Contributors: Daniel, David
Another bijou night of gaming. Plico James was showing us all how to
breeze to an easy win in Deception again (I'd love to play Poker with
him someday), then we split into two tables.
Soren and Phil joined
me for a three player bash at Android. Phil still likes it, Soren hated
it, and I totally crushed them both as Bioroid Floyd 'master of
unlocking the conspiracy'.
A funny moment was that virtually all the
points the Soren scored came from me connecting social favours up to
score 4pts each, particularly as circumstances meant that I ended the game
without any favours myself.
Phil focussed heavily on gathering evidence on the murder suspect, and when tokens began to pile up into a cardboard ziggurat on one of the suspects they immediately became a target for the hit-squads and were taken out of the game. Fortunately, he was able to find a way to change his suspect card, however it wasn't to be as I had already thrown a couple of purgery tokens down on my target along with a juicy alibi that was destined to fall apart in the courtroom.
Then Raj replaced Soren for a couple of rounds of Spell Wizards, silliness and crudity for a few minutes to wrap up the evening.
.....
James B and I were there quite early so played a game of Carcassonne with Carcassonne: The Tower
expansion. I think the expansion is great for two player games, it
prevents one player from playing farmers early and dominating the game
as there is always a way of removing each other's meeples. This does
lead to smaller cities and quick scoring which James was doing to build
up a small lead. It was quite a close game for the first half up until
James used his last tower piece. After that I was able to start playing
farmers and running interference on his meeples as I still had 5 tower
pieces left. In the last few turns I maximised farming and finished a
couple of large cities that had laid dormant due to previous tower
removals. When it came to scoring James made 97 and I was on 186 or
thereabouts. 
After that was a game of New York: 1901
with Raj, James B, Peter and myself. I picked it up a few days ago as I
was looking for something similar to Ticket to Ride and the theme was
appealing. It looks fantastic and they obviously went all out on
production quality. As for the game play, players compete by building
skyscrapers in a small district of New York. On a turn players can take a
lot card and then optionally build on their land or they can demolish
one or more of their existing skyscrapers and build in its place. On top
of this are bonuses for controlling certain streets or building certain
types of skyscrapers.
There's a certain element of tetris as you try
and fit skyscrapers into position as well as trying to grab all the land
around your existing skyscrapers so you can build much larger ones
later on. James B managed to stop me from doing this a few times by
grabbing plots of land right in the middle of my planned construction
areas, Peter and Raj meanwhile were busy getting most of their early
skyscrapers built as well as securing future land. Towards the end it
was obvious it was between Raj and Peter for the win and it would come
down to who would score best on the bonuses. When it came to scoring Raj
won by 5 points ahead of Peter with myself about 20 points behind and
James B a bit behind me. I really like this one and will bring it next
week if anyone is interested in trying it out.
The next game after that was Palazzo.
Back from a time when Reiner Knizia made some great games. I would put
this up there with Medici and Ra. It's a bit ugly and bland but has a
simple auction and building mechanism that works well. The objective is
to construct the grandest palace with the most windows using the same
type of material to score the most points. As there is only three types
of material and four players it meant that there was a lot of
competition for the same types of building. Peter won comfortably, ahead
of James whilst I came in just behind in third. Raj meanwhile was
unlucky to have quite a few negative palaces still left in play as the
game ended which pushed him back into last place.
To end the evening was a game of Jane Austen's Matchmaker,
I convinced Raj to play and James B was keen to play again, he must
love the theme more than I do. Interestingly Raj referred to the
romantic courtship as attacking, which he did quite well, as he launched
a series of unsuitable cads against my defenceless ladies. I was
struggling to offload my useless and penniless gentleman whilst James
was trying his best to catch Raj. It wasn't to be, Raj won with a
landslide of heroines, whilst I ended last with James one point ahead of
me.
Contributors: Daniel, David
Those of us who weren't being exhilerated by Sevilla's magnificent
performance in the European Kickball Cup settled down to a fine nights
gaming, no less tense and with equally disappointing second-half
collapses in form.
Paul
D said something interesting at the end of our game of Pax Po, in that
he thought it was a lot like a Euro game, something which took me back a
bit. Thinking about it now, I'm not too sure where the parallels are,
other than the large amount of beige ink in use. As an example, during
the game Paul bought some ranch land in Chihuaha.
In a typical
Euro he would have taken the Ranch Action, precluding the rest of us
from doing the same, or taking the best land available and leaving us
with a choice of increasingly poor stony ground, where even the Cacti
struggle to grow, as penance for being de-prioritised in player order.
We might then have taken other things that blocked Paul in similar
fashion, our revenge for him swagging the best turf, or tried to devalue
the strategic ‘value’ of ranches within the game in order to peg him
back. It's the gaming equivalent of sticking two fingers up from a safe
distance, and pretty far from the more direct interaction in Pax Po.
