Vegas, Baby!

Tonight, the four core GNN regulars arrived at Sam’s with Joe bringing along Lords of Vegas as the evening’s special treat as Joe desperately tries to get everyone to play his freshly-bought board games to convince himself he hasn't wasted his money. Before we began, he ruefully admitted that he wouldn’t buy any more games until Christmas. But he did have lots of board games on his new iPhone. At least if he puts them there, they won’t take up valuable shelf-space in the house.

Lords of Vegas is all about gaining control of areas which will then hopefully score points and earn money. It’s all about gambling, since a random selection of areas never get played at all, allowing neighbouring players to take them over for a fee. Of course, this then leaves them worrying that this area may be revealed later in the game, meaning they lose the property they spent so much money on building. It’s all about risk and reward, and playing the odds.

Since it was everyone’s first game, I threw caution to the wind and I bought up vacant lots whenever possible, hoping that the casino would pay out. And, to my delight, it often did. Joe, who’d played this game before, was behind in the early part of the game but finished strongly. Gamblin’ Sam had mixed luck with the dice while Cautious Adam had some luck, but never reaped the full rewards since he often shared any financial risk with the bank. Less in losses, but less in wins too.

It’s a very gamble-y game, with choices made according to what you think the most likely card will be next. I enjoyed it, and there’s a certain excitement when somebody decides to reorganise a casino, meaning everyone’s dice get rolled and a new boss is chosen. I think we underplayed the trading section, but I don't think the game suffered too much.

Andrew 36, wins tiebreaker on money
Joe 36
Sam 26, wins tiebreaker on money
Adam 26

After such opulent gaming, with properties being developed for millions of dollars, why not continue the high-rolling atmosphere with For Sale! In this card game we bid for properties in the same care-free manner as other people feed bread to ducks. I felt confident in this game, too, after a round of betting between Joe, Sam, and Adam over the highest valued property left them all relatively cash-poor.

In the second half of the game, where we play out Property cards like trumps in order to earn money, we kept expecting Joe to play his lowly 1 card, but he didn’t. It was a bluffer’s paradise, with people tempted to play low cards, thinking that surely THIS time Joe would play his 1 card. But he didn’t... Until the last round of the game, where it didn’t help him much. After a recount, Adam was declared winner of For Sale.

Adam 68
Andrew 62
Sam 53
Joe 49

So after two games based around the crazy high life of property development, we stumbled back into the damp November air, still giddy with talk of tens of millions of dollars. For everyone except me, it was a middling performance, but my first and second pushes me up the new leaderboard. Now all we have to do is convince Quentin to turn up again. And then somehow make him lose.

The Form Table...

						Points
Quentin	1	1	1	2	1	6
Andrew	2	1	1	3	3	10
Adam	1	4	3	3	2	13
Sam	3	3	2	2	3	13
Joe	4	2	3	2	2	13
Jonny	3	2	4	5	5	19
Dan	3	1	5	5	5	19
Steve	3	2	5	5	5	20
Andy	2	4	5	5	5	21
Sally	2	5	5	5	5	22

A few acres of tiles

With Ashton (recovering from a chest infection) and Ava (Normal bedtime) happily tucked up in bed and dinner out the way by 18.50, an inviting 4 hours of gaming was available. Paul suggested that this week we might try to play as many quick games as possible after last sessions time eating monster A Few Acres Of Snow. Seizing my opportunity I quickly plopped Citadels, a new game to us, on the table. Although there would be a rule learning session and the obligatory "Open Hand" I thought we would probably get a game in under the hour benchmark stated on the box.

The rules didn't seem overly complex but the powers that the characters held required constant referral. For two Citadels newbies the interaction between the characters and what was a "Good" move remained elusive until near the end. Realising that I had built a whole bunch city cards and was near to closing out the game I began to choose my characters a lot more carefully. It would seem that some cards like the Bishop, Warlord and Assassin become a lot more sought after as the game progresses. It's then that you see how neatly balanced this game really is. I managed to negotiate my way through to an eighth city card and that was that. I really liked it but I could see Paul was left a little cold by it and so we hurriedly moved on to our next game....

