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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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We started with a 3 player game of Innovation, before playing a quick filler while waiting for the last few to arrive – one of Sami’s birthday presents, Qwitch – a little multiplayer speed game, but that seemed a bit flawed as the player playing had too much of an advantage over the others. By the time that had finished we had our full complement of players, 7 this week! I suggested a few games, one of them being The Settlers of Catan, and the non-Settlers played vanished downstairs, to play Innovation (of course!). Settlers was very much mine and James’ game (and an incredibly low brick game – with two of the brick numbers being 2 and 12!). James managed to get lots of cheap points (longest road and largest army), as well as having as good a board position as the other two; I just seemed to get really good production early on to build my three settlements up to cities, and got a cheap VP from the deck – building new settlements proved rather problematic, but as soon as I built them, they upgraded to cities, which helped my income!
After that I suggested Stone Age, another favourite of mine we haven’t played recently. This time the game was very friendly to me, which meant it was a bit of a gift – the number of double 1s rolled on two dice for gold was quite amusing too – I think I was the only played not to do it! Richard always rolled one less than he needed for exact production (and no, he didn’t have a tool!), which I always seemed to roll exactly the right number to maximise my production, the right tiles came out when I needed them (1-7s in particular), and the right cards came up in the right order too!
After that we switched around, and I suggested various games, one of them being Vegas Showdown, which appeared to be a popular suggestion, so we played that on one table, while the other three went downstairs – the Innovation game Richard suggested at first wasn’t welcomed, but they did suggest he might like to play Dorn, and he raced upstairs to get that!! After Vegas Showdown I asked if we could play Fauna, and for once it didn’t get vetoed! We realised that Cherry knew very little about animals, but for once Marion did really well, better than me (James won by miles as usual!). We finished with a game of Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, designed to take us up to midnight, but unfortunately taking us rather past it, as no-one seemed to be scoring at any rate, as no-one went particularly military – heavy. I ended up winning thanks to a great last turn, but everyone else was within one point of each other!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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I had to attend a teatime concert at Jennifer’s school, so was back only just before we were due to start. Ray and Colin arrived early, so Sami sent them upstairs to try a game of Innovation, our latest hit favourite and new to both of them, while he fed the children. James then arrived and joined them in a quick Halli Galli game while we put the kids to bed.
Then the gaming proper started, and we played two games of another new acquisition, The Resistance, while waiting for Marion and Richard to arrive. For once it wasn’t me that got the giggling fit during the spy shutting/opening eye phase!! Spies won both games – the rest weren’t quite clever enough to work out all our bluffs and mess-ups (I was a spy both times!!).
After that we were 7, so split into two groups. One table played Hawaii, which Ray had brought along, while the other table played Innovation, followed by PAC-MAN Game(one of Dominic’s favourites so it was on the table, and a game Marion remembered fondly from her childhood). Hawaii was an interesting take on a worker placement game, and seemed to have many different strategies. I went for no extra income, which was doing well for me until the round, when I scored almost no points. Meanwhile Ray went to the opposite extreme and had a huge income, which meant late game he was able to get huge amounts of points. Sami wasn’t far behind him though, with his multi-foot strategy.
Then we had a mass “what to play” session. Ray, as the winner of our game, suggested Tigris and Euphrates or El Grande. There seemed to be more takers for Tigris & Euphrates, so eventually four of us moved downstairs for that (the same four as had played Hawaii as it happeend), while the other table, the same three again, pulled out Innovation AGAIN!!! Our T&E game was incredibly short, as we suddenly realised (at the end of my turn!), that Sami had finished the game in his last turn by taking a treasure. It was incredibly close scoring wise, but also low scoring, with the winning score being only 6. I then suggested another new acquisition, Pictomania, a Pictionary variant. It turned out to be quite amusing trying to guess what other players were drawing from their card. James totally confused me by drawing what looked like a mouse, stopping while guessing everyone else, and then turning it into a helicopter later!! Ray did ok on the easy cards, but seemed to suffer badly when we moved up a difficulty, and ended up with a negative score (if no-one guesses your card at all you get a lot of negative points!). I’m looking forward to trying this again soon, especially with people I know that are more into party games!
After that we needed a 7 player game for the last half hour or so, but it proved to be very difficult to find a 7 player game that everyone wanted to play. Sami solved the problem by heading to bed, leaving us with 6, which gave us rather more options, and so we started with For Sale, and finished with a very riotous Jungle Speed – I’d forgotten how much more chaotic it becomes with 5! Colin didn’t help by keeping missing grabbing the totem, instead sending it flying across the room or into me several times.
