Tuesday, November 2, 2010

More Wonders


7 Wonders is my hot game at the moment. We had a mini meet again last week and managed to fit in 3 plays of it. This time around I tried a few different strategies.

I always made sure I would be able to make the third part of my wonder. A mistake that caught us out the first time we played.
In the first game I tried to build every military card I could, and if not use it to build my wonder. This managed to score me the full 18 military points.
On the second game I tried to build as many green science cards as I could. This worked well, but I had no access to paper so couldn't build any of the tablet cards. This hindered my final scoring.
The third game I screwed up by not building enough resource cards. I managed to finish my wonder off very quickly but didn't manage much after that other than a few blue cards.

It was interesting that in each of the 3 games different people won with different strategies. I really think you need to score the highest in a minimum of 2 categories to win the game. Keeping an eye on resources available and what other people are doing is also very important. This gets a bit tricky with more players, don't ignore the people you can't trade with.
Coins seem to produce the least vistory points, but nobody has really played a coin producing strategy yet. Maybe something I will try next week.
Military is very good, getting 18 points is definately a good strategy but winning a fight in the third age can wipe out any negative score you have picked up earlier in the game.

Score wise, the winner of every game we have played so far always had around 50 points, with everyone else scoring low to mid 40's. So the games have always been quite close.

Hopefully this will get a few more plays in next week.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

7 Wonders


Lot's of gaming has happened recently but the best was last night. My copy of 7 wonders arrived after being bought at Essen last week. It's got a lot of buzz at the moment and for good reason. It's a cracking game.
I had read the rules last week so we would be ready to give it a go and they seemed very simple. The rules themselves seemed to jump about a bit, but the basics seemed easy enough.

the game was punched explained and cards were sorted and dealt. The first age went very smoothly except for the fact I had no red military cards. I was trounced in combat on both sides but I had built a few civic building to generate VP's.

Age 2 started and more resources were available. Wonders started taking place but again I had a very poor military force.

Age 3 arrived and it all clicked. Well, we all realised that we couldn't build the third stage of our wonder. We had all passed up resource cards thinking we could trade them or already had them. I had 1 paper resource but needed 2 in order to complete my wonder. The only other paper was on the other side of the table! resources had been spread around the table. Guild cards were played to good effect in the final rounds and it was a close finish.

We all scored around 46 with the winner winning with 49. It was a very enjoyable game and I am now desperate to give it another go. I am sure this game will win a couple of awards this year and I expect an expansion sometime next year.

The other game we played was another new Essen release. Diver, Die, Deep (?) a push your luck diving game. It was quite fun but I was useless. Either diving too deep or staying under too long and running out of oxygen. It plays as a group push your luck that lasts several rounds. As a group you determine how much oxygen is in the tanks with hidden cards and each round you roll a dice for oxygen consumption. It gets a bit tense at times but sometimes you know you have made the wrong decision. A fun game that I would play again.

I also picked up a copy of Gosu, loving the look of the cards and box but need to read teh rules and give it a try.

Friday, October 1, 2010

A spot of Painting

A week has passed and Thunderstone hasn't hit the table. Instead Fresco got its first outing and it's a pretty good game.
When I first heard about Fresco the idea of mixing paints and keeping your workers happy sounded like a good theme. It was the strong "euro" in this years SdJ and I was on the lookout for something else to try with the kids.

At its heart its a worker placement game with a few twists. You decide the playing order each round by deciding how early your going to wake up your workers. First up gets to do things first but paints from the market cost more and your workers happiness drops. If your last out of bed you don't have much to choose from at the market but its cheap. Your workers are happy and you may even recruit a new one.

So after you have bought paints its then time to use them to complete tiles on the Fresco part of the board. You have to use up your workers and paints to complete these tiles. followed by the ability to earn money by painting portraits, mixing your base colour paints to make different colours and finally sending your workers to the theatre to increase their happiness.

so each round you have a few things to think about, mainly what time to get up, whether you are buying paints, painting the fresco or mixing new colours. All while trying to keep your workers happy.

The board and components are really nicely put together. All the tiles are good heavy card stock and the graphic design is beautiful. Layout of the board is well put together, visually it helps resolve each round. Queen games always seem to do well on their pesentation and design so I wouldn't expect anything less.