Chris 30
Paul 16

Which was Stone Age! Oh no everybody groans..... Well I won so there, and I did so without my new tactic of throwing Paul's workers under the washing machine panning out as I had planned.

Chris 243
Paul 200

The time was 21:45, the night was still young! So we unboxed Carcassonne the Discovery. Paul hadn't played it in at least 10 years but hadn't lost any of his skill as a tile laying magician. In fact if anybody needs their bathroom doing then Paul's your man. Although you will have to be happy with a perfectly tessellated satellite picture of a fictional medieval country as thats all he does apparently. We were neck and neck all the way through but this was all balanced by whether one of Paul's early mountain dwelling meeples would be lucky enough to find the piece of land which had two corners mountain opposite two corners grassland. Twice I picked the ideal tile and quickly placed far far away. Fortunately for Paul his meeple got the map turned the right way and found the perfect tile, scoring 18 points (A lot in this game) and taking any chance of a comeback away.

Paul 117
Chris 103

We had managed to get all three in by 22:45 and not have to break any traffic laws getting Paul to his train on time. Hoorah.

Name Played Won
Chris 18 12
James 7 3
Paul 11 3

<ilayer src="http://www.mail2web.com/cgi-bin/banner/ad.asp?zone=110"><a href="http://myhosting.com/" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.mail2web.com/images/banners/defaults/zone110.gif" width="160" height="600" align="top" border="0" alt="" /></a></ilayer>

A Gentleman's Guide on How To Score

You know, much as we all love the leaderboard and we think the Q-system of scoring is a great idea, I can’t help but notice that the gap between first and sixth is 84 points. That’s quite a gap to bridge. And even between me and Joe, there’s 31 points.

I was wondering about another leaderboard that doesn’t have these huge gaps, nor does it rely on the Points Ratio to even things up. Basically, it’s just a form table of the five most recent games each player has played with 1 point for first, 2 for second etc, This means that a poor showing one evening doesn’t effect you all season and you can work it off over time.

For those who haven’t played five games, the gaps are filled in with 5th positions, just to get them on the board, and also to tease them with the tantalizing offer of a sudden leap in places should they do well.

At first glance, I like this, just because it keeps everyone close together. Any thoughts?

The Form Table...

						Points
Quentin	1	1	1	2	1	6
Adam	3	3	2	1	1	10
Sam	2	2	3	2	1	10
Joe	3	2	2	3	2	12
Andrew	1	3	3	3	3	13
Jonny	3	2	4	5	5	19
Dan	3	1	5	5	5	19
Steve	3	2	5	5	5	20
Andy	2	4	5	5	5	21
Sally	2	5	5	5	5	22

Have it, Caesar!

Tuesday night games saw 5 of us clustered around the table - Adam, Andrew, Joe, Quentin and myself (Sam), cracking our knuckles in anticipation as Joe walked in with a bag of new games - one of which, Lords of Vegas, did not play five, so we broke open the other, Ave Caesar. In this game players race chariots around the dusty tracks of ancient Rome, pausing only to throw a Denari in Caesar's lap - or, if you prefer, you can ignore Caesar for tactic's sake and sacrifice your laurels (or victory points) instead. If one had a big lead that might be a viable option, but as it was we were too in thrall of the Emperor (or fear of losing) and stuck to our task. The chariots are propelled by card play so there's an element of card management and an element of blocking competitors off where the track narrows or veers around corners.

The game suggests 4 races but as it was fairly lightweight we did 2 instead and found it an enjoyable filler, for some reason encouraging a lot of smutty humour. Quentin began another successful night by coming in first again, with Joe and Adam tied for second and Andrew and I placed third:

Quentin 8

Joe/Adam 7

Sam/Andrew 5

With the night reasonably young there was time for a semi-serious game, but we found it so tricky deciding in the end a Decider was chosen at random, and that turned out to be me. I plumped for Ra, hoping we'd have time for Poison afterwards. There had been talk of Torres but if it makes Adam feel any better I realised later that it only plays 2-4.