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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There were just 4 of us this week, and a large carrot cake for Sami’s birthday that seemed to be go down very well! We started with Eminent Domain, as Richard and Marion were wanting to experience it with more players – they found the 4 player game very different from the 2 player, especially as Sami took Research every action for the first part of the game, and ran the Research deck out incredibly quickly – I had a small collection of Research cards in my deck, but Marion and Richard were effectively prevented from doing much in the way of Researching after that. Sami then had a problem though – he couldn’t manage to settle a third world of the same type to dig the large research cards out of the deck – he effectively got all the 2nd level cards out of two decks though. Meanwhile Marion kept producing a VP a turn from cards that got her one, and Richard went warlike and took over a number of worlds, while I did a mixture of everything. It turned out that my mixture strategy was the best one, beating Sami by just one point.
After that Marion begged for Innovation, our latest hit game, and new to Richard. The 4 player is definitely not as good as the 2 or 3 player game, as there’s no real benefit to stepping up the ages quickly, as the decks run out so quickly. Richard was doing well in the first game, until we realised he was inadvertently cheating. It ended up with Fission blowing everyone up, and it being a complete lottery who won. The second game was more normal, with Sami managing to be victorious in the end, despite everyone trying to stop him.
Richard asked if we could play Carcassonne next, so we pulled that out. Marion spent the whole game saying she’d forgotten the rules, but managed to complete a very large city which netted her lots of points. She completely ignored farms though, and at end-game the rest of us managed to catch up with our farm scores, with Richard just ahead.
Next up was Colosseum, which we introduced to Marion and Richard a few weeks ago, and they’d enjoyed. This time we played it 4 player for the first time. It was a slightly odd game, as Sami decided to hang back and produce much smaller shows than the rest of us, meanwhile amassing huge amounts of emperor medals by moving senators, as well as stealing tokens off the players doing best. At end-game he was able to present fully the best show, with lots of bonuses, for nearly 100 points! The rest of us were very close, but about 20 points behind!!
We finished the evening with King of Tokyo. Sami suggested that Marion might not want to sit on his right for a change, so switched seats with her. This meant that I was now on his right, and went out very quickly, as the person on his right is wont to do – I have no idea how he manages to roll so many more claws than anyone else!! Sami bought the card that got him VPs for rolling one of each symbol, and got it
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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There were 5 of us. Colin and I started with a 2 player game of Forbidden Island. It was going fairly well and we had picked up three treasures, but then the landmass split in half, which made getting the last one tricky. Eventually we were down to just three land tiles, and we didn’t have the helicopter we needed, so we lost. Then Sami joined us and we went for Quarriors!, which we hadn’t played for a while. This was Sami’s game from the start, as a few high rolls early on got him a couple of good dice, which he promptly rolled every time, and as they were the ones which make it hard for others to get creatures out, we couldn’t stop him scoring them either. We then had ten minutes before Marion was due, so pulled out Take it Easy!, which was a very close game, with me just beating Colin by one point.
The first 5 player game of the evening was chosen by me to be Outpost. The early game was much as usual with the Carpenters going research (Richard especially so, Marion was having a bit of a disaster), while Colin was forced into his disliked titanium strategy, along with Sami and I. Some strange bidding mid-game gave me an unexpected Outpost, while Colin found himself moving into research instead. Then round 3 hit, and two Moon Bases came out. Both Colin and I saved cash the first round, giving us averages of between 195 and 200 for the next one, while Sami decided not to take the risk. I was lucky and got exactly 200, while Colin was just short with his exact average of 198, and this turned out to be the deciding factor. Colin was able to pick up the lone Planetary Cruiser, which kept him a clear second ahead of the rest, but no-one could catch me with my Moon Base income. Marion’s disaster game didn’t improve, but she wasn’t far behind at end-game.
I then chose Notre Dame as the next game (as no-one would play Fauna  ), and we realised that we’d forgotten a few details as it had been so long since we’d played. The innocent query from Marion about “What happens when you die?” caused much amusement, as Sami replied “Nobody knows!” in a spooky voice, Richard followed with “You go to heaven, don’t you?”, while Marion, totally oblivious to the pair of them, said “You lose VPs don’t you?”, which paired with the other two responses just sounded really odd! It was clear that Marion had forgotten how to play Notre Dame, as she made several little mistakes, and Sami got a real gift in Notre Dame in round 2, scoring all the VPs there from just one cube, which meant that he won, with Colin, sitting to Marion’s left, was in second, miles ahead of the other three of us!