What
actually transpired was that Paul settled his ranchers and expanded the
land, creating a rich and fertile enterprise. Seeing such a ripe
venture propped up in the shop window I levied some troops and sent them
into his land to extort a generous slice of his profits. Unable to find
better equipped soldiers to take me on in a fair battle, Paul
retalliated by greasing the wheels with some crusty greybeards in the
corridors of power and saw that command of those troops was transferred
to him, diverting the proceeds from their protection racket back into
his own coffers. Incensed by this, I whipped up a storm of discontent
amongst the native workers who instigated a riot that burnt the whole
place to the ground, leaving nothing of value in the charred ruins. Of
course I got banged up in jail for liberating them from their toils, but
a small bribe saw me cleared of any connection to the incident and back
making mischief again, idolised as a hero by the revolutionary faction
to boot. Meanwhile, Paul A was interfering all the way by attempting to
unionise the workforce and blockading the area to dry up the income
stream altogether. I think this is all pretty far from a typical Euro
gaming experience 
Following an interesting discussion on our BGG guild forum about labelling games to a type, wherein we pretty much agreed that this particular game defies attempts at classification, I believe that one of the key tenets of Ameritrash is that the gameplay
experience is front and centre. In that respect I'd say Pax Po is
leaning more in that direction as the Euro-centric mechanics of the game itself are a
fairly uninspiring exercise in building and maintaining a simple card tableau.
All of the experience rests in the interaction between the players; I
can write essays about my games of Pax Po, even remembering things that
happened in games from years ago, but I couldn't ever easily explain how
somebody put a cube here or there or paid some money tokens when taking
an action. It just doesn't feel like a mechanical experience at any
point. But whatever, it doesn't need a label, I'm just glad that Paul was able to appreciate and enjoy this awesome game.
The
game in review started with some bruising antagonism across the table,
mostly between the two Pauls – Dawsey was setting up enterprises in
Sonora, with me piggy-backing through a mix of extortion and upgraded
railway connections due to a lack of direct income opportunities coming
my way. Agapow decided to give his intensive mining within the Gadsden
Purchase (an area of land now forming parts of Arizona and New Mexico) a
boon by funding a full scale revolution in Sonora, which promptly
declared independence and disappeared from Dawsey’s tableau as a result.
Later in the game, Dawsey paid for an expensive assassination of the
Sonoran leader in order to destabilise the breakaway republic and to
bring it back into the Mexican fold.
Not content with murdering
Sonoran rebels, Dawsey also took some time to give me some special
attention in trashing my one working enterprise with a stack of unrest
tokens and sending me to prison twice during the game. Agapow also gave
me a black eye by killing off two of my business ventures, canny moves
that kept him far ahead in the rich list with his largely invulnerable
ranches and mines situated in US territory.
Agapow made a strong
move on Outrage and was very close to taking the game – as often happens
though he fell foul of being either just one action or a bit of cash
short of being able to close the deal. Meanwhile, I used the cover of
our focus on stopping him to have some cosy time with Diaz, amassing
loyalty points to get to the top of the class. With the ‘Pax’ topple
disregarded in the exchange I was able to make an incisive push for
victory, persuading Diaz that it was time to retire to a sunny cottage
on the coast in order to make way for my own brand of lunatic
dictatorship. First against the wall in the new regime would be a tough
decision, but would likely be somebody named Paul.
Also of note in Pax - I had a raft of revolution points, a regular
Wolfie Smith, which meant that I came to power as Diaz's most loyal
lickspittle who also happened to be the secret master of the
revolutionary forces that were fighting against him. Bwah-ha-ha! I love
this game
I also had
a quick game of vanilla Carcassonne with John, boy it’s weird to play
without Inns, Rivers, Cathedrals, and whatnot. No Mega Meeple either!
John took an early lead while I sat in cities and roads that kept
expanding seemingly forever. I was able to close off attempts to sneak
in and so received windfall scores midgame when they eventually
completed. John kind of got stuffed by pulling monasteries (or are they
abbeys?) near the end that couldn’t be played for more than a couple of
points each, and as I had already sown up and blocked off the only
worthwhile meadow he had no option other than to take weak turns. My big
meadow score put me out ahead by some margin in the final countup.
I
really get the feeling that the base game is heavy on the luck of the
draw, so with two players it gets lopsided as there isn’t the level of
chaos you get with more players. This is particularly pronounced at the
fringes of the build area as it’s much harder to sneak in or to screw
with completion without the claustrophobia of having the map close in
around your opponent’s ventures. Castle is still the king of two player
carc as it’s optimised for direct head-to-head conflict in an enclosed
space, and I think that the regular game really needs some of the
‘vital’ expansions to bring it alive.
.....