Ra's not a strong game of mine but rather than hedge my bets and try and scoop up tiles at the end of the round, a strategy that's burnt my fingers before, I opted for grabbing things early to cover the bases and avoid penalties, a system that would have paid off had it not been for the presence of the new Ratio King at the table - yes, Quentin did it again, shrugging off the odd penalty to grab first place. Adam's comprehensive collection of monuments saw him score big but he was also hampered by his Pharoah and Civilisation shortcomings. Joe suffered the Ra equivalent of darts-elbow; having collected the three highest sun tiles for round three he was reticent to spend them.

Quentin 39

Sam 37

Adam/Andrew 17

Joe 16

It was ten o'clock and while Andrew cracked opened the whisky Joe and Quentin decided to retire, making the last game a three-hander. As such, Poison was out, and after a little dalliance with the idea of Trans-America, we settled on 7 Wonders. I like this game for three, with a little foresight and guesswork you can think a move ahead rather than just in the here and now. Andrew had professed to being a little jaded by 7 Wonders recently, but you wouldn't have known it as he wiped the floor with us, going big on Military and Blue Buildings to finish just one point off Adam's record score:

Andrew 62

Sam 46

Adam 44

Nice to get three games into an evening, and just look at Quent's ratio! He did volunteer that ratio should only come into it after ten games (which we agreed to) but it's worryingly impressive all the same.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	21	94.5	4.5
Adam	19	86	4.53
Andrew	22	78	3.55
Joe	13	47	3.62
Quentin	6	31	5.17
Jonny	3	10.5	3.5
Dan	2	8	4
Steve	2	7.5	3.75
Andy	2	7	3.5
Sally	1	4.5	4.5

Not Another Stone Age Review!

Yes.

Not being one to pass up an opportunity to play Stone Age meant that I found myself, once again, at James' house for what is becoming a bi-weekly session of games (spread over two days!). My previous high score had since been confined to the history books thanks to Sam's recent massive total and James was of a mind to reduce the gap, thus hindering any chance of a repeat performance. In the two player version the fight for resources is not as tight as it is with 3 or 4; therefore simply avoiding your opponents strategy is easier.

Hence, James collection of fields and workers was matched by my axes and huts leaving us to fight over the culture cards. Although my lead - courtesy of a little row of huts - looked quite impressive, James managed chomp away big chunks of that lead by building huts with pure GOLD! Inspired play! In the end it came down to a couple of culture cards that appeared to complete my set and the two fields left unplayed.

Chris 265.
James 199.

Our second game, Ticket to Ride, was probably as close as a game could get. Come the final tot-up I was ten points in the lead, however James had pipped me for the longest route. This brought the scores to 105 each and with four 4 tickets completed it all came down to the longest route. Which James had.

James 105
Chris 105

Bracknell Leaderboard:

(October - November)

Name Played Won

Chris 15 10

James 7 3

Paul 8 2

Which makes me look like a flat track bully....

Cold War Classic

Whilst Sam and Andrew struggled cooperatively for control of Middle Earth (see below), Steve and I, down the road in Montpelier, went head to head with a struggle of a more modern kind.
Before Steve arrived, I had piled up a few choices, including Cuba, which we'd both played for the first time recently, and La Citta (another of The Works £7.99 wonders, one I haven't managed to play yet). I'd also included a couple of two-player games; Martin Wallace's A Few Acres of Snow, and BGG darling Twilight Struggle.
Having assessed the options we agreed that it would be wrong not to play a dedicated two-player game, given the circumstances, and I left it to Steve to make the choice. Acres would be a long rules learn, but a shorter game. Twilight Struggle (slightly) easier to grasp, much longer to play. Steve opted for Twilight Struggle.

The rules are a bit of a bear; it's not hugely complicated, but the direct conflict, zero-sum nature of the game means that you really need to be up to speed before going in. We started in on the rules description at 7.45, and an hour later we were setting up the first turn. I was USSR, Steve the free world.

