But once all that talk of milk teeth and best nappies was over (something like that, I expect. I wasn't listening) we sat down to play. Seven of us: Jon, Anja, Steve, Joe, Sam, Adam, and myself played Incan Gold. This was Anja's only chance of the evening to get points on the leaderboard, and she played it well. It was also the first game of Incan Gold that we can remember when all five artefacts came out.
Anja 33
Sam 32
Jon 29
Joe 20
Steve 20
Andrew 20
Adam 11
At this point, Hannah arrived and Anja retired for the evening, and we split into two groups. Jon was keen to play Blood Bowl and he recruited Joe and Adam to his cause. Meanwhile, Sam and I wanted to see how Samurai played with more than two players, and Hannah and Steve agreed to try it.
Sam explained the simple rules, and we put out the big four-player, four-island version of the board. The main difference between the two and four player versions is the amount of AP. With so many options, trying to whittle your choice down to one can take a while. While the other table hummed to the excited commentary from Jon, our table was mostly lost in thought, with the occasional "whose go is it?" breaking the silence.
At the end of the first game, newcomer Hannah came away with a commanding win.
1. Hannah
2. Andrew
3. Sam
4. Steve
Since the Blood Bowl was still in full swing, we set up and played again. This time, I clustered most of my tiles on the main island of Honshu, and it seemed to work.
1. Andrew
2. Hannah
3. Sam
4. Steve
With Joe, Jon and Adam still in battle, and Steve enlisted to Baby Patrol, Hannah, Sam and I tried a new but simple game called Can't Stop. In this, four dice are rolled. Pairs of dice are made to give two values, and each time those values are rolled, the player moves their counter along that particular value on the board.
In a later roll they can later nominate a third value, but once they've done that, they're stuck with those three. Rolling the four dice and not being able to make up any of those values means they are bust and return to wherever they were at the start of the turn. Otherwise, they can stop once they feel they've pushed their luck enough.
I loved it. It's a perfect example of Good Dice. We didn't have long enough to finish the game, so it remains non-leaderboard, but for the record Sam was doing best, followed by Hannah, then me.
On the other table, the blood had dried up and gone all flakey. The final scores were
Joe 35
Jon 33
Adam 23
On the form table, Sam holds on to first place, while Adam can be grateful for those tied scores in Incan Gold, otherwise his last place in a seven player game would have sent him second to bottom.
| Points | ||||||
| Sam | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
| Andrew | 2 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 12 |
| Hannah | 2 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 14 |
| Adam | 5 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 14 |
| Anja | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
| Steve | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 15 |
| Joe | 1 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 16 |
| Jon | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
On the Division, however, we find that Adam's overall performance this season has been the best in terms of points scored. Anja comes out top in points ratio.
In Bracknell, Paul was away helping to form a new government in Italy. Instead, everyone's imaginary friend Dirk took his place in two games of 7 Wonders. James won both by giving Chris a Vulcan mind-meld and a dead arm.
James - 53
Chris - 48
Dirk – 24
James - 49
Chris - 48
Dirk - 40
Great to see the next generation and hook up with Jon again. Tristan has got a real twinkle, hasn't he?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed Samurai but the contrast in moods between our table and the Blood Bowl one was really marked. With four Samurai became a completely different beast - even more thinky, as you're trying to account for both your own tiles and what three different opponents might do, depending on their tiles, and of course one opponent's obvious move might change depending on another's move, leading to a knock on effect for you. See?
Even describing it is a mind-meld. Would like to try with three.
Thanks to Steve and Anja for hosting. I don't think I even attempted that for about a year after Stan arrived!
Lovely to meet Lu for the first time - and Tristan and Morag too!
ReplyDeleteI can see the merits of Blood Bowl: Team Manager (not to be confused with Blood Bowl proper, which as I understand it is an '80s Games Workshop Behemoth that lurks in Steve and Anja's attic).
There's a lot of luck, and ideally, a lot of beer, pretzels and smack-talk involved. Jon was doing a commendable job with the latter, but I hadn't had enough beer to get fully into the spirit of it. Within the sacred window of game time that is tuesday night, it felt like too inconsequential a game, to me. That's a lot to do with the theme, I think, which is well integrated. If it were about American football itself, or actual football, hmm, well I wouldn't care any more I guess. But I'm not really one for the fantasy theme.
Any way, I enjoyed it for what it was; if it was a half-hour game rather than the main event it would be great. I did dream that I woke up this morning and realised it was brilliant, but then I woke up and realised that was a dream. Still, always nice to try out a new game, thanks Jon for bringing it along.
What's happening in Italy then? And how is Paul involved?
ReplyDeleteSince there are no official reports from Bracknell, I'm filling in with short fictional versions of events, based on the scores Chris sends me.
ReplyDeleteYes, but what is he doing in Italy in your fictional accounts?
ReplyDeleteI just thought that Paul beig absent at the same time that in Italy they were finallly trying to form a government two months after the elections was too much of a coincidence.
ReplyDelete