The first play went very well, its a smooth game to play with no real rules questions. It just seems to make sense. It's not very difficult to grasp, so I think its going to become my first gateway game to introduce new players.

The game also comes with 3 expansions. These add extra rules and things to think about to increase the complexity of the game. I haven't tried these yet but its nice that they added them into the base game instead of releasing them as a seperate expansion.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A bit more Thunderstone


The Thunderstone expansion has been delivered, unboxed, sleeved and collated. This expansion is brilliant, not only for the extra cards but for the built in filing system you get. Having a way to sort through the cards from both boxes now is a great bonus.

I have tried the expansion twice now and both games have been very good. We mixed up cards from the base set and expansion and they worked well. I did tweak the cards on the second play as we had no magic attack cards available and some of the elemental monsters needed magic attacks. both games played out well, although there was the inevitable stall point where a big monster blocks the dungeon and the players are busy trying to get cards into their deck to defeat it.
This is my only sticking point with the game. Whether its a creature only defeatable by magical attacks, or another that has such a terrible penalty if you don't have particular cards can hinder the game. It's not insurmountable, you just carry on grabbing cards until someone manages to get a good hand. It just sometimes stalls the game for 10 minutes when things were running smoothly.

My Dwarf promo cards haven't turned up yet which is annoying. I seem to be having problems with my post recently. Halo Reach is 3 days late and that's more annoying than the lack of Dwarves!
Hopefully I will have some packages to open soon.

Friday, August 20, 2010

More Thunderstone


Thunderstone has hit the table again this week. It seems to be one of the most talked about games and I am really enjoying it. Although the next time I play I have vowed not to use the suggested starting set of cards.

I had the same problem when Dominion came along, followed by its expansions and promos. The base set of cards suggested do a good job of bringing people into the game. There are enough cards to add variety without adding too many that have either too much to read so they are ignored. OR change the game around too much to make it confusing. The trouble is I have all these other cards that I am dying to add into the mix and it never happens. I like to make the first play of Dominion not too overwhelming for new players, so after a game with the recommended set of cards I will then swap in 2 or 3 other cards to add a little to the mix. Usually the Witch and a couple of others to add a little interaction. Hopefully after that they have a better understanding of the game and I can add some new cards in the next time.

Unfortunately Dominion has become a monster and its impractical for me to cart 4 boxes of cards to play one or two hands. I could really do with a carry box that I can use to bring over everything I need to play a couple of pregenerated hands.

Thunderstone is going the way of expansions, and the first one looks like its going to be a winner. Not only can it be played stand alone so you don't need the base game it has solved this storage problem. The original storage for the cards was weak, just a few holes in the box and no real strategy of what to put where. Divider cards were supplied but they were not great and after I have sleeved my cards they are just lost in the box. Now the new expansion will hold all the cards from the base set and provides some foam inserts to break up your cards plus some sizable divider cards. This sounds perfect, I will be able to bring along all the cards in one box and get things setup efficiently. Now I just have to wait for it to be released.

Other gaming has been mixed. Last night I had a half game of Memoir 44 using Vassal. Normally it works but technical problems hit us after half an hour of play so we gave up and moved onto Dominion on BSW so the night wasn't a total disaster.

Dice Tower awards are looming and will be interested in what people think of the winners. Till then I'm waiting for my Dwarven Thunderstone from the Geek. Not that it will get played ;-)

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Orc Rush in the cold


Another night another game meet for the P.O.B. group. Last night I managed to get a game of Ur in. It's a new game to me and one that I have just started playing on mabiweb. To be honest I was confused on the online version but after the game was explained to me it made more sense. I came last mainly due to building two Zigurats near the start on my Agriculture tiles and then shafting my cube production. Live and learn eh!

Next up was Thunderstone, second play and it really clicked this time. I lost by 1 point but it was an enjoyable game. We used the starting set of cards again as I was the only player out of the three who had played before. The Sphinx card has tripped us up both times now. Needing a magical attack of 8 seems really harsh. We all struggled to combat her and having the thunderstone behind it made it the game winner. I bought as many fireballs, wizards and flaming swords as possible but they just didn't hit my hand at the right time. In the end I ended the game using the Elf wizards ability to put a monster to the bottom of the deck. I thought I had killed enough monsters but hadn't leveled up enough of my hero's. A really good game and I will look out for the expansion now.