The first turn took 45 mins, and was a fairly tentative affair -  there were no scoring cards - and we were just finding our feet. Turn two was very different, as I held the Middle East scoring, and Steve the Asia scoring; unfortunately for Steve, I had made some in-roads into Asia in turn one, so was able to concentrate on shoring up the Middle East to maximise my score there, and in the end, Asia was a dead heat, though I scored a few points for controlling battleground countries.

Turn two had taken a bit longer, and as we went in to turn three, the early war deck had to be re-shuffled, giving the potential for a repeat scoring of Middle East and/or Asia, along with the inevitable battle for Europe.
The whole of round three was a tug-of-war for Europe, and we were beginning to get a good feel for the game. It's daunting, of course, trying to take in the situation in every region at once. But what you realise through playing is that different regions become the focus of a round if someone holds a scorecard, which makes for a more managable cognitive load.

Steve managed to keep Europe out of my grasp, but hadn't managed to do the same in the Middle East, both of which scored in the final round of turn three. My Middle East victory pulled the VP marker all the way to my 20 VP goal, and the game was up. We were both glad in some ways, because it meant we'd completed a game rather than left it hanging (Steve confided he was going to call it a night at the end of the turn); but I was more glad than Steve.

I could really get into this game, if it got played more often - if time/tiredness were not factors, I think we would have both gone in again with a much more focussed, aggressive stance. It's well-deserving of its classic status; grown-up without being dry, competitive, but with enough luck from the cards to not feel too mean. The theme is perfectly in tune with the gameplay - I like the way the influence builds up in certain hot-spots; the more influence your opponent has, the more you need to have to try and wrest control, leading to mini-skyscrapers of chits in certain places.  All this, and the ever-present threat of nuclear armageddon - what more could you ask of a tuesday evening in november? JB

Lords of the Stone Age

Today’s plan for the same game to be played in two venues at once, with messages flying back and forth was slightly scuppered when it was revealed that Joe had lent out his copy of Ascending Empires. And also there isn’t really enough down-time during a two-player game to muck about with instant messaging or texts.

In the end the two factions went their separate ways. I believe that Joe and Steve went for A Few Acres Of Snow – a two player game that Joe has been itching to get people to play. Since two-player games aren’t leaderboard (at least, not usually), Sam felt in a co-operative mood and we chose Reiner Knizia’s re imagining of The Lord Of The Rings for our opening game.

I’d played it fairly recently, so I refreshed Sam’s memory of the rules, and we got stuck in. For most of the game, it was plain sailing, with Sauron barely twitching until Helm’s Deep, at which point he dragged himself a couple of spaces in our direction. Heading into Mordor, we had plenty of shields and I was confident of a successful campaign against the rabbit-eared monolith.

However, Sauron didn’t gain his reputation for evil for no reason, and in the last round, we went from comfort and confidence to panicky fear after a string of event tiles were turned over. Mordor is very deceptive: it’s events are bad, but they’re quite easy to avoid, and so you aren’t too bothered when the next event is uncovered. But this is a false sense of security. Each event takes you closer to Sauron’s victory, and we soon found ourselves standing one space away from defeat and two spaces away from absolute victory. It all depended on the turn of one tile.

An event tile... Sauron won. And he barely moved all game.

While the game was exciting while it lasted, and we couldn’t believe our luck with dice rolls, the end is a bit of a damp squib. Still, it was nice to team up with a fellow GNN regular and battle a common foe. I mean, one who isn’t Adam, that is.

For our next game we chose Stone Age as a nice two-player. Although I never win at this game any more, I still enjoy it. It feels very Roulette-ish, with the placement of the pieces and the element of luck. And I have to admit I had quite a bit of luck. By my standards, I played a very good game – getting my highest score by far. But Sam is not a man to be taken lightly at this game. Any confidence I had at my score was obliterated at Sam racked up the highest two-player score so far (sorry, Chris. I just couldn’t stop him).

Sam 337
Andrew 249

I'll leave it for Joe to explain his adventures in the snow with Steve in another post.

