing a good job of hitting the star at the top of the score track, for lots of bonus points, and were cleverly using the purple buildings to their advantage.

3 rounds pass relatively quickly, and the thick tiles create a pleasing 3D cityscape at the end. Soren had raced into an unassailable lead, and Jon was bringing up the rear after having failed to score many bonuses during the game.

Verdict: really interesting puzzle-like city-building game. Although attractive, the pastel colours make it more difficult than it needs to be to instantly assess the ‘gameboard’ (purple/blue and yellow/green being particular culprits), but overall a nice little game that deserves further outings.

Postscript: it appears that Soren did have one rule wrong – the bonus for landing on the ‘10’ space is indeed 2 stars, but you don’t then get another star for ‘wrapping around’ back to ‘1’ again. I’m not sure that this would have affected the result, but it would have been a lot closer. Well, that’s my excuse for losing so badly and I’m sticking to it……

Soren 19; John 13; Jon 9

Another city, another type of thrill...

Lords of Vegas (thanks Paul).

After successfully introducing James II to Lords of Vegas recently, and still dizzy from the many unplanned circles that occurred in Robo Rally, it was time to run it by James' partner in crime, Alex.

Alex picked up the rules in no time. His starting lots were on the strip, which is good but means they take a little longer to build on at the start as they're more expensive and you get less cash at the start. All part of the balance of the game. Unfortunately for him, the strip came out a couple of times before he was able to build on this, so he wasn't able to take full advantage.

James II and Paul's lots were dispersed in seemingly more random locations so to start with they built sized one casinos.

Paul got a little lucky and build a three sized gold gambling den earlier than normal, and then got even luckier as this was drawn in quick succession, allowing him to take a healthy lead.

A big brown casino started to appear in the middle as a result of several disparate tiles being joined, which had a bigger number of tiles owned by Paul and James II, but the single die owned by Alex had the biggest number. As money was tight, it was difficult for James II or Paul to fund a reorganise and reroll the dice, which would have been in their favour.

A lot of gambling took place between Alex and James II, with James II offsetting the bet at the bank on almost all the times when he won, and not doing it when he lost. The perils of Vegas.

Eventually James II took over the seven tile casino, and Alex build a nine tile enterprise just over the strip, but Paul had build a lead that was too big to claw back.

Paul: 44, Alex: 29, James II: 23

P.S “The Wiki Page for Physics Major redirects to Engineer” is a quotation from “Every Major’s Terrible”, which is a modern spoof on “A Modern Major-General”, which is found in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. You can find the spoof at xkcd.com

3... is the magic number

Indeed... and it could've saved a lot of time if we'd remembered this early on when trying to decide how to split games between 9 players...  oh, how we could've done with Tonio's mathematical skills to help !

Eventually common sense prevailed and we split into 3's to check out the games below...

But first, a small aperitif for the early arrivers...

Fast Flowing Forest Fellers

Jon and I managed to get there early this week and so ramped up a 2^nd game of this with the idea it would be over by the time everyone else showed up. This time using Jon’s new copy, him having been impressed enough after the initial game to get one himself (well that and also i suspect the 7.99 price tag helped sway the decision J). Then Paul showed up just before we started which made it a 3 player game.  Some new maps were chosen for the course, one with long (LONG) currents just asking for player interaction, and the second with an interesting set of currents and logs that looked intriguing.

Early on, as suspected, everyone seemed more enthusiastic to dump other players back down the long current flows rather than trying to get clear of the hazards… to avoid this I decided to only launch one at a time so I could focus on getting each past the obstacles rather than relying on getting the right cards… Jon and Paul seemed happier slugging it out on the rapids J

Eventually, after some kind of reluctant truce was called, everyone started to drift to the 2^nd board… this set in motion a very different kind of scenario wherein a chain reaction would be triggered by kicking a log into a current near the top of the board. This would kick another log onto another current, which might kick a player, who would move a log etc… all the way down. Quite interacting to see, if not exactly that useful for anyone.  By this stage both Jon and Paul had realised that I was ahead and were trying to join forces to stop what was probably both of their worse outcomes… me winning J… but in the same way that Dastardly and Mutley never quite seem to get it together it wasn’t having much effect… eventually they both realised the game was up as my 3^rd and last logger reached the finish line.