Sami’s choice for the next game was Breaking Away. We had a slightly bizarre start, which meant that Richard got some very impressive numbers – at one point I handed out three numbers 15 or higher to him – and was able to use them for the win! Sami was going for an all or nothing strategy, determined to get first at each sprint (although he had to settle for second occasionally), but losing a few bikes in the process from lack of energy. I was the other extreme – I had more cards than anyone else in front of me at end game, but as they were all low scores it didn’t help my final position!
Richard chose Around the World in 80 Days next. Marion asked for a rules explanation, so she didn’t lose another game because of forgetting the rules, and although she missed a few mid-game it obviously helped, as she got round the world in not much over 60 days, setting a hard target for the rest of us to follow. The rest of us then struggled to get home quickly behind her, meanwhile losing days from delays as well as someone being home. Richard and Sami were unable to finish in less than 80 days even, I managed in about 75. Colin was looking good for the win early game, but as a result made himself too much of a target, so wasn’t able to stay under Marion’s amazing score, although he was still way ahead of the rest of us.
Marion got to choose the end of game filler, and we played just one hand of Coloretto, with the additional rule of only two suits scoring positive, which made it rather harder. I managed to pick up far too many card early on, and was in danger of getting a negative score for most of the round. Marion went to the opposite extreme and hardly took any cards, but was lucky with me drawing almost all the jokers in front of her. Colin won.
It was a very friendly evening, with all 5 players winning a game, as I announced at the end. To which Colin, packing up his copy of Coloretto and taking it home finally (we don’t need two copies!), enquired “Which game did I win?” – erm, maybe the one we just finished that you’re still packing away?
Mon Apr 30, 2012 12:09 pm
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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We started slightly late this week, with James and I playing a few fillers while waiting for Sami to finish with the kids – On the Dot (which didn’t seem to work too well with eating a hamburger), and Monopoly Deal Card Game – where I couldn’t keep any money in front of me! Then Sami arrived, and James suggested Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. I tried to go military again, and James sort of followed, with an amazing tactics card, while Sami ignored military and went solid VPs, particularly Michaelangelo (which is too strong in the short game I think). Sadly we weren’t able to do enough damage to Sami – I kept weakening him with aggressions, but James was unable to pick up any to follow up with, and the events were very tame for the weakest player. I just managed to beat James on final scoring, but both of us were miles behind Sami, who was getting a ridiculous amount of VPs a turn at end-game scoring.
We then pulled out Egizia, which surprisingly was new to James. We had just explained the rules and were about to start when Marion texted to say she could arrive in 15 mins, if it was suitable. We played thorugh a sample round so James understood what was going on, then moved to fillers while waiting for Marion – High Society (where I got a bit carried away and spent far too much), and Halli Galli (Marion’s appearance doomed me – I was doing well until then!). We then played Egizia, 4 player, with Marion building the pyramid, Sami and I building the Temple, me buying a few caves, and everyone piling into the Obelisk. I don’t know if stone production was higher than usual, or it was just my impression of the game, but it seemed more things got completed than normal – it might just have been the lack of people going into caves (they were all very high numbers early on), which meant that stone went elsewhere instead. There was mass underfeeding one turn too, when Sami moved the ring to the green region – he underfed, but everyone else underfed far more, although we were all down the bottom of the grain track by then, so it wasn’t too many points (luckily!).
We finished with a couple of fillers – 7 Wonders, a low scoring game, which James just managed to win, and then King of Tokyo – where Sami managed to beat up James and Marion’s monsters in short order, but left himself on low enough health that I was able to defeat him – with the help of a card turning up that did 3 damage to all monsters. First time in a while he hasn’t won this on a Friday night, according to Marion!
Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:40 am
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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we were 5, with a new gamer, Darren joining us. Colin and I started with a game of Trans Europa, while Sami suffered through In the Night Garden and put Robert to bed. Then we pulled out Hey, That's My Fish!, and Sami arrived while we were setting it up, so joined in. It looked early on like Sami was doing well, having gained a large corner of the board to himself, but then his other Penguins got almost no fish between them, and Colin and I shared most of the rest of the board for a very close finish. We then just had time for a 7 Wonders before the others arrived, with me winning by miles with the Pyramids (and knowing it would annoy Marion by playing before she arrived!).