The place where Bracknell and Bristol meet

Tonight was an evening of glamour for the games night regulars as we hobbed and nobbed with Bristol’s literati to celebrate the release of Joe’s book of comic strips from the Guardian. Me (Andrew), Sam, Adam, Hannah, Steve and Anja all congregated to congratulate Joe (and his collaborator Pascal) on his success and to drink the free wine and eat the complementary nibbles (which included UK-caught Tuna among its ingredients, which is something of a rarity apparently). It was nice to all meet without a table covered in meeples between us.

But Sam and I sped back early to relieve visiting gamer Chris of his duties because he was kindly babysitting for Sam. Once there, we agreed to play a couple of light games to round off the evening. Chris was eager to try something new, but Sam was already a little too drunk to explain any rules and it was getting late so the familiar old box of Seven Wonders was brought out.

After being over-played and falling out of fashion, Seven Wonders has re-established itself as a quick game, perfect for rounding off an evening with three or four players. Not too taxing, but not too lightweight either. The first game was a exciting affair. Sam was perhaps distracted by having to cook pasta at the same time as playing, while maybe Chris had on eye on the England-Sweden game?

Chris went for the jugular and bullied his way to military might,. He insisted that he had no choice those were just the cards he got, but I’m not convinced. I quickly built up all the resources I needed in the first round, and before long I was the Mr Rockefeller of the table as people bought what they needed from me. This came in useful in round three, as I was able to spend this money and pick the choicest bluest cards. It ended:

Andrew 61

Chris 52

Sam 50

Curses! Just two points short of the highest ever score, I thought.

Sam suggested another go, since the game was already out. Even though I never win a game twice in a row, I agreed.

Once again Chris reached for his guns and fought his way into an early military lead. I went for sciences and managed to chain 5 symbols together for a healthy twenty-five points, while Sam scored highly in all categories. It was a very close game, and when my and Chris’ scores came up equal, we did wonder if it would be a three-way tie. In the end, though, Sam’s calculated play edged him home.

Sam 59

Chris 57

Andrew 57

But this week’s “official” games night will be an interesting affair. Postponed to Thursday, it consists of with two simultaneous games going on in two different venues, with carrier pigeons and semaphore to be used as means of communication throughout the night. And maybe our phones, too. I suggested that we all play one game and amalgamate the scores into one big five (or six) player game, and I think Seven Wonders may be the best choice: the top score doesn’t seem to be effected by the number of players. And it’s a lovely way to end an evening.

The GNN High Score Tables

Hey, remember when videogame magazines had pages dedicated to high scores where people could send in their high scores, and then everyone else could look at their high scores? Well, I thought we could do something similar. I only listed games that’ve been played three times or more, and sometimes I’ve included scores for different number of players.

Agricola
Sam 46


Alhambra
Sam 141 (three players)
Sam 113 (four players)


Ascending Empires
Sam 39


Brass
Joe 191 (online version. GNN record is also Joe with 177 points)


Collosseum
Sam 96


For Sale
Andrew 68


Medici
Adam 120


No Thanks
This may be pre-blog, but I do remember Joe getting negative points once.


Poison
Chris 6 (three players)
Hannah 6 (four players)

Ra
Sam 54 (three players)
Hannah 40 (four players)


Seven Wonders
Adam 63


Stone Age
Chris 318 (two players)
Sam 265 (three players)
Adam 183 (four players)



Ticket to Ride
Adam 131


Tinners’ Trail
Sam 150 (three players)
Sam 115 (four players)


Trans America
Adam 0


Trans Europa
Sam 1 (three player)
Paul 3 (four player)

Torres: Worth it?

My copy of Torres arrived today - all the way from Greece, it came, in exchange for Popular Front - and Andrew was good enough to pop around and give it a trial run.

The game is fairly abstract but the tacked-on theme involves building castles for the king - the bigger your castle, and the higher your knight placed in it, the more points you get in the three scoring rounds, when the size-obsessed King comes to visit. There's four turns in each round (in the two player version) where you build castles, place knights, and get to ignore the basic rules via the implementation of 'action' cards.