Gotta say I’m liking this game, and not just from the result. It’s simple (possibly the simplest game to teach I have), quick  (45 mins) and has a lot of potential for interaction, planning and even a little strategy…

Final score: James (me) winning, with Paul and Jon still floating somewhere off the coast of Alaska, squabbling about who was to blame for my victory…

Power Struggle (thx Noel)

Having had Power Struggle on the shelf in the living room for the last
year, Noel was very keen to get it to the table for the first time
this evening. Over that year, the rules had been read many times and
with a brush up on the day he was all ready to go. It did need all his
best spin doctoring to wheedle it onto a table so it was less a
Coalition of the Willing but more an Alliance of the indecisive (James
II and Jon) and the Latecomer (Andy) who started the game.

After a thorough rules explanation and with no one having a clear idea of strategy, Noel took up the Director of Communications and the Chairman roles with the initial placements. Jon picked up the Development division, James the Legal eagles and Andy was Human Resources chief. In the absence of anything clearer to be focusing on, Andy and Jon piled cubes onto the board 'that cant be bad can it?' and James picked up the first batch of shares. The Communications role meant Noel sorted the order of all the cards that were coming out and combined with the Chairman role enabled him to make plenty of money in  the first few rounds. He was unchallenged in the Communications role for the whole game which enabled him to control the pace and timing of the whole course and in retrospect all of the others realised that the Spin Doctor was the crucial role and should have made more efforts to bribe or bully their way to control this department.

As a whole there wasn't too much bribing going on the in the game. Andy had the initial reputation of being a bit easy in accepting the brown envelopes and moved ahead in the corruption points track, but soon Jon
picked up the mantle of table shark. Unfortunately he combined being dirty with being cheap and no one accepted his bribes so although he moved up on the corruption track he didn't gain any department special abilities through these actions.

Noel 'spin doctor' reached the 4 VPs needed to win first, with Jon 'Dirty but Cheap' 2nd on 2 (3 million Pinats), followed by Andy 'cube builder' on 2 (1.2 million Pinats) and James 'Stealth Takeover' on 1.

This first game lasted about 2.5 hours, including rules explanation. It is a unique and interesting mix of mechanics: area control, worker placement, bribery and economic, in a nicely thematic way. This unique
mix makes it challenging to identify a strategic route early in the first game but should benefit from another play which should also bring the playtime closer to 90 minutes. Hopefully, enough going on and enjoyable uniqueness that it doesn't take another year to get it back to an IBG table.

Sunrise City (thx Paul)

Paul and Soren were both keen to build Sunrise City version II after a fun game last week, with Tom taking the other seat at the City's planning committee. Tom had done his homework by reading the rules on-line, so minimal recap was needed and the game commenced.

Paul's first role was the one that Soren used to get into a lead last week, with points being given to match any other players during the zoning phase. It seemed to work as well as it did for Soren last week, so Paul managed to sneak into a good lead by hitting 10 points straight away and then again fairly shortly afterwards.

Soren enjoyed his use of the lawyer card by swapping round bidding markers at the end of the round, although Tom wasn't in a position to complain about the very honourable role in the legal profession, being a real life one, and all. As it was, Soren chose to screw with Paul's marker instead. Tom focused on swapping zoning tiles to his advantage.

Tom realised much more quickly than James II and Paul last week, the absolute importance of 'hitting the ten', so both he and Soren kept in pretty close proximity to Paul and at the end game all three had amassed a good pile of stars.

On the count it was revealed that Paul had managed to keep his lead, although had another turn been played he may not have.

Scores: Paul: 19, Tom: 16, Soren: 15

Cyclades

After some debates about who and what to play Johan, Phil and me disappeared to the far corner with Cyclades. Phil and me had played once before, but it was new to Johan. The rules are pretty simple though despite the complex looking nature of the board. A little bit of everything involved, auction (a-la-Amun Re), area control, set collection, dice… but the game all fits neatly together and after a couple of rounds plays very smoothly to a conclusion.

