We began with a bit of comedy. Rattlesnakes is a game where your pieces are magnets and you have to place them according to the colour shown on a dice, without disturbing the others. If the pieces suddenly join together, or are repelled off the board, you have to pick them up. The first person to successfully place all their pieces wins. And it was great. A bit tense and a bit silly and definitely a great way to warm up for an evening's studious gaming.
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| fully loaded nest! |
Andrew 0
Adam 4
Joe 5
For the first main game, we chose Hansa Teutonica. When we'd played it recently, Sam remarked that it was the kind of game that Adam would be good at. However, not even in our craziest dreams could Joe and I have imagined how quickly Adam would get the hang of it. It was the gaming equivalent of being in a cement mixer with rocks and stones, as Adam quickly increased his number of moves and his number of men available, and before long was picking up points for fun. Meanwhile Joe and I were trying to find somewhere on the board where we wouldn't accidentally give Adam a point. Or two.
By the end, both Joe and I were feeling pretty beaten up, and Adam's margin of victory accurately reflects the dominance he displayed during the game.
Adam 53
Andrew 36
Joe 30
It was still early and so we decided on a new game, Innovation. This card game takes each player through ten stages of civilisation from the early ages (illustrated by sort-of-cave men with bad posture standing beside a henge) to Space colonies. We had barely started when Sam arrived, so Joe went through the rules once more (which I needed) and the four of us began to play.
The rules were a bit complicated, but once you understood the jargon, easy to follow. The cards you play have icons around the edges, allowing you to carry out certain actions. By "splaying" your cards, a player could increase the number of icons on display. The actions allowed you to add cards, take cards from other people or generally mess things about.
Due to the random nature of the game I couldn't plan ahead at all, since I had no idea what would be in my hand until it was actually my go. And I got lucky, since I had lots of crown symbols and I got an action that needed lots of crown symbols. This action was powerful enough that, if I did it a few times, I was soon in a healthy first place and able to end the game.
Andrew 4
Adam 3
Sam 2
Joe 1
I found Innovation to be too random to be much fun, and it felt like a card game version of Robo Rally. And those occasions that I succeeded just felt like stumbling into luck. Pity, since the illustrations are quite nice.
All of which leads us to the final leader boards on the season. Last time, the great big leaderboard took too much time to sort out, so I've streamlined things. First is the Form Table, which Adam takes right at the end, and I scramble into second, pushing Jonny into third. Congrats Adam! You see, the form table is a sprint, not a marathon.
| Points | ||||||
| Adam | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| Andrew | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 8 |
| Jonny | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 9 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 10* |
| Steve | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 11 |
| Sam | 3 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 14 |
| Joe | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 18 |
| Hannah | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
| Anja | 3 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 21 |
| Chris | 3 | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 22 |
| Paul | 4 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
Meanwhile, definitely a marathon, not a sprint is the old-style points ratio, which goes to Quentin. It's all about quality, not quantity with this guy and it's the second season in a row that he's won this particular category. And a quick tug of the forelock to Sam for winning most points overall.
The leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Quentin | 5 | 25 | 5 |
| Sam | 33 | 153 | 4.64 |
| Steve | 14 | 64 | 4.57 |
| Adam | 27 | 120.5 | 4.46 |
| Joe | 28 | 112.5 | 4.02 |
| Andrew | 33 | 129 | 3.91 |
| Jonny | 11 | 42 | 3.82 |
| Anja | 13 | 43.5 | 3.35 |
| Hannah | 3 | 10 | 3.33 |
| Chris | 3 | 8 | 2.67 |
| Paul | 3 | 7.5 | 2.5 |
A finally, the Olympic-style leaderboard, which is like a marathon with sprinty bits. Sam is a comfortable winner this season despite Adam's late run of good form.
| Gold | Silver | Bronze | |
| Sam | 12 | 11 | 5 |
| Adam | 10 | 6 | 7 |
| Joe | 8 | 4 | 9 |
| Andrew | 3 | 14 | 8 |
| Steve | 3 | 6 | 2 |
| Jonny | 3 | 0 | 6 |
| Quentin | 3 | 0 | 2 |
| Anja | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Hannah | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Chris | 0 | 0 | 1 |
And so that's it for another exciting season. It is Easter next week, so its still unsure if there'll be a games night next week, but one week off won't hurt us. Will it?
Not much, anyway.
* the decay rule – people with five results registered, after a while, will find their score go down one point per week if they don't attend for three weeks. It may sound harsh, but it stops the regulars getting resentful. If they attend another evening, all decay points are removed.
Whew. Thanks for the write-up Andrew.
ReplyDeleteShame about Innovation, it does look nice and I liked the mechanic of actions only being actionable if X players have that amount of castles/kings/factories etc. But the rest of it felt a bit of a mess - some cards too powerful, some utterly self-defeating.
Nice to see in the final hour of the season though.
Oh and one of the season's highlights was the amiable and placid Joe saying "Sorry Adam. I didn't just call you a bastard."
ReplyDeleteYes, Innovation was a bit of a disappointment. Too much concentration required for what is ultimately a bit of a luckfest. It is, apparently, best with two — I can see that that would cut down on what Andrew noted about not really knowing what you'd have to play with by the time your turn came round.
ReplyDeleteIt shares a few things with Glory to Rome (it's by the same designer) but the latter is, whilst still very swingy, much more strategic and enjoyable. Still waiting for my edition with the nice cards, due around June I think.
This morning I realised what Andrew and I should have done to stop Adam running away with Hansa Teutonica. The moment he began using his four actions to build route/claim office-score point, we should have seeded the available routes with at least one of our own cubes. In a single turn, between us we could have laid 6 (or 7?) cubes, which would have a been a big hindrance. To use the routes he would be propagating us and spending more of his cubes.
I like HT a lot. It is essential to 'get up in other peoples shit' as Andrew put it (I hope I got that right - you can't edit comments), which is refreshingly different to the passive-aggressive tactics required in many of the other games we play. It played very well with three, too.
And as for Rattlesnake — as I was clearing away after you guys had gone, I couldn't resist seeing if it was possible to get all 12 eggs on to the board at once. I succeeded, only after waking up the dog and the rest of the house with the sound of clacking magnets. Photo added to the blog . . .
Thanks for stopping by, chaps. Bring on the new season, and hearty thanks to Andrew for keeping the blog and leaderboards rolling.
Thanks for hosting, Joe. It could be argued that in choosing Agricola and Hansa Teutonica, we handed Adam a couple of wins, but not even I was prepared for the onslaught that transpired. And well done on getting all twelve snakes on the board at once. I realy liked Rattlesnaks, which reminds me - we must play Animal Upon Animal again some day.
ReplyDelete. . . and a huge thanks to Sam for such stalwart hosting too! Just . . . thank you, everyone.
ReplyDelete