Andrew tried to ignore the pumpkin...

On an aesthetic level it's quite pretty if you ignore the castles, which are the colour of a 1970's bathroom suite and overtly plastic. On a strategic one it's quite a thinker; though both Andrew and I ended up with nothing to do with our action points on a given turn - that may be a slight downside to the 2-player version or possibly we haven't fully comprehended the rules yet.

But aside from that it was relatively straightforward in the rules department but with depth to the possibilities - always a good ratio, I feel. And in terms of the mechanic it's very different to anything we have on GNN; certainly anything I can recall. Tikal lets you build (or 'discover') upwards, but not with this amount of flux and manipulation. You start with a nearly-flat board and as the game progresses it builds upwards as players construct their own castles and pop around to each others to claim credit for them as well.

We ended the game intrigued by it and enthused about playing with more people. I claimed a narrow victory (251 to 241) having played the first sneaky move on round two and shot ahead - though Andrew outscored me over the next two rounds, I just held on.

Definitely one to get to the table for 3 or 4 players in the near future.

Game Time in the Smith's

Joe's prescient comment on GNN applied all too well for Bracknell's split games nights. On the Monday I introduced James to the wonders of Stone Age. Two weeks ago Paul and I had whizzed through a game and still had time for 3 rounds of Aton. This week, with rule intake aside, we found ourselves checking that the side of the box did in fact say 60-90 minutes. Your first game of Stone Age can be a daunting experience especially against someone with a few games under their belt. As with my first game when Sam stressed the importance of culture cards and it wasn't until it was too late that I started collecting them, James found the variety of choices too enticing and embarked upon a balanced approach. Unknown to him, within the first 6 or 7 rounds, I had snaffled all of the people multipliers and was visiting the love hut with insatiable regularity. The game ended when we had exhausted the supply of civ cards which probably had something to do with the length of the game. With all of the civ cards split between us the hut, axe, field and people multipliers went nuts with scores coming up thus.

Chris 318
James 186

James revealed this was his favourite game so far. The rematch in a couple of weeks probably won't be so one sided!

On Tuesday Paul popped over again and it was decided to give new game A Few Acres Of Snow an airing. As mentioned before on the blog it is a 2 player game representing the war between Britain and France over the North East Americas. We started at about 7.30 and optimistically thought we would probably get a quick game of citadels in at the end before Paul's train at 11. Didn't really work out like that. The rules........ I had spent an hour going through them in the day to make the process a little easier when it got to game time. Unfortunately It didn't help. The game plays out like a version of Dominion and London stuck together and as with those two there is a lot of card referencing to be done. It's a game worth persevering with as once you get over the hump of your first 5 moves it starts to flow. However, to the newbie, the extended AP and constant checking of what a card does and what goes with it as well slowed play right down. By 10pm we were hitting our stride and starting to make headway toward each other after a lot of time building up our respective decks. Me, playing the French, had by 10.30 performed a successful siege and chased Paul out of Halifax after he had rudely settled in between my two villages...... then just as we were really in the swing of it it was 10.50 and time for Paul to catch his train.... We decided to score the board anyway as neither of us were anywhere near the game ending conditions.

Chris - 55
Paul - 37

Another one that is going to be played next time for sure.

Just one note on anybody thinking of buying this and wanting to do some research on the Geek. There are many threads saying that the game is "broken" and that there is an unstoppable tactic by one of the sides that works every time. Interested though I was I avoided reading them because it would ruin the game. I will probably never stumble across this tactic either so I don't need to know about it......

Cheeseburgum

Tonight saw a plethora of gamers gathered at Joe's house - as well as the 'Cheltenham Four' (myself (Sam), Adam, Andrew and Joe) Steve and Quentin made it along too, and we decided to split into two groups of three, playing different games.

However the mood was briefly tense when Quentin ventured to suggest Joe had too many games. If Joe employed a pianist on these nights to keep the mood light, he would have stopped playing at this point. But thankfully the tension passed with Joe breaking out Hamburgum for himself, Adam and Steve and making his 'cheeseburgum' joke. The rest of us opted for Alhambra.