Darren and Marion arrived pretty much at the same time as each other, and Marion suggested Agricola, after the disaster earlier in the day that ate most of her round cards (if anyone has any spares, she would love to have them!). It was new to Darren, but he was happy to learn. I suddenly realised how long it was since I’d done a rules explanation for Agricola – Marion was probably the last person I taught it to in fact!! I got lots of cards that made me end up with a 6 size house, but definitely wasn’t playing optimally to get there! Marion got one of her highest scores ever, but at final count she was still fourth, only a few points behind the other three of us. Darren did well at managing to feed his people (unlike me – if Sami hadn’t pointed out to Darren that it was a harvest round coming up, one turn I would have starved horribly, having thought we were one round behind that), but as usual in the first playing, didn’t really get a chance to concentrate on points too. It was a very odd game though, with huge clay deposits building up mid-game, and no-one really wanting stone (I had a renovate straight to stone house, and 3 stone from day labourer, so wasn’t interested myself, but I don’t know why everyone else didn’t want it!).
After that we went for something lighter, and something Darren knew – King of Tokyo. It was a very short game for Marion, who went out almost immediately, as Sami seemed to be able to roll amazing numbers of claws each round. Colin and I followed shortly after, leaving it as a dual to the death for Darren and Sami, finally won by Darren, in a very close nail-biting finish.
Darren then suggested Puerto Rico, which he knew. He went for a building strategy, while Colin went tobacco-harbour, Marion and Sami both went for the factory strategy, and I was the lone coffee player for most of the game, but not really getting any of the big buildings to help me. Mid-game it all went very weird, with corn perpetually running out, which meant Darren never got any goods to trade with his markets and ran out of cash rather badly; with Marion or Sami almost always crafting to conspire to make Colin late in the shipping order; and with me getting gift after gift at the trading house, or first choice of where to ship, but not really being able to do anything useful with these gifts! As a result I managed to get three coffee trades in a row at one point, before being forced into shipping. I bought a 10 building with my cash, instead of a harbour, and I still don’t know if it was a good idea – it certainly annoyed Sami though, as it was the 10 building he’d been working towards!
Next came Modern Art, after the game last week, again new to Darren – Marion had suggested 7 Wonders, but we’d already played it, to her annoyance. Modern Art was the usual game of trying to devalue other player’s paintings, and the bidding patter was quite good, but, unlike last week, prices were kept vaguely in check – in fact with fixed price auctions, players often ended up buying their own! And it appears Marion has finally learnt how to play!!
Marion suggested 7 Wonders again, and with just half an hour left we agreed to play it a second time. Colin and I both got dealt the same wonders as before, just the opposite side. We still couldn’t locate the 7th wonder card – right now, no-one can play Lighthouse, until we find a substitute. I won again, with a very similar score to the first game – two out of two for Pyramids!!
Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:28 am
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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Friday was moved to Thursday, as it fitted better with the rest of our Easter weekend, and we had just 4 players. We started with Quarriors!, and then moved onto the first proper game of the evening – Giza: The Great Pyramid(which Marion bought instead of Egizia by accident – oops!). It was hard work learning it from the box, and there were certain aspects that weren’t totally intuitive. The scores changed very dramatically at end-game, but Sami did very well, using a leeching strategy. I played for lots of points when the pyramid was built, but everyone was too busy blocking everyone else for it actually to happen. Most players had forgotten that the game ended when 10 rounds were played, not when the pyramid was built, so they got a bit of a shock near the end when I pointed that out! All in all, an ok game, but didn’t stand out amongst lots of very similar games.
After that we were all in the mood for some lighter fare, so moved onto one of Matt’s favourite games, and certainly his favourite party game – Time's Up! Title Recall!. The teams drawn were girls vs boys, and in the first round it seemed like we were going to absolutely clean up, getting well over 20 while the others were only on about half of that, but then Matt managed to get all the remaining 5 or 6 cards so that we weren’t quite so dramatically ahead! Second round and I forgot for my first couple of turns that I could use words, which handicapped me slightly! Sami kindly pointed it out halfway through the second turn, but by then we were a bit behind and weren’t quite able to catch up, although we weren’t far behind at round end. The third round was the usually amusing stuff, as we tried to turn our words into gestures. A few proved to be very easy, but there was mass confusion over some, and there was more than one card where there was a big sigh of relief when it was finally got! The boys were victorious, winning both the last two rounds.
We finished with two games of King of Tokyo, where Marion dramatically announced that she was no longer as wussy as she used to be. Sami attacked her with 4 claws on the first turn she went into Toyko, and 3 claws the second time – and she spent the rest of the game and the next one trying to avoid ever going into Tokyo again (as usual!!).