Johan started out looking to collect philosophers for a quick route to victory, while Phil quickly took a military lead picking up the god granting troop movement in the first round and claiming a new island.  Then in the next round he successfully attacked some of my ships... which kind of flavoured my approach to the rest of the game :)

Indeed, most of the game revolved around Phil and myself threatening each other and the occasional battle whie Johan focused on the philosophers and managed to avoid most of the carnage... A tactic that almost worked like a charm as after several rounds when Phil and me were sparring we suddenly both noticed he was one philosopher away from claiming a 2nd island and the win... a truce was hurridly called between myself and Phil as we checked our options. Basically we got lucky... Johan could claim the 2nd metropolis, and indeed we couldn't stop him... but he only had one island to put it on, and I was able to invade this to take over control of his metropolis before the end of the round... great for me... not much use to Phil... and Johan's dreams of glory vanished in that instant.

From here Phil and Johan realised that I was now the main target. During the previous rounds I'd managed to obtain 6 priests which grant the owner discounts on the auctions... with this I was able to under bid for the gods with impunity and was also stashing a nice nest egg as a result.

And despite their combined efforts, I managed to wrap the game up soon afterwards by ininvading one of Phil's metropolis's to pick up my 2nd metropolis. Interesting to win by allowing other players to build up the cities and then just invading, some might call this a cheap victory... personally I'd disagree :)

It was an interesting game from my side as to be honest I'd not been playing for the win for most of the game, but was having fun building up an army and being able to select what Gods and creatures I wanted due to having the most cash and best dicsounts... It was only after the 'near' Johan win that I realised what the actual point of the game is (to build 2 metropolisis) and switched aims.

Final scores:  James completed the 2 metropolysis first with Phil and Johan both looking distraught at how things had turned out...

A rare victory for me in a game involving Phil... Ok, so it has dice, but I'll take it anyways.

and that's that... also played I believe was a co-op game of The Isle of Doctor Necreaux which was won by the good guys...

"Geography's Just Physics Slowed Down with Trees on Top"

Coloretto (thanks Paul)

There was a game of Coloretto at the start of the evening as five people were waiting for the rest. I can't recall exactly who played or what the points were, but I think it was a three way tie for the lead on 21 points between you, me and Soren. I could be wrong.

The focus shifts to a heavier game...

Ora et Labora

I was eager to play with my new copy of this, and I found three people new to the game and willing to be taught, Noel, Neil and Ian.

After a somewhat laborious rules explanation I kicked off with the opening moves in brewing beer. Noel copied me by building the Priory, Neil took money and bought some seaside and Ian built the Spinning Mill and used the revenue to expand his holding by a strip.

My beer brewing strategy was reasonably successful. Noel beat me to the Stone Merchant and Neil beat me to the Brewery, but I was still the first to brew beer and I brewed quite a lot of it. I then switched to Whisky production, distilling 10 barrels Whiskey by building the Whisky Distillery. However my alcoholic efforts meant I fell behind in the settlement phase, building a less valuable settlement in the first opportunity available and also that I had to spend more on landscapes later in the game.

Meanwhile Neil had made good use of the False Lighthouse and Houseboat and was already laying the foundations for his grid like array of settlements. Ian tried several different courses, building the Alehouse, Scriptorium and Builder’s Market .. Noel developed a line in Cloister buildings with the Cloister Courtyard, Cloister Workshop and Chapel.

At this point I rather lost my strategic direction- I had a lot of whiskey but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I turned Beer and Whiskey into Chalices at Noel’s Chapel and then turned a Chalice into 14 goods by building the Portico. Then I decided to boost my settlements by building the Castle. Unfortunately the Castle and new settlements required quite a lot of clearing of bog and forest spaces, which slowed me down. Fortunately I had plenty of straw left over for use at Neil’s Slaughterhouse, where I was able to turn 10 Sheep into 10 Meat for a gain of 30 food.

