Who needs salad days when you can have Ice Cream instead?

It's about time we caught up with the summer events at IBG - with attendance numbers bigger than ever we seem to have enjoyed the opposite of the traditional quiet sunny days!

A different format for the next few week's blogs as we allow individual IBGers to have their say.

Contributors:  Paul A & David

With an ever-increasing number of players, we started off with Mascarade, which played as it always did - you rapidly lose track of which role is where, who is doing what and still somehow the game creeps towards an end. A good start to the night.
 

We then shifted into a game of Mercante, a mid-weight sort of trading game. I fear my energy levels were dropping as the result of some long work days, so my comprehension may not have been at its best - apologies to my fellow players. But anyway, it's a relatively simple same but with a lot of options within and moving parts, so valuing goods is very difficult. Also, while money is relatively easy to come by, victory points are much harder. This makes for a tough game, which is actually something I like. Want to revisit this one soon.

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As Paul says above, Mercante is a rather dry and light trading/economic game. Players take it in turn to auction off goods from ships that arrive in the harbour then proceed to stockpile these goods in their warehouses and then sell them to the open market. The more stuff is sold the less it's worth. Add in random events and faction cards to affect the rise and fall of the market. Paul won with 10 Victory Points by doing enough trading to buy victory points at the critical time as well as win them at the auction. Philippe came second with 9 points as the king of the pigs and I came last with 5. (I tried to concentrate on the luxuries market and overpaid for almost everything that seriously dented my profits)
After that we waited for James II, Alex and Gareth to finish their game of Cuba which Alex won just ahead of James who was only one victory point ahead of Gareth. I didn't see enough of it to say which strategy each person used although Gareth almost did enough at the end by brining in the 3 pesos for 1 victory point law but it was too little too late to catch Alex.

When they finished we started a game of 7 Wonders, with myself, Alex, James II, Gareth and Philippe's first ever game of it. It was a fairly close affair with James going down the civic structures route, Philippe going military and myself big on Science. Whereas Gareth and Alex went for something in between. When it came to final scoring my science, which was across x 3 and down x 3 was enough to beat off the competition from James II. Final scoring was myself on 59, James II on 55, Gareth on 49, Philippe on 43 and Alex on 42. (being the Hanging Gardens of Babylon helped my cause as well as no one else challenging me on science)