We'd all played it before but for Quentin there had been a number of years in the interim. But he shrugged the woolly cloak of time aside and began building Moorish temples like there was no tomorrow. Fortunately for me, I'd built a ludicrously long wall, enough to see off Quentin's gardens and late charge into Chambers:

Sam 141

Quentin 130

Andrew 82

Seven Wonders was a tighter affair, with all of us scoring big in certain colours and covering the bases - mostly - on others. But Quent's avenue of blue buildings squeezed him into top spot by the skin of his teeth:

Quentin 60

Sam 59

Andrew 50

I'm not sure what happened in Hamburgum because despite a game length on the box claiming '1 hour' they were still building churches after Andrew, Quentin and I had finished a game of Alhambra and a game of Seven Wonders. I'm sure the comments will be abuzz - but the last we heard was Joe saying "I'm in the lead, but Adam's winning". A familiar sensation to most of us I'd hazard. Eventually Hamburg must have been churched up to the gills, however, as Joe texted me the final scores:

Adam 106

Joe 86

Steve 77

Another night of high drama and starchy foods comes to an end then (one assumes) and take heed; next week will be at Joe's house on Thursday. See you then...

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	18	81.5	4.53
Adam	16	74	4.63
Andrew	19	65	3.42
Joe	11	39	3.55
Quentin	4	19	4.75
Jonny	3	10.5	3.5
Dan	2	8	4
Steve	2	7.5	3.75
Andy	2	7	3.5
Sally	1	4.5	4.5

Is this a game, or is it my science homework?

Tonight was a special night for the GNN regulars. Tonight we were to attempt the board game High Frontier. This leviathan of a game (about exploring the Solar System) with its many rules is a sort of north face of the Eiger for semi-casual gamers such as us.

We began at seven o’clock on Saturday. I had taken precautions and read through the rules online, taking notes as I did. Joe also had read through them, and Adam too had some knowledge of the rules. Sam, however, had no idea of what the game entailed. As it turned out, this was like turning up to base camp in Bermuda shorts and flip-flops.

I am delighted at the clarity and thoroughness of my notes

After the rules were explained, the game got under way at around eight. We slowly built up our technologies and water tanks, when I decided to break free of Low Earth Orbit and set off to a new planet. Or moon. I landed on Deimos at 9.20 – the first of our group to successfully touch down on alien land! I was so excited, I wanted to text someone to boast about my achievement. Unfortunately, the only people I knew who’d be interested were with me in the room at the time.

Soon after that, Adam colonised the Moon, and Joe set off towards Jupiter or something. It’s hard to say, because he then looked at his cards, said “oh, fuck” and before long his ship had disintegrated. Sam, meanwhile, was getting frustrated. He had two thrusters to build his rocket with, but both were rubbish. They were solar sails, and one barely used any fuel until you needed to perform a “burn” at which point it became very inefficient. The other barely got you anywhere at all.

I successfully identify the playing area on the table

Adam and I continued to build up our extra-terrestrial concerns, while Joe tried again at the outer Solar System. But at 10.45 Sam discovered he couldn’t land on Mars with the ship he had, and so he resigned from the game rather than go all the way back to Earth and build a new one.

After Sam left, Adam and Joe began to prospect in the Asteroid Belt and they discovered just how mean a die can be, as one asteroid after another came up blank. Meanwhile (twelve minutes past eleven), I got some Glory points for taking a human crew to an asteroid (Phaethon) and safely back. The ticker-tape parade and extensive media coverage had to remain in my imagination, though, as Joe and Adam were too busy trying to find anywhere worth claiming as their own to acknowledge my epoch-defining achievement.

Joe and I discuss the rules. Adam can barely hide his excitement.

The game struggled on. I headed back out to Phaethon, hoping to refuel and tackle the outer Solar System, but by the time I got there, it was midnight and I was exhausted. By now Adam had succeeded in finding another asteroid worth prospecting and Joe finally got a bit of luck with a dice roll and landed and prospected on his first extra-terrestrial lump of rock. It was ten past twelve. We had been playing for four hours.