Noel and Ian were now focusing on making Vp goods. Ian built the Quarry and Filial Church, giving him Stone enough for the Round Tower and Vps enough to use it for a Wonder. Noel pursued a more direct route of steadily making ceramics and metal out of clay and stone.

Neil had meanwhile perfected his grid system, sometimes buying buildings just to fit them in the gaps. His strategic focus gave him a clear victory over the rest of us.

Neil 221 Philip 205 Ian 191 Noel 185

Elsewhere the game was more urbanised...

Sunrise City (thanks Paul)

Soren had become a board game pre-production backer with Sunrise City, from Clever Mojo games. He'd taken delivery by courier the day before, played it at London On Board the night before, and seemed more than happy to play again with us folk further to the west.

If I were to summarise this game in one short sentence, I'd say 'think Sim City meets Carcassonne'. Most gamers out there will then realise that it's all about building a city, and the main mechanism for doing this is by laying tiles. Our first observation on unpacking the box was that the quality of the components was outstanding. Two types of tiles which were both easy to follow and also really chunky, plus nice big wooden pieces and nice graphics on the cards also really helped the game.

Of course there is more to it than a tile laying, city building game with nice bits, but as the theme was represented very well, the game was easy to follow and Soren's explanation left us without many questions and eager to break ground.

The game is played over three rounds, with players choosing three roles (property developer, mayor, union boss, etc) at the start of the game, with one role being used by each player in each round. Each round involves revealing the roles, deciding who the start player for the round is, 'zoning' (playing tiles into the empty space to dictate which buildings could be built there), bidding on where you'd like to build and doing the actual building.

Points are mainly, but not exclusively, scored in the building phase and the number of points depends on the height of the building and the numbers on the building. There are extra points for ground floor buildings to the players who held the right to build there - not necessarily to the tile layer. One very important feature of the game, is that 'stars' (victory points) are gained every time a player scores ten points, however if the player manages to land their scoring cone EXACTLY on the tenth space, two more stars are awarded. Therefore, as Soren very fairly explained at the start, these extra points can triple your score, and will almost certainly dictate who wins the game.

The first round saw James II ensure he played first, which he was the try and do throughout the game. Soren showed us how it was done, getting himself into a good early lead by hitting a 'ten' when he was only just starting, which he managed to keep for the rest of the game.

Soren's tips at the start clearly underlined the importance of the 'ten' scoring, which implied a subtle approach - i.e if you're none away from the end then it's better to score six than ten, as then you can get the other three some other way. However this goes against most game playing instinct and both James II and Paul, in their tussle for second place, took a while to twig that this really was the most important part of the game. Only during the latter two rounds did they both catch on, when bigger ranges of scores were available and therefore it seemed easier to hit the tens and pick up the bonus stars.

Paul started to pull away from James II at the start of the last round, and made some ground on Soren by hitting a few tens in a row, but the lead was too big.

At the end of the game, all players agreed that they could have easily enjoyed playing another round or two. My verdict was that it was such a smooth playing game, which really stuck to the theme very well, with a lot of scope for variation, and call for some serious thinking without causing me to get a headache, that I'd give it a huge 'thumbs up' and happily play many more times. Soren - please bring again.

Score: Soren: 23, Paul: 21, James II: 10

Another urban game followed...

Lords of Vegas (thanks Paul)

Soren then left for the evening, so James II and Paul decided to see what Lords of Vegas was like as a two player game. Paul had played many times before and wasn't at all sure how it'd pan out. James II had never played before but was keen to try it.

The games resulted in a huge ding dong battle, with big swings one way and then the other. Casinos were built with blood sweat and tears, only to be swiped by the other player, then back and forth many times.

Paul took the first points, but James II got a green casino going which came up a few times and took what appeared to be an unassailable lead. Somehow Paul managed to take this over and build it into a nine-tile enterprise, so on the back of that clawed his way back into it.

Other casinos were then taken by Paul or James II by the 'only card' that could have done it (usually with a 'six' on the die' being drawn). A lot of money was spent on rerolling dice, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Overall it was a great game and didn't suffer at all by only two players being at the table. The only thing that we noticed afterwards, perhaps understandably, is that no trading took place at all. But the game didn't seem to be any the worse for it.

