It takes two Baby...

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!  

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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.


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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).