Gareth, Sarah, Paul A, Philip and I started the evening with a game Drakon with the Drakon Expansion.
Players enter the lair of Drakon in hope of stealing the dragon's
treasure. However the main objective seemed to be how much you can screw
over the other players with the side objective of collecting gold
coins. Philip and I split off in different directions early on whilst
the other three were spending time rotating rooms or outright destroying
them. This lead to a few headaches as we battled the ever changing
dungeon. Phil managed to grab victory with 5 coins whilst Gareth and I
were just behind with 4 coins. For a simple tile-laying game there is
perhaps too much screwing people over or maybe it was just the way we
played it.
Alex, Raj, Philip and I followed that up with a game of El Caballero.
An often overlooked game from the late 90s which is probably best
described as Carcassonne meets El Grande or as James B likes to call it,
Carcassonne with maths. Players explore the New World by drawing and
placing tiles. They then claim either the land or sea with Caballeros or
ships and then compete over these territories with the larger the
territory the larger the score. This was particularly relevant during
our game as we set about creating the largest possible single island
that we then preceded to fight over for the seven game turns. It looks
simple at first but there are a lot of complexities and we really pushed
these in our game, placing land tiles and Caballeros tiles in a such a
way that prevents other players from muscling in or blowing your
Caballero tile off the board.
Each turn players have the option of
removing their Caballero tiles from the board which opens up previously
locked areas and allows players to change the landscape, this allowed
for some particularly interesting moves which Alex used to force me from
the high scoring Island just before the first scoring round. After I
was unceremoniously dumped out of the running from the main island I set
my sights slightly lower just to regain some pride so I joined in with
Raj by building ships on a large sea zone. Towards the end the control
of the main island swung this way and that as we found new ways of
removing or adding influence. When it came down to the crucial turn Raj
had managed to add enough influence and in such a way that we couldn't
force him out. The final scoring was Raj on 103, Alex on 50 something
with myself on 33 and Philip on 31. The victory could have easily gone
to either Alex or Phil had they just had one more turn.
Contributors: Daniel, David
A quiet night with only two tables on the go, but plenty of fun had by all!
An
early start with Show Manager for myself, Tomtoo, David, and Raj,
meanwhile Tom got his Dragon Eggs out at the other table to occupy the
later arrivals while we finished up.
Tom and David seemed to be
trying to outdo one another for the theatrical equivalent of a Golden
Raspberry, both managing to attract a critical savaging and first night
closures with their debut productions. Raj looked like a early bet with a
tremendous performance of Moonlight that wowed audiences in the theatre
capital of London, but financial struggles meant that he was unable to
repeat that success and went into a slow decline. I coasted into a
comfortable win by being the bridesmaid in the biggest scoring cities
and raiding the coffers from smaller locations where the point spread is
less brutal.
Noel brought along Vegas Showdown and it would have
been rude to refuse a game, so we settled down with the two Toms. Stone
Age or something was on the other table, could have been
Mombasa/Caylus/Cuba/etc. I really cannot tell just by looking these
days.
Noel went straight for the mantle of Slot King with row
upon row of shiny one-armed bandits, and Tomone managed to resist the
urge to turn his casino into one giant food hall this time around with a
more balanced build. Tomtoo fell in love with lounges, later bringing
in some restaurants to feed the corpulent slouches infesting his
premesis. I competed for a short while with Noel on Slots before
swagging the first Table Games tile that came up, which took me in
another direction. Noel ended up coasting to a very comfortable lead and
spent the end game adding Lounges to keep his score moving forward - in
retrospect we could have been more competitive against this but were
all so wrapped up in angling for the bonus tiles that we wanted that he
rolled us over, like a true Casino boss oughta.
Screwage,
bluffing, guile, and more screwage in Intrigue, which then spilled over
into No Thanks! I managed to play the temporary alliances in Intrigue
against each other pretty well I think; Despite screwing Tomtoo over
very badly in the first round I got him onboard with Team Dan by then
offering an Olive branch while the other guys were kicking him while he
was down. In response, Noel and Tomone formed an uneasy alliance that
fell apart with some careful prodding; it was particularly flaky as Noel
didn't do himself any favours by adding plenty of 10k notes to his hand
while only handing out 1k ones in his bribes, and Tomone seemed
determined to burn bridges on every side. With a smidgen on cajoling I
got Tomone onto my side, ditching both Noel and Tomtoo into exile in the
process, setting myself up nicely in incontestable positions. The
hammer dropped in the final round - as the last player to make
appointments I kicked Tomone out of my tallest tower to even out my
opponents earnings in the final round, preventing anyone from lurching
ahead with their final income. At the final countup I was ahead by some
margin, my realtively low earnings throughout the game allowing me to
fly under the radar with the strong final positioning giving me a
massive payday that sealed the deal.