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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There were 5 of us, but we started with just two of us, as the others were late. First we played four boards of FITS, using some of the expansion boards, and then a game of Lost Cities where Colin was incredibly lucky - in one round I couldn't do anything but lose horribly - even playing every card I saw in optimum order my highest score was under 20!
First we went for Agricola, which everyone knew, followed by King of Tokyo, as Marion wanted to show it to Cherry as a game on her buylist (when it comes back into print!). Sami won and suggested Modern Art, but Marion isn't keen on auction games (she gets a bit carried away bidding!), so instead suggested Endeavor, which works well with 5. I had an absolute disaster, with nothing working how it was supposed to, while Sami went for a building strategy early on and this seemed to work really well for him. Overall scores were closer than everyone expected though.
After that we pulled out Modern Art anyway, as Cherry sounded intrigued by it. It was definitely a seller's game rather than a buyer's one! Prices were high for buying (Marion and Cherry both loved bidding high!), and Colin and Sami in particular were doing their best to demote a painting's value as soon as it had been bought, so quite often people were buying what they thought were safe buys, only to find they made a loss on them. I won, having only bought one painting all game!
We finished with a quick hand of The Bucket King, one of my favourite fillers, with some player's pyramids falling down incredibly quickly!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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There were 4 of us, with Gill paying us a visit for the evening. We started a little late, with King of Tokyo, which was new to Gill. Sami was out early, thanks to some very aggressive claw rolls by first me and then Gill, but most of us rapidly ended up on low life, and Gill was able to win fairly quickly afterwards. Next we pulled out Time's Up!, as it’s a favourite of Gill’s and Marion enjoys it too. We rolled for teams and it was Khans vs the others. There was the usual fun and misunderstandings – Sami doing a beautiful mime of a person having their head cut off, and a crown – me saying Henry VIII, only for a load groan from Sami, and the rest of us very confused – we’d all totally forgotten that Lady Jane Grey was in the set – and it was such a wonderfully mimed clue for either of them! It was close in every round, but the Khan team won overall, despite the fact that in the early rounds I couldn’t seem to guess anything Sami was describing – luckily it was working pretty well the other way!
After that Marion suggested Ingenious. Gill had played it before, but needed a quick refresher on scoring. Sami decided not to be mean to her one turn, but instead played a move that was much better for him. It turned out that it moved him up a position, from third to second, but Gill won overall – a close game though, as everyone ended on either 11 or 12, and it came down to tie-breaks. Then I suggested Don't Say It, a Taboo variant designed for kids. The scoring was a little odd, as the 1 point cards weren’t noticeably easier than the 4 point cards – in fact, sometimes they seemed quite a lot more tricky! However, although the words were simpler, so that kids knew them, they were still hard to describe by the time you couldn’t say a lot of relevant words, so it was a pretty good kid’s version of the game – now just to wait for the kids to be old enough to play it – I doubt it will be that long.
After that we pulled out Vegas Showdown, a general favourite. The game seemed to be playing into Sami’s hands a bit, and then buying a speculative cheap Theatre without a Fancy Lounge, with two turning up together shortly after, he ended up miles ahead of the rest of us, although it was close for second. We then tried Forbidden Island, which Sami still hasn’t “played”, despite being present in at least two, if not three, games already. It wasn’t looking good when we set up the map, with the helipad on a corner, and one of the treasure types on the farthest corner of the island, but we did manage to recover all the treasures. Sadly we couldn’t quite get them to the helipad in time though, and the island sank beneath our feet just as we were trying to escape.
We finished with Boggle, where Marion showed that Gill has major competition for this game!! We played three hands, as the first two (especially the second) were quite low on words, and hence on scores. The third round was one of those where you kept writing right up to the last second! Sami and I were very much competing for third, as the other two found way more words than we did, and Marion in particular seemed very good at finding the same ones as Sami – she pretty much single-handedly gave him a score of 0 on the first round!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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In totally bizarre weirdness, we invited people over as usual for Friday night games, then got invited out to a quiz night at the school, so ended up going out, leaving the gamers babysitting for us whilst playing games as usual! We returned just in time for a final Ave Caesar, which was quite tame in some ways, with no-one crashing and burning or failing to pit, but still amusing, with me managing to come from the back in the final lap of the first race to win, and Marion doing the exact opposite in the second race - looking like she was safe for the win, but ending up crossing the finish line last!
Other games played in our absence were Ascension (one and a half times, as it was aborted and restarted the first time), Goa, Eminent Domain and King of Tokyo.
Mon Mar 12, 2012 11:01 am
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