Lastly I managed a game of Summoner Wars. This is getting lots of love at the moment. The Dice Tower guys really like it and with the Dice Tower awards being revealed soon I am sure its going to get something. It got my vote!
It's a nice quick miniature battle game that uses cards instead of miniatures. Contradicted myself there but it works really well. The rules are simple but playable. However the Orcs seem to have won every game so far. I am not sure what I am doing wrong with the Elves. I know they have better range attacks but its difficult to get them in position without being overrun by the Orcs. More plays and a rethink required on this one.
The play mat still annoys me on this one. For the cost of the game I would prefer something better but then games seem to be getting more expensive anyway.

Friday, August 6, 2010

To Sleave, or not to Sleave?


I usually only sleeve cards in games if they are going to get repeated use. The character cards in Citadels were some of the first non CCG cards I sleeved. Mainly as they are continually being used, shuffled and swapped around the table.

Other games I have sleeved have been Combat Commander as I wanted to pimp out the game with coloured sleeves and card decks for the forces. But I don't really play the game enough to really warrant the sleeves.

Thunderstone arrived last week and inside are 530 cards and I chose to sleeve them all. I have dominion and haven't sleeved that mainly because of the large number of cards so I have no real excuse here. Other than the fact I have all the expansions so the number of cards is now well over the number in Thunderstone.
The main reason I sleeved Thunderstone is that our gaming group, P.O.B. meets in a pub in Portsmouth. We get the room for free which is great but sometimes we have to use a room where the tables are a little grubby and sticky. I wanted to protect the cards from the wear and tear of this environment. It's a bit harsh and I have thought about sleeving some other cards as I am loathed to bring them to play.

Maybe I am to O.C.D. but I like to keep my things as mint as possible.

Sleeving has its downsides. The cards are a bit more tricky to shuffle now, but I can put up with that. Extra cost was negligible, about £4 for the sleeves from ebay. Maybe not the best but they do the job.

As for the game, well it's no Dominion. It's not as slick or polished as the daddy of the deck building games but it was enjoyable and I am looking forward to giving it another go next week.

More on the game will follow as I think it needs a few more plays till I can really comment on it.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Shogun



It has been a while since I played Shogun, so last week a game was organized and our samurai troops shuffled around feudal Japan. It was a great game that ended in a 4 player draw with the winner decided on the number of war chests. As I had calculated to spend all my chests I ended up last but it was a monumental game.

Shogun is one of my favorite games, its more than an area control game with players having limited number of actions to perform and the cube tower is a great piece of kit.

For those that don't know about Shogun I will break it down. The board is made up of Japan's provinces with players having a number of cubes in the provinces they control. Everything starts off even with each player controlling the same number of provinces and having the same number of cubes. You have a card for each province that you control.

The game is broken down into 2 years, with each year having three playable seasons followed by the winter season where scoring and other processes happen.

For each of the three main seasons players have to decide what their province is going to do. Each player has a board showing all 10 options and they must place a province card upside down onto the action they want. The actions are broken down into 3 building actions, castle, temple and theatre. Obtaining Rice which is used to feed your provinces in Winter and war chests which are the currency of the game. The other actions revolve around building up your troop types and moving them around the board attacking adjacent provinces.

Once all of the players have chosen a province then the order of these actions is revealed and a turn order bid happens. One of the nice mechanics is that only the first 5 of these 10 possible actions is viewable at the start of the round. As the actions happen, the remaining actions are flipped. Sometimes this means that you may not be able to afford to build your armies as the war chest action hasn't happened yet. Either way you only get to do 3 possible actions in a province before winter happens.

Taking rice or war chests from a province makes the local peasants unhappy and revolt markers are placed in the region. These have two effects, one the farmers will not help the defenders in battle and two, if you have more than one token in a province the peasants will revolt against the occupying player.

