Seven people and the promise of more? Two games of Blueprint on the games pile? Too much to resist so they both made in to the table at once for some parallel Blueprinting.
Blueprint I (Thanks Neil)
So, the chance to not only teach Scott a game but to beat him too was way too good to turn down. We were joined by Charlotte who, to be honest, was far too pleasant and interested in games to be stuck with Scott.
Just to make sure they had both been listening I collected a load of green dice in the first and won the round by a country mile. Maybe they were both put off by their dinners arriving too? Who cares, I was on my way.
The next round they both showed that they were getting it with Scott claiming the 3 points and Charlotte the 2 points. Hell, he even remembered to pick out a new dice from the bag after he'd chosen one to build with! This round I did manage to collect a bonus for 5 dice of one colour but was pipped in the tie break by Charlotte for 4 dice with matching values.
The next round they both showed that they were getting it with Scott claiming the 3 points and Charlotte the 2 points. Hell, he even remembered to pick out a new dice from the bag after he'd chosen one to build with! This round I did manage to collect a bonus for 5 dice of one colour but was pipped in the tie break by Charlotte for 4 dice with matching values.
Blueprint II
Gareth I soon realised that although the game was about building 3D structures out of dice, that being a real life architect was no help.
Philip paid little attention to detail as he was really killing time before Caverna, and his strategy of doing random things in fillers didm;t really work here.
Paul tried a few different things, including building a very tall one die tower.James won by getting the most points from the regular scoring and picking up the most 3s.
Exact scores unknown as Paul has lost the paper with them written on.
Trains
Charlotte and Dan started in the East, with James in the middle of the board and Paul over in the North West. Charlotte and Dan competed with each other a lot. Paul spread out and constructed his rails to fend off James. James built a good deck and spent big sums on Underground Rails, which allowed him to build into Paul’s best cities with no additional cost, so the fending off was fruitless. Charlotte and Dan continued to fight over the same spaces. Paul tried to get back at James but it was too little too late.
James won again, mainly due to the cheap expansion card.
Scores (don;t still have the bit of paper that the scores were written on): James won, Charlotte, Dan and Paul didn't
Gluck Auf
A worked placement game about coal mining? Theme a bit bleak asked Charlotte and Paul, but went along with it as James was obviously really keen. Both remarked afterwards that they were glad that they had done as it was very well thought through, the theme worked well and overall it was a good fun, middleweight game.
Charlotte and James fought over yellow, Paul went straight for Black.
At the end Paul and James were tied for first place, and tied using the first two tie breaking mechanisms, but James claimed victory as he had the most cash. Paul swore under his breath, pretending to be gracious. Charlotte bemoaned her lack of black coal.
Scores (on the same bit of paper as Blueprint): James won, Charlotte and Paul didn't Caverna (Thanks Philip)
The Sixth Peaceful Dwarf and his Seven Dogs.
Back to Caverna for New Year's Day with Scott, Gareth, Neil and me. Gareth was new but everyone else had played before (See "The Sixth Peaceful Dwarf and his Nine Dogs" for the last game played by Neil and I).
I drew start player and went straight for excavation, with Scott also excavating, Gareth taking Wood and clearing and Neil taking Grain and clearing. I built the Carpenter and some discussion followed on how to prevent me also taking the Stone Mason. Scott took first player, Gareth took "one of everything +2 points" and Neil took Wood.
I forget the details after that. Scott took the room which gives you 7 Wood over 7 turns and I was able to retake start player for turn 3 and build Stone Mason. Gareth took the Slaughtering Cave, leaving me with the rather less efficient Working Cave. Scott took the cave which lets you turn Grain+Veg into 5 food. Before that however I had built the Couples Dwelling and begun breeding Dwarves. Gareth was not far behind with the Mixed Dwelling.
Neil was first to go adventuring, followed by Gareth and eventually Scott- Scott did say he was trying to imitate me but he evidently gave up at that point. Once the others had high level adventurers they didn't really need to use the build room space- hence my 7 dogs.
This game I was a little more invested in Agriculture and remembered to use my discount on stables as well as my discount on fences. I didn't get so many rubies either, with Gareth and Scott both developing at least two Ruby Mines. Feeding was tough with harvest following harvest, especially after I added a 5th Dwarf (with a Simple Dwelling) and then the Sixth Dwarf. The question marks came out fairly early and the third question mark in round 10. I had set up with just enough food to leave a pair of each animal type (except cows, which I hadn't started collecting yet), but only if I could collect from my fields so the "breeding phase or field phase" dilemma was a tough one- I chose the field phase, eating but not replacing the 3rd sheep, donkey and pig. Fortunately I was able to scrape enough food in the following round and even purchase a pair of cows in the bargain.
There was some keen competition for spaces with imitation taken a few times and occasionally I found both the space I wanted and imitation blocked.
Everyone was breeding their dwarves- Scott and Gareth had 4 and Neill 5 Scott armed all his dwarves for the 20 Vps combination pair of scoring rooms (3 VPs per Armed Dwarves on one, 8 VPs for all Armed dwarves on the other). I had gone the other way with the 8 VPs for no Armed dwarves room as well as 10 VPs for the Sixth Dwarf and 2 VPs per VP room. Gareth took the room which gave VPs for Sheep as well as an immediate food bonus equal to your sheep. Neil had a Cuddle Room allowing him to keep 5 sheep in it. No one took the room that cancels negative points this time. Gareth had the Ore Storage room.
In the final round I was able to reach 11 Gold by taking Gold and turning Gold into Ore. I was not however able to fill my cave with furnished rooms, just unfurnished ones. The other 3 all had 2 unused spaces. I was ahead on Farm Animals and Dogs at the end, with Neil close behind.
After the final scoring Scott claimed he could have had another 7 points if he'd played the final turn right.
Final Scores Me 92 Scott 80 Neil 73 Gareth 68.
Machi Koro (Thanks Neil)
I was going to do Machi Koro [write it up] but my brain is so gamed up I can't even remember who played the bloody thing! I usually recall who I'm next to, or some interaction between competitors... but I can't bring even the winner to mind. I know I did very poorly as my café/restaurant strategy let me down. Bodes well for the rest of the year n'est pas?
And that was that for the evening. Tip for next week - write down the scores, take them home and keep the bit of paper.
Games players: Scott, Charlotte, Neil, James, Gareth I, Dan I, Philip, Paul