With the final card scoring the strip, Paul was in the lead but James II had more casinos touching the middle, so the final outcome did come down to the last turn of the card. As it turns out, Paul managed to hold out for victory, but it was mighty close.

Scores:

Paul: 40, James: 36

P.S. “Geography’s just Physics slowed down with Trees on Top” is a quotation from “Every Major’s Terrible”, which is a modern spoof on “A Modern Major-General”, which is found in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. You can find the spoof at xkcd.com

Super Rulebook Exploring.........

.
Players: Neil, Andy, Soren, Jon, Tonio, Paul, James I, James II

Relegated to the conservatory by what can only be described as a 'room full of grey-haired men with beards', we garnered the usual inquisitive stares, as we brought the world of boardgaming into the lives of normal people trying to have a quiet meal at the pub.....

Nice to see Tonio back with us again - apparently the combination of being a teacher and getting married this year is curtailing his gaming time. Nice to see that his soon-to-be-wife hasn't told him to stop wearing that flat cap yet.......

For Sale
With players arriving in dribs and drabs, as soon as there were enough, we broke out this perennial filler.
It was new to Neil, but this didn't seem to matter as he romped to victory. Soren on the other hand, experienced the For Sale equivalent of the credit crunch.....
Neil 62; Tonio 51; James II 49; Jon 48; Soren 37

Super Dungeon Explore (thanks Paul for this report)
James I had been waiting to play Super Dungeon Explore for a while, so when Tonio came along with it under his arm and keen to play, it was too much for them to resist. James II seemed pretty happy to join the crawl too, so Paul arrived back from the bar to find out that he'd be playing a game with big fantasy miniatures in the public bar downstairs, which wouldn't have been his first choice on how to spend a Wednesday evening - but he rolled up his sleeves and gave it a go.
As Tonio started to explain the rules, it slowly dawned on him that he'd only played once previously, which went smoothly, but that was after a monster swatting up session and it was months ago and the rulebook and number of 'things to know' for a smooth game was quite large. Nonetheless an extremely valiant attempt to plug the gaps in his knowledge went on for much of the evening.
James I, James II and Paul happily allowed Tonio to be the bad guy / dungeon master, so they chose their characters and after the long rules had been run through as quickly as possible, made a start. Unfortunately the game didn't ever really manage to develop a rhythm as there were too many things to remember and Tonio had to take a turn in between each of the good guys' turns, so we stuttered along for most of the evening. The adventurers slowly managed to get to the second board before a time check at 10.30 told us that it was pretty obvious that we weren't going to come close to finishing and so the decision was made to pack up and try something lighter that we could all understand for the remaining few minutes.
The main lesson learnt was that games with very big rule books need to be thoroughly understood and fresh in people's minds before attempting them, otherwise play them on a weekend not a Wednesday evening. It's probably a very good game if both of those things are in place, and you fancy a dungeon crawl.
Game abandoned (but it was pretty obvious that Tonio's bad guy was going to be annihilated by our good guys if we'd played to a conclusion...!)

And on the big table in the centre of the room, Jon had co-opted some willing recruits to satiate his recent bizarre addiction to all things trains -