No Thanks! ended up being
almost an extension of Intrigue, with enmities from the previous game
encouraging cards to be passed purely for the sake of dumping a bad
score on someone else. I picked up two cards fairly early that were
around twenty odd points each then eventually fluked into connecting
them together in the last couple of turns, once again coming from a
seemingly untenable position to swipe a sneaky victory.
Noel was
then coerced into Magical Athlete against his will, not sure if he's
recovered from the expereince yet. Making a correct guess with the
prophet was pivotal in keeping me on a winning streak, then we finished
up late with a round of Epic Spell Wizards (Raj replacing Noel for this
one - I don't think we could have got away with getting him to join in
on this one), it did it's thing with a tense finish where Tomone managed
to hold on tightly for several rounds despite being right on the edge,
ending in a grind of single-card spells that should have been strong enough to finish things off but always seemed to fall just short.
.....
The game on our table was A Council of Four,
Phil, Raj and I had all played this before a month or so ago, so
thought we would give it another go now that we knew how to play. Last
time I did incredibly poorly so was out to make amends this time around.
Both Phil and I went for the same opening moves of building in the two
blue cities and claiming the early victory points and related bonus. I
was luckily enough to beat Phil to this by a single turn which then
allowed me to link a number of cities and claim a few of the extra
bonuses. Raj meanwhile was working towards the larger city objective and
scoring well from his connections. At the end it was a race between Raj
and I, my early move putting Phil a bit too far behind to catch up.
When it came down to final scoring I had just managed to pip Raj to the
win by a single point thanks to the various end of game bonuses. I
enjoyed both games of this even with a few of the production issues it
has a nice balance to it. 
After that we played a quick game of Meteor. A bit like Spaceteam
but with a lot less shouting and musical chairs. The objective is to
destroy 7 meteors before they hit earth, working together as a team to
construct and launch rockets. There's a lot of communication required as
you only get 5 rounds at 1 minute each but we still found time to
destroy all the meteors with time to spare. We did play the easy version
though and I can see this being a lot of fun and more pressured with
five or six players.
I ended the evening with a couple of games of Council of Verona.
Raj won both games and the second game was notable as I ended up with a
hand of 'move' cards which swung the game this way and that
Contributors: Jon, Neil, Paul A
I was wrapped up in a cosy twosome with Neil for most of the evening, we started wth a game of Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small.
Neil
picked up 3 new tiles, looking to max out on some nice points for
filling them up. Jon picked up two of his own, but stupidly placed one
on the wrong side of his cottage and so was never going to be able to
build over it.
Jon picked cows to breed, Neil took the horses,
and they both took plenty of sheep and pigs (although not enough to get
big bonuses.) Near the end, Neil had obviously got his eye on a building
that could be built for free if he had 2 of each type of animal, and
would then give him 4 extra animals to boot. But Jon was wise (for once)
to it, and took the last cow to prevent him getting it. As always, the
end comes incredibly swiftly, and the count up revealed that the points
for Jon's buildings (cottage conversion and stables) helped him pip Neil
to the post. Great game!
.....
Following that loss I couldn't resist getting 7 Wonders: Duel
out. I managed to beat Tommy teacher last Friday, narrowly avoiding a
military wipe out and rather fancied I'd remember more rules than Jon
might. Age I passed cagily with us both getting an early wonder. Going
early for science cards I managed to pick up a progress token as the
first move of Age II which allowed me to build the Wonders for 2 less
resources. Just about my next move chained the building of my remaining
three wonders in one turn and I think we were both convinced it was game
over.. having three extra turns one after the other must be the prefect
storm.
We played it all out, Jon picking up more and more
civilian and commercial buildings and money, me avoiding further
military losses and still picking up the science cards. And there we
were, at the end of Age III with Jon turning over the penultimate card, a
face downer, and it's a science card which he has to take and leave me
with the final science card to ensure a scientific victory with a
collection of 6 of the 7 science cards. We decided to add up the scores
to see by how much I'd conquered him in normal play..
Well, blow
me down, if he wouldn't have beat me, and quite comfortably too. His
civilian and commercial cards and the guild to score for the latter had
wiped out my advantage in science and progress. We was shocked! Flipping
balance in this game must be calculated to about a thousandth of a
decimal point, amazing.
.....
Paul, Tom, James and I played Skyway Robbery. It's a steampunk themed
game of assembling teams of skilled experts & equipment to pull off
heists (e.g "I defeat the Tesla coil with my engineer"). I think we all
felt the same way: it carries the theme well, is colorful and had some
interesting mechanics but takes far too long and is too dependent on
luck (e.g a lucrative heist shows up and you have just the right gear to
solve it).
A funny moment was that virtually all the
points the Soren scored came from me connecting social favours up to
score 4pts each, particularly as circumstances meant that I ended the game
without any favours myself. 