Combat is handled with the cube tower. It's one of the best parts of the game. It's a cardboard tower that you drop in the attacking and defending cubes. They rattle around inside and a number of cubes will end up in the tray at the bottom. These are then used to determine who wins and the attrition of the battle. Sometimes your cubes will end up in the tower to come out at a later time. It works really well, especially as you seed the tower at the start of the game.

When Winter arrives players must have enough rice to feed all of their provinces. If not then more revolt markers are placed on the board and players can loose the provinces if the peasants revolt and win. Scoring then starts with players earning points for the number of provinces they own, the number of buildings they control and for the majority control of each building type per region.

After the first year has ended, all revolt markers are removed and the whole process starts again.

Its a fine balance between attacking for more provinces, defending provinces that you have built on and building to gain the majority in each region.

Most of the game is spent planning, which can lead to a bit of analysis paralysis. It also takes a bit of time to setup, the names of the provinces take a while to find on the board but after the first year new players should have a good idea of what they are doing and how to win. Subsequent plays help round the strategies of the game out.

Overall I really like this game and wish I could play it more often. It's a big game so it takes a bit of thought and table space but this shouldn't put people off.

Friday, July 9, 2010

Viva le France!


It's all been about the French recently. A two week holiday to the South of France meant for little gaming. Apart from a couple of hands of Franks Zoo and Colloretto there wasn't much gaming going on.

I did however manage to visit Carcassonne, inspiration for one of the first games I bought in my resurgence into the hobby. It's an amazing place and well worth a visit if you enjoy wandering around castles. However be warned, anything game related costs a fortune. I had the idea of buying an expansion for Carcassonne while I was visiting, it seemed to make sense buying Traders and Builders while wandering around the historic courtyards. However the prices soon put me off. In the castle gift shop the base game was selling for 38 Euros. Yep £31 at today's exchange rate. That would buy me two copies here from my favorite online supplier. The expansions didn't do much better. I decided to wait till I got back home to spend any money on game related items.

I had arranged for two nights of gaming when I got back. The first brought Glory to Rome and Macao to the table. I really like Macao, it has everything. Tiles, Cubes, Dice and Cards that all work very well. Yet again Hannah won the game continuing her winning streak. I messed up early on in the game picking up cards I couldn't build. Next time I will think hard about this.
Glory to Rome was good, it took a little while to get going as it was new to me and the others had only played it once. I was so close to winning but didn't quite manage it. If I had one more go I would have been the new Emperor. I really enjoyed this game and will be looking for a copy when the reprint hit the shelves later this month.

Tuesday night put me back in my French mood as I took the rains of my French army on the lookout for water slides and Ziggy Piggies. Waterloo had been picked up at the recent UK Games Expo by Rich and it was the first time it had hit the table. Luckily Rich had setup the game ready, although a few pieces were missing you get a lot of chunky wooden bits in the box.
I managed to win the game by continually harassing the English troops and managed a win by 3PM just as the Prussians arrived for tea. Overall a good game that felt a little restrictive at the start. My troops seemed hemmed in by the sheer number of other pieces and an annoying ridge line in the center of the board.
Next time I will play the role of the British and see if I can put history back on track.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Spiel des Jahres

The nominations for this years Spiel des Jahres has been released.

Dixit Official Site | BGG

Identik (Portrayal) Official Site | BGG

Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age Official Site | BGG

a la Carte Official Site | BGG

Fresco Official Site | BGG

Out of all the games I think Dixit will win. It's a very good game that would suit families. It's not too complex and looks very nice. Roll through the Ages is a good game and one I enjoy playing and Fresco looks like a nice euro game but I am not sure if there is anything that new in its mechanics.

So, Dixit gets my vote.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Dungeon Lords

It's been a busy week of gaming with two meets. The first we played a couple of fillers No Thanks and Franks Zoo followed by Power Grid.
It was a close game with all of us rushing to build 17 cities, We all managed it but only Dobbie could power then and scored the win. I think it was the closest Power Grid game I have played.