I called an end to proceedings with barely any argument from Joe and Adam, and I counted up the scores. To be honest I thought I had won, but I forgot about the scores for different types of factories. My “D” factories scored nothing at all, but Adam and Joe had other types of factories, giving them eight points each. In the end, it was:

Adam 12
Joe 10
Andrew 8

It was a game that promised a lot of geek-driven joy, but in the end did not deliver. Even I, who did quite well at the start thanks to some lucky rolls, found it quite a grind towards the end.

We ended the evening by ruefully admitting that we'll probably never play this game again, but I'm not sure. If I see someone setting this up at Stabcon, I may be tempted to join in. Assuming it's still early afternoon, that is.

It's not the game, it's the stigma

Tonight, the gamers who arrived at Chez Sam were greeted by the sight of the kitchen table brought out from against the wall and fully extended, in expectancy of a bumper attendance. And so it was, despite a late apology from Dan there were seven around the table in two groups.

Sat at one half of the table was myself (Andrew), Joe and Quentin – making his début this season. The other half consisted of the leaderboard front-runners Sam and Adam and Jonny and Andy, also making his first appearance of the season. But if I was thinking that I'd escaped the sternest opponents that Games Night can offer, then I had forgotten about Quentin's steely-cold logical mind.

They chose Alhambra and Sam explained the rules to the newbies. Meanwhile, we chose a new game, Oregon, and Joe talked us through the game. Quentin initially claimed to be confused, but by the end of the first round, he said he'd worked out some of the subtleties of the game. At this point Joe and I should have just thrown down our cards and welcomed our new Oregon-playing Overlord. Instead, we battled on, watching helplessly as Quentin played the cards like a maestro. Before we knew it, he'd placed all his men calling an end to the game.

Quentin 59
Joe 55
Andrew 44

We glanced across at the still unfinished game of Alhambra, and we thought we had time for another game of Oregon while it was still fresh in our minds. We set off again to ruin the beautiful nature of the state of Oregon with mines, buildings, railway stations and people standing in the middle of nowhere hoping someone might put a point-scoring building right next to them.

If Joe and I thought that our familiarity with the rules may rein Quentin in, we were in for a sorry lesson. Quentin sped ahead by an even greater score than before, leaving me to rely on coal mines to just edge me past Joe in the final count.

Quentin 73
Andrew 56
Joe 52

I can't say I'm in love with Oregon. There is an awful lot of luck involved, and it's possible to find yourself staring at a hand of four cards which do nothing but offer your opponents some free points. Perhaps we were too eager to use our jokers and our extra goes too quickly. When I say “we” I mean “me and Joe,” of course.

By now, Alhambra had ended. I'll leave it to the others to describe the vicous battle over choice real estate that must have taken place. But the results were

Sam 113
Jonny 86
Adam 84
Andy 78

... but before we had ended our second game of Oregon, they had already begun a game of Trans America. Quentin bowed out of a quick game of Hey! That's My Fish, preferring to get an early night (ie, keep his points ratio intact). Joe and I played a quick non-leaderboard game of Citadel (won by Joe by enough of a margin that we didn't need to count up the scores) until Trans America had ended. This time Adam had wreaked terrible revenge for his third place in Alhambra with a whitewash of his opponents.

Adam 0
Andy 10
Jonny 12
Sam 14

This leaves the leaderboard looking more populated, with two new names added. Not much has changed in terms of position near the top, but Quentin wondered about not turning up to any more games nights, just to keep his points ratio nice and healthy. Luckily, Joe lent him Ascending Empires which means he'll have to make at least one more visit to the GNN tables to return it. And then we'll get him, good and proper.

Right, guys?

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	16	72.5	4.53
Adam	15	69	4.6
Andrew	17	59	3.47
Joe	10	35	3.5
Jonny	3	10.5	3.5
Quentin	2	10	5
Dan	2	8	4
Andy	2	7	3.5
Sally	1	4.5	4.5
Steve	1	4.5	4.5