“Empty Chairs at Empty
Tables”
Today’s report
combines the events of 10th and 17th October. 10th
October only generated 3 Session reports and 17th October 6. 17th
October had a good excuse as some people were at Essen, 10th October
not really. Today’s title comes from Les
Miserables: fortunately for the
Isleworth boardgamers, our chairs and tables were only temporarily empty!
Starting with a quick
card game...
6 Nimmt (thanks Noel)
Noel arrived just in
time to make it for a 7 player chaotic game of 6 Nimmt. Philip had decided it
was time to forsake his random blind card playing and focus on the best
possible choices. Not sure how different that makes the outcome with unexpected
cards being picked up by Amanda early on and a huge set of bulls hit (:-))
Woody's hand shortly after. After all the chaos Noel and Dan rejoiced in their
shared victory.
Noel and Dan, 7; Philip, James I Scott, Amanda, Gareth all lost,
Woody lost harder.
On the 17th
we started with a longer card game:
Modern Art
One of Reiner Knzia’s classic
auction designs, the secret of Modern Art is putting the correct value on the
intrinsically worthless. The thematic content is much enriched by reading the
flavour text in the rulebook, which is also quite funny. Anyway, me Noel and Richard
battled it out, with myself employing a consistent formula that a fair price
for a given painting was 50% of its expected sale value that round. Noel more
or less followed my lead while Richard used a higher fair price measure,
meaning he bought most of the paintings.
Bad news for me- I was
using the wrong formula. The correct fair price is 66% of expected sale value
(I leave the reasoning as an exercise for the reader). So Richard won easily.
Richard 586 Philip 487
Noel 385.
Amun Re
Noel, Richard and I
moved onto another of Dr Knzia’s auction games, and we were joined by David and
Andy. The game was quite lengthy as people put a lot of thought into the
auctions, which was ok for four of us but Richard was thoroughly bored by (at
most) halfway through. It is a credit to his sportsmanship that he stayed the
course.
The Old Kingdom started
off with all three camel provinces being auctioned, which lead to a consistent
low sacrifice pattern for this part of the game. I was playing a high sacrifice
game and therefore ran out of money by the end of turn 3. Andy and Noel gained
the 5 point bonuses at the end of the Old Kingdom and were clearly in the lead,
though David had made the most money.
Lots of money was
spent on provinces during the new Kingdom, except by me since I had (almost) no
money. Curiously this meant my financial position improved sufficiently to have
2nd most money at game end- most money going to David. David also
had the most Pyramids, with Noel close behind him.
David 47 Noel 41 Philip and Andy 38, Richard 32.
Going back in time to
the week before, another classic game, not by Knizia this time.
El Grande (thanks Jon)
Tonight saw a 5-player
outing for James’s copy of this classic game, which was new to all but Philip.
The rules were fairly straightforward and easy to comprehend, but it’s the
action cards that add the complexity.
The 2 cards that allow
movement of a player’s Grande came out very early, which meant that everyone
was soon tied in to their bonus regions. Jon and James were vying for the
northern region that James had his Grande in, whilst Noel’s central region was
being challenged by Philip. Woody laid claim to the East side of the board, and
changed one of the scoring tokens to boost his score.
Mid-way through, Noel
was out in front, with Jon a little way behind and James lagging a bit at the
back. The thing with El Grande is that there are a lot of action cards that
mess with other players, so it essentially means that whoever is out in front
should be taking the brunt of the ‘take that’ actions. However, James claimed
that he was being screwed over regardless, and Woody always complains even if
you look at him a bit strangely… (quote of the game [after Jon had just moved
some of Woody’s cubes] – Woody: “Look at how Jon just stabbed me in the back!”
– Philip: “Actually, I think that was more of a stab in the front…”)
Going into the final
round, James had saved his ‘13’ card for a cunning masterstroke. However, Noel
had also done so, and as he was first in turn order, James was relegated to 4th
in turn order, so we will never know how cunning his plan was… Woody was
storming up the leaderboard, courtesy of having the majority in two ‘8’ scoring
regions.
Jon and Woody had
dumped many caballeros into the Castillo, and as it scored twice at the end, it
gave them both a boost. It all came down to the final placement of caballeros
out of the Castillo, and when the final region was scored, Jon had just
pipped Woody to the post by a couple of
points.
This was a long game
(probably down to what Noel describes as the ‘first game dither’), and with 5
players felt a little out of everyone’s individual control. With so many ways
to mess with other players, there is very little point in racing into an early
lead, as you just paint a nice fat target on your back…or your front (as Noel
found out to his cost). Maybe with less players there is more control? Tbc….
Jon 98; Woody 96; Noel 92; Philip 84; James 84
Another game played on
10th (and our last report from there)
Quandary (thanks Jon)
This is Loco or
Botswana, but with nice Bakelite pieces. James was a bit distracted by the
results of the latest Maths trade being published, but he still came in second
(although if he’d chosen a different tile for his last action, he’d have won…)
As it was, this was a
really close result – shame there was only time for one round. No picture as only Botswana images seem to be available!