Later in the week we had a P.O.B. meet and I finally managed to give Dungeon Lords a go. It turned out to be a pretty clever but unforgiving worker placement game. I enjoyed teh game but played it very badly ending up loosing all my dungeon in the first year. I was then on teh back foot and managed a final score of -2. Not the best. A few early mistakes seaaled teh deal, I was just too evil and the Paladin decided that my dungeon was in most need of being cleansed. I think he must have had a bottle of Cilit Bang with him as it was sparkly white when he was finished.

Its a very good game and now on my wish/want list. I want to give to another play, just so I can beat my negative score.

The rest of the evening was filled with filler games, No Thanks, Franks Zoo and Pack'n'Stack.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Automobile


We had a mini game session on Friday night and Ed chose Automobile as the main game of the evening. If anyone knows Ed he likes his economic games and Automobile was a pretty good one. I have mixed reviews of Martin Wallace games, I appreciate the technical aspex of the game but I find them a little hard to get my head around. Brass lived on my shelf for ages till I managed to get it to the table. Perikles is still there.

Automobile is all about building car factories, recuiting sales people and producing cars and selling them. Its a balancing act of building as much as you think you can sell, with unsold cars loosing you money. I was suprised it only plays for 4 turns, and the game lasted about 2 hours. I suspected it to last a little bit longer.

I won the game, not sure how I managed it but I went for a high end approach, building as many high end cars as I could and making sure they were all sold. Mid range cars bulked up the rest of my production. It seemed to work as I had only a few loss cubes, mainly for having sales guys twiddling there thumbs.
I will be happy to play it again, now I know what to do its definately going to make a difference. Also I thing the next play may be a little bit more aggressive, we were all playing fairly and not trying to under cut each other.

We had a little more time after Automobile so I pulled out Dominion Seaside as the others haven't seen or played with the cards. It was a good game but I just couldn't get my money engine running. We managed to end the game with all the points cards being bought up. The last province card ended the game, never seen that before.
I had enough cards to beef up my hand each round but no where near enough money in it to actually buy anything. Lesson learnt.

The house now has an Ipod Touch so I need to spend some time on teh app store looking for those board game conversions. The only problem I can see is wrestling the thing out of my sons hands. I may have to add another one to a virtual basket sometime soon.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

New Games


I haven't bought as many new games recently. Mainly because I have been trying to hold back and the other is I have been buying a few games on the Xbox. Most months its either one or the other.

Well today I have ordered up a few games.

Macao
No Thanks
Franks Zoo
Are you the Traitor?
Cthulhu Dice

Originally I was looking for a couple of card games to take on holiday. I always envision playing a few games while sitting in the sun but it doesn't always happen. My kids are happy to play but its difficult finding games that are portable and playable for them. Last year Uno and Colloretto were both played heavily, Uno I can take or leave while I do enjoy coloretto.
I am hoping that Franks Zoo and No Thanks will hit the spot, and I am tempted to take along Carc. Mainly as we will be 45 minutes away from the real place and a visit is going to happen.

After adding the light games in I tend to look for something for me, Macao was a good price and it sounds like a nice game. The Spiel guys talked about it a few eps back so it was added to the basket. The others were just fillers to bulk up the order.

Hopefully these will be delivered by Monday in time for some testing next week. I am also going to try and dig out a chess set so I can start teaching the kids how to play. Maybe I should start with Checkers!

Monday, April 12, 2010

Player Aids


One of the best resource on BoardGameGeek has to be the abundance of player aid's. As soon as pickup a new game I will always have a shift to look for any player aids that are going to help. Sometimes these player made files are invaluable, the recent player aid for Ghost Stories helped by putting all of the icons and symbols onto a single sheet. These were printed and laminated and have proved invaluable.

So why don't publishers put decent player aids in the box to start with? I recently played Twilight Struggle, one of my favorite games. The player aids that come with it are ok, but no exactly inspiring and certainly don't convey enough information. It was half way through the game before I remembered that coup's in battleground countries reduce the defcon level. Oops!

For me a player aid needs to have all the key points on a single sheet, with maybe a second sheet if cards or buildings need explaining or summarizing. The player aid should be colourful, with different areas marked out, not just a black and white sheet of paper.

Some publishers, you know who they are seem to have a thing about stopping player aids. I understand copyright, but if its something that's going to help get you game played and sold then surely there should be no issue in allowing players to create and share there work. Personally I think great player aids should be incorporated into reprints with the designer acknowledged.

