Tuesday 8 November 2011

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...

PlayedPointsRatio
Sam1881.54.53
Adam16744.63
Andrew19653.42
Joe11393.55
Quentin4194.75
Jonny310.53.5
Dan284
Steve27.53.75
Andy273.5
Sally14.54.5

10 comments:

  1. Sam, you're becoming unstoppable at Alhambra!
    Well there we are, nearly played Alhambra tonight but swapped out with Andrew to play Hamburgum instead.

    Twas interesting, but long - a shame, as I had my heart set on a few shorter games. Never trust the time on the side of the box - it's always longer.

    It's my first rondel game, and I like the rondel. The game is full of chunky bits; oversized goods cubes and enormous purple churches, real clay bricks and brass bells that tinkle.

    The game itself is archetypal Euro fare; a little more convoluted than, say Stone Age, and lacking that entertaining dice-rolling element. But with a fair amount of spoiling your opponent's fun, if that counts for anything.

    Would happily play it again, but I'd rather it didn't eat up a a whole evening - it didn't feel like an evening's worth of game.

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  2. I like the pattern-forming aspect of Alhambra. But I really should have played Hamburgum so it's not one of the Guilty Nine - games sitting in my cupboard that, as yet, I haven't played...

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  3. I never really got going last night. After several attempts, I just don't get Alhambra. I was also distracted by the multi-coloured pieces from Hamburgum which seem to be made by Duplo. The rules may be for adults, but the meeples are suitable for even the tiniest hands.

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  4. I think you need to avoid using your reserve if you can Andrew - it takes up valuable moves.

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  5. That was the first time I'd used the reserve. I only used it when there was nothing I wanted regarding tiles or cards, so I did that and hoped that there'd be better things on offer on my next go. Which I thought was a fairly sensible way to use it.

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  6. Yeah, that does sound sensible. And it's in the game for a reason. I guess for me I'd try and build a hand of cards - there might be a shitty pavilion on the green for instance, but you don't know what tile will come up to replace it.

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  7. Why are we the Cheltenham four?

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  8. Because I'm obsessed with categorisation? I was thinking of Lower Cheltenham Place as the birthplace of GNN... perhaps erroneously.

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  9. I mean, where did it really start? Chris' Warhammer links? My escape from suburbia into role-play? Adam's X, Joe's Y? Who threads the needle of life's tapestry?

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  10. Well I started eurogames when Anja invited me to play a game of (I think) Settlers. That would be about 8 or 9 years ago at Stepney walk...

    But the Lower Cheltenham Place Four does have a catchy ring to it!

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