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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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It was my turn for the afternoon/evening session this time, and I arrived just as my husband had finished a game of Power Grid. There were 6 players looking for a new game, so we decided we were looking for two 3 player games. I saw that Paul had brought Letters from Whitechapel and suggested that, to hear a "Not yet!!!" from Paul himself, stuck in a game of 7 Wonders on another table. Three of us were interested in