Maybe next time my commrades should have one of these. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/46383/major-sholtos-coolest-ever-guide-to-cold-war-opera

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Iconica


Latest game ordered is Iconica. A post of the Geek Dad feed brought the game to my attention and the artwork really stood out. I have ordered a copy of the base game along with some extra cards to save on teh postage.
I must admit it was a bit of an impulse buy, I know very little about the game but the artwork is worth a look. Guys on the geek seem to like it and for the cost its worth a punt. I will be on the lookout for some larger prints of this if it goes well.

Other gaming has been Kids of Carcassonne with the boys. It's a very good version of the game simplified for young ones. Still enough in there to give them something to think about without overloading them with rules.

No other gaming planned for this week, so Yucata will have to sate my appetite for victory points.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Black Ops

Netrunner was played last night and it was great. Just as good as I remembered it and I am now ready to get the rest of my cards out the loft and start sifting through them building decks to play.
I played Corps first and managed to score the win. I was very lucky in that the runner didn't harass me even though I only have a couple of pieces of ice defending my forts. When he did break into my HQ I had 4 agendas in my hand and he missed them all. Systematic layoff allowed me to quickly score an agenda to win the round.
Next up I was the runner and I ran and ran. HQ and R&D were constantly hit and inside jobs allowed me to sneak past the first level of ice. I was knocked back a few times but at the cost of the corp paying up loads of bits to rez his ice. A few lucky runs on R&D and I had 7 points of agendas and it was game over.

A good pair of games that helped bring the rules back from a dormant part of my brain. REady for another.

The evening finished off with more card games. Battleline is a favorite and I won that one due to some lucky card play. We didn't play with the tactics cards, I admit I am not a great fan of them. We also played a game of Jambo, this time playing as African traders. Won that one as well, I had a good evening. Jambo always suprises me, sometimes I dismiss it as its a card game but there is a bit more to it than its "filler" status in my mind.

So from Alexander the great to Crash Everret, Inventive fixer all in one night.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Hidden Agenda


I'm a sucker for cyberpunk, give me Snowcrash or Neuromancer to read and I'm a happy man. When I heard about Netrunner back in the 90's it was as if they had made a game for me. I was heavily into Magic at the time and a Cyberpunk based CCG filled with hackers against corp was music to me ears. I remember taking a trip to London on launch day and grabbing starter decks and boosters then reading the rules on the train back home.
The game was brilliant, it fitted the world very well and the rules were simple and elegant. Needless to say it was played again and again. Boosters were bought and around singles were swapped using new technology called email and newsgroups. I even travelled to play in some sealed tournaments organised by newsgroups. My £20 a month pipex account was well used then.
The first expansion came out out, Proteus and I travelled to Brighton to pick up a box of boosters. I have never bought a box of boosters before or since, I was that enthralled with the game.

Then the news of it being dropped hit. Why! its such a great game, but the market was being saturated with CCG's. I was buying Xfiles, Mech Warrior, Star Wars, L5R and others but none came close to using Black Dahlia on that ice infested run.

I haven't played Netrunner for a few years now. It occasionally hit the table after a bit of nostalgic banter and this Wednesday sees it rise again from the ashes. Decks have been sorted, rules have been read. Hopefully Wednesday will involve some good games, that said the fact that Netrunner is going to be played means there will.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Wu-Bob!

Ghost stories was played on Wednesday night and after a false start (read every haunter and tormentor, not ones on your board, yikes!) things went well. I am very pleased with the look and feel of the game, the artwork is really nice. The plastic ghosts are good and there is enough bits to make a good game without needing hundreds of baggies to keep things organised.

Needless to say we lost. We managed to get about half way through the ghost deck before we forgot to use out yin-yang tokens to flip back some villager tiles. A noobie mistake but we were busy trying to fend off hoards of ghost. The ghosts did seem to appear think and fast and boards were being over run quickly. Mainly due to the black curse die bringing in more spooks.

I also found that we didn't use the villager tiles as much as I though. Probably because we are not really up to speed with what they do. We also missed opportunities with our special powers. I was yellow and didn't use my enfeeblement ability the first few turns as I forgot about it.