Railroad Tycoon (Rails of Europe)
With everyone having played the game before, it was much quicker (by RT standards) to get going. The limited lighting and shiny board resulted in some early discussion as to whether cities were actually black or blue, but this was soon resolved.
Soren and Neil began the game in Berlin / Amsterdam, whilst Jon chose the extreme South-West to pick up the Service Bounty for delivering to Constantinople. This quickly jumped him up the income scale, but he had to abandon this link as it was impossible to build a viable network from that location. Andy began in Moscow, and it soon became apparent that he was going to try to build the Major Line to Vienna as quickly as possible (although he also picked up a hotel in Milan, which proved to be a good move).
Neil was the first to pick up a Major Line bonus, taking the Amsterdam to Marseilles route. Jon had his eyes on the Berlin to Rome bonus, but Soren pipped him to the post, leaving Jon with 4 links of track, all in different locations - not a great strategy....
As the game progressed, all the players took several loans to finance their rapidly expanding networks. Neil built down into Spain, but the poor cube-distribution in that area was making him work hard for his points. Soren had a nice little network running from the tip of Italy up to Scandinavia, and was neck-and-neck with Andy, who had quickly upgraded his engine and was running goods backwards and forwards from Russia to Western Europe with impudence. Jon was suffering from his early choices and was lagging miles behind - his only hope was to break out from Paris and try to connect to Constantinople for the 8-point bonus.
With multiple deliveries being made each turn, the game was coming to an end. Andy had started to pull away from everyone else on the score track, and Soren missed a possible opportunity to pull him back when he chose to urbanise Copenhagen rather than a city in the middle of Andy's network. This may have limited Andy's point-earning potential, as he was running several cubes from one end of his network to the other for massive points.
Jon finally connected Paris to Constantinople, and as a result was also able to make several 4-link deliveries, whilst Neil's opportunities were starting to dry up.
The last empty city marker was suddenly placed and the game came to a close. Jon had somehow managed to overhaul Neil for 3rd place, but Andy had retained his lead to take a well-deserved victory from Soren in 2nd place. Scores always seem further apart when you mark them on a track on the board, but in fact, they were remarkably close, with only 6 points between 2nd and 4th.
The post-match analysis revealed a couple of anomalies: Jon had forgotten to distribute any Rail Baron cards (secret missions) - although the game seemed none the worse for that. A quick tot up of the empty city markers also brought to light the fact that Andy can't count to 13 - he had in fact put out 14 markers at the beginning of the game. This may have brought the game to a close one round earlier, but probably wouldn't have affected the result.
Another fine game, which will continue to be brought to IBG as long as there is the demand for it, and as long as Jon has the strength in his arms to lug that massive box around......
Andy 55; Soren 49; Jon 45; Neil 43

With Andy leaving but an hour left on the clock, there was still time for something relatively meaty -

Peloponnes
New to Neil, and Soren had played a few times before a while ago. This proved to be a vicious game - the disasters came out very late, causing multiple loss of population and buildings. Soren's lack of Stone, and Neil's lack of food left them bereft in buildings and population respectively. Although Jon also lost all but 6 of his population, this was enough to win the game.
Unrelenting death and destruction - a great way to finish off a Wednesday evening...
Jon 18 population / 24 buildings; Soren 9 build / 21 pop; Neil 6 pop / 22 build

And this is fast becoming another great way to round off the evening -

Pitchcar Mini (thanks James for this report)
So for the remaining 30 minutes we took out what could become the flavour of the month for a closing game and set up Jon's PitchCar track. New to Tonio and James II we took the necessary 10 seconds to explain the rules (ah how refreshing after Super Dungeon Explore!) and after picking 2 cars each for maximum carnage we set off. Paul took advantage of his pole position and careered into a lead while everyone else scrambled arouond the first few bends...
After the first lap, positions started to make sense with James I holding 2nd and 3rd, Tonio 4th and the last 4 places a bit of a scramble. Paul's lead though was already looking unassailable unless he decided to go the kamikaze route (sadly he's far too sensible for that...)
2 laps in and Paul's last place 2nd car was slowly catching up, whilst his first had lapped a few back markers. Tonio had taken 2nd place from James so it was looking like a race to come 2nd... James II had decided that this was more a scenic drive than a race and was stopping to take photos and have a loo break at every opportunity.
Last lap and positions were up for grabs. Paul's lead car finished at a canter, and suddenyl his last place car, seemingly from nowhere came to grab 2nd place. Tonio took 3rd despite some reluctance to actually cross the finish line. James took 4th and 5th with his 2 cars that had spent most of the race holding hands around the track. Tonio took 6th and James II ran out of camera film and so crawled in with the last 2 spots.
Lots of fun, as it was last week too. and plans are already afoot to obtain the full size version for future mayhem in the weeks ahead :)

And that brought the end to proceedings. Back in the Riverview Room next week for more of the same...
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