Woody 30; James 29; Jon 28
Another quick game,
this time from the 17th.
Mystery Rummy: Jack
the Ripper (thanks Jon)
With 20 mins to kill
before Andy arrived, a quick filler was required, and this fitted the bill.
However, Andy arrived in double-quick time, so there was only time for one
hand. Unusually, it was won by Jack escaping, as all the victims were revealed
very early in the game. Jon was the player to play the ‘Ripper Escapes’ card,
and therefore scored the 35 points. It would be nice to have time to play
several hands of this game one week – any takers???
Jon 39; Dan 5; Mark 2
More cards...
Biblios (thanks Jon)
Andy had arrived, but
the Euro-crowd were still up to their necks in Knizia auctions, so he joined
Jon, Dan and Mark for some manuscript-collecting.
This game was new to
Dan and Mark, but it’s easily explained and the game was soon underway. Several
‘dice adjustment’ cards came out early, which resulted in the sets having very
unequal values. As is usual with this game, there are a few tense decisions, as
you decide whether to take an early card, or to wait in the hope of turning
over something better (you never do…) Everyone was trying to sneak off cards of
certain sets, although Dan seemed bent on amassing a small fortune in gold…
When the auction pile
was turned over, it was discovered that everyone had been stashing a lot of
gold cards there (it was surprising that there were any left after Dan’s
hoarding tactics…), so there wasn’t so much of interest to auction. However,
the result is always in doubt until everyone finally reveals their cards.
Andy had clearly won
the Holy Books category for 5 points, and Dan had pipped Jon to the Forbidden
Tomes for 4 points. He had also been largely unchallenged for the 2 points on
offer for the Pigments. Jon had collected 4 points for the Monks category, so
it all came down to the Manuscripts, which Mark and Andy were tied for – but
Andy had the card bearing the initial ‘A’, so took the set, and the game.
This is always an
enjoyable game – it rattles along at a nice pace and has just the right amount
of tricky decisions for a game of this length. It’ll be around for a while,
I’ll wager.
Andy 8; Dan 6; Jon 4;
Mark 0
And now for something
altogether more exciting...
Fury of Dracula
(thanks Jon)
With 5 die-hard euro
freaks being magnetically attracted to more Knizia fare, it was left to Jon to
turn to the dark-side and join Dan and Mark for something altogether trashier.
FOD is essentially Scotland Yard with more depth and theme. Mark chose to play
Dracula, so Dan and newbie Jon took control of 2 Hunters each.
The Hunters spread themselves
out to start with – Jon took London and Madrid, whilst Dan was covering central
and eastern Europe. It took several turns to pick up Dracula’s scent, by which
time another vampire had appeared and given Dracula a third of his required
victory points. As night became day, this increased to half the points needed.
All 4 Hunters now
converged on South East Europe, where Dracula was certainly hanging out – only
for him to play an ’Evasion’ card, which allowed him to magically transport to
any other location on the map. This was effectively the nail in the coffin (or
stake through the heart) for the Hunters, who, although they eventually tracked
Dracula down to England’s green and pleasant land, did not have enough time to
destroy the dark Lord.
All players
collectively agreed that the ‘Evasion’ card should be removed from the game, as
it essentially resets the game to the beginning, giving the Hunters almost no
chance of winning. There was also no combat at all in this game, which made the
multitude of weapon cards redundant. Maybe this will get another outing and be
slightly more balanced next time…
The fantasy theme
continued...
Epic Spell Wars of the
Battle Wizards (thanks Jon)
Well, the other
table’s examination of Knizia’s ancient Egypt was nowhere near ending, so Jon
cheerfully resigned himself to more light-hearted Ameritrash. This was a card
game that Dan had brought along, with the longest and most unmemorable title
ever. However, the gameplay is simple, but strangely engaging. It’s basically a
‘last man standing’ game – a la King of Tokyo – where players use a hand of
cards to cast spells on each other, trying to cause damage and eventually death
to their opponents. If you can be last man standing twice, you win the game (a
la Skull & Roses).
Dan and Mark both
seemed to be experts, and probably took it easy on Jon, who won the first
round. No such favours were extended second time around, which ended in Dan
standing proud at the end. Mark then told some sob story about how he never
wins the game – Jon fell for it and took out Dan in the second round, only for
Mark to triumph leaving all players with one win.
The last round was
therefore a decider and really went down to the wire. In the penultimate phase,
Jon had only 1 health left, whilst Dan and Mark had 3. Somehow, both Dan and
Jon survived that round, and with Jon going first in the last round, he had
enough power in his spell to kill off Dan and take the victory. It was about as
close as you could get, and made for a really exciting endgame.
So is Jon converted to
Ameritrash? Not completely, but if this game came out again for 3 players, he’d
probably jump in with both feet. High praise indeed….
Jon 2; Dan 1; Mark 1
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