This would never happen with a Kindle

Contributors: Daniel, David, Jon

A cozy night with double Tom for me, after a brief bit of Salmon related palaver we progressed from maniacal fish to magical tomes with The Big Book of Madness. 

We followed up with some gentle holidaying in Tokaido plus the expansion. It was a pleasant game as always  - I built a massive lead during the game with my bargain-hunting shopper monk, but in the final counting Tom Juan had leveraged the end-game scoring mechanisms from the expansion content to rapidly catch up. It all ended in a narrow one point victory for me with Tomtoo caught dawdling on the scenic route. 

Tom Juan then insisted that we suffer through Romans Please go Away, finshing up with a full game (gasp) of Council of Verona.

.....


Myself, James B and his friend Richard arrived early at 6 to get in a game of Devil's Run: Route 666. TomToo turned up just in time to make it four. It has just been kickstarted and it's a post-apocalyptic race along the Devil's Run with a Mad Max theme. We all started with one car and one bike each, although it felt unbalanced. *edit* I had a quick chat with the developer of this and feel the game we played wasn't a true representation of the final product. it sounds as though there are a lot more rules and scenarios that haven't been released yet that makes the game play properly. Hopefully we'll see this at the club again where I can have another bash at it.*After that was a game of Troyes, one of my favourites. It was an incredibly close game with everyone working on a similar strategy and competition for places was tight. I worked on my usual strategy of filling the activity cards with my workers and utilising the yellow money/victory point Activity Cards as often as possible. Towards the end I realised I wasn't going to score well on any of the secret characters so resigned myself to last place. However when it came down to scoring James won with 38 whilst Richard and I were tied on 34. Lovely game and looking forward to the upcoming re-print so I can pick up my own copy.

After that was a quick game of Sushi Go, James B kindly picked me up a copy of this from the bring and buy at the expo as he knew I enjoyed playing it at the club. Nothing bad to say about it, it's quick fun and I love the art work. I'm interested in what Sushi Go Party! will add when it's released.

To finish the evening was a game of King of Tokyo, a fun enough roll and keep dice game with a monster theme. It plays fast enough that you don't realise that there's not much game here. It was the copy I picked up last week in a charity shop in new condition for £10.

.....

A 5 player outing for Railways of the World. Jon, Noel, Neil, Phil and Paul decided to try the Europe map, which is always cosy with five! A service bounty in the first set of cards meant that Neil bidded highest to start in Spain. Noel went to northern Italy. Jon went into western Europe with Paul piggybacking along for the ride. Phil decided to stay out of trouble and went straight to Russia!

Jon ignored his usual tactic of taking as few bonds as possible, and spent the first few turns racking up huge debts to ensure that he did not get hemmed in.
Neil decided that Spain and Portugal were lovely places to stay at this time of year and spent the whole game without coming out of that area. He also never delivered a cube more than two links. He also came last.

Noel was also largely uncontested as he built up into Europe and down into Italy, picking up a couple of major line bonuses on the way. Phil build down out of Russia into Europe as well as going into Turkey. He nearly ruined Jon's plan of completing the most valuable major line bonus from Paris to Constantinople, but John was able to take out yet more bonds to just get there first. Paul was trying his hardest to interfere with everyone's plans!

Jon had managed to get the city of Prague all to himself after taking a card which refused entry to any other players-he then added a number of cubes leaving him with several four point deliveries in the last round of the game. As the game concluded Jon was ahead on the points track but when the penalty for bonds was counted up Noel had sneaked a victory by two points. Phil and Paul weren't that far behind. Neil was still topping up his tan and enjoying the sangria...

Four player kingdom builder with two expansion boards in play. This time Noel was unable to execute his usual strategy of picking multiple special abilities that added extra settlements, although he did have a nice boat to sail around....

Phil and Paul made good use of abilities that allowed them to choose from two terrain cards, whilst Jon had a good selection of bonus tiles, allowing him to manipulate settlement placement as well as adding extra ones. Jon brought the game to an end and had managed to score good points in most of the 4 scoring categories. This was enough for the victory. This game plays out so differently each time, I'm sure it's not going to grow old any time soon.