I am going to give it a solo try over the weekend, more to get the rules down. I hope to get a bit further through the deck.

Afterwards we played Stone Age, one of my favorite games. Things progressed well with Gornad choosing the action I wanted pretty much every time. Mudhoney struggled but it was his first time and it was getting late. I managed to win the game by a sizable margin. Mainly due to holding lots of cards. They always seem to be the game winner for me.

A good nights gaming, but I always leave wanting to play more games.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Who you gonna call?


It's nearly the end of February and things have been busy. If I haven't been delving into virtualization at work I have been running with an aim of completing a 10 mile run at the end of the year.
This hasn't left a huge amount of time for gaming, and even less for typing up what's been going on but some gaming has been had.

POB has met up again, last week and it seemed to be a night of the classics. Settlers and Tigris were played. I even managed to scrape a win in Tigris. It's a game that only just "clicked" and made sense. I was lucky in that 2 of the 4 players hadn't played the game before. I can sympathise with them as its a complex game and one that you have to think about.
Other games played were Stone Age, Poo, Pirates and a prototype card game designed by a newcomer.

Other gaming has seen Dominion: Seaside hit the table and I really enjoyed this one. I am desperate to give it another play as I have only used 10 of the new cards. The delayed action mechanic is nice, having a trail of caravans supplying you with cards is very handy.

New purchase of the month is Ghost Stories. I have had my eye on this for a while but the price has put me off. I finally managed to scoop up a copy on an auction. This looks great and hopefully its going to get played tonight. I hear it's hard, but I hope its enjoyable enough to want repeat plays. Nothing worse than playing a game only to find nobody else liked it.

A game that has caught my eye is the new Fantasy Flight war game set on Westros. I am a big fan of the GRRMartin books and FFG always puts a lot of effort into there games. The fact that it uses Battlelore as a system, or part system is interesting. The only downside I can see is the cost. Games just seem to be getting more expensive these day.

Friday, January 29, 2010

King Kong was never like this.


We had a P.O.B meet this week and the Wine Vaults is turning out to be a really good venue. It's quiet on a Wednesday so we don't get many distractions and the beer is good.

A good turn out this week meant we had 3 tables of games running. I setup Steam on one and we had a 5 player game running. Most of us had played Age of Steam or Steam so only Neil was learning the game. It played out well and was quite close at the end with Peter scoring the win. Initial cube deployment was very random so it was all about economic track placement and Peter did well from the start. I came in last due to some poor track placement and not getting the city growth when I wanted it.

Another table were playing Chaos in the Old world which looked quite nice. I know very little about this game but wouldn't mind giving it a go later on.
After these were finished a few people left so we settled down to some card games. A 5 player game of Race for the Galaxy was started and I pulled out Poo!. I bought it as a throw away game but our 4 player game was so much fun we played it again. The game is all about throwing poo at each other and trying not to reach 15 poo markers. Our first game was hilarious as 3 of us managed to get to 14 while Neil hovered around 8. His final card would have taken all of us out but some nifty card playing from Ade and Rob managed to deflect poo back at him in there final death throws. It was a classic ending and a game that will be remembered for a while. All in a much better game than I expected.

Closing orders were rang but not before we squeezed in a quick game of Mow, the RftG game was called as we had run out of time.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

It's all so Quiet!

Gamers where are you? It's been deathly quiet on the gaming front. I don't think anything has been played since new years and its getting to be a bit of a problem. It's not that I have masses of new games to play but I would like to replay some of my last purchases or even some of those ones at the top of the shelf.

A POB meet has been arranged for next week so hopefully some gaming will happen in January. On a different note Agricola is no longer No1 at the geek. Puerto Rico has grabbed its Stanna stairlift and motored its way back to the top. I enjoy both games, but neither are really my favorites or number ones really. I maybe enjoy Agricola a little more than Puerto Rico but I understand why PR is so popular. In fact I struggle to think of what my No 1 game would be. Different games are for different groups or times and there are many games that I would happily play at the drop of a hat. Picking my No 1 is just too difficult.

Maybe I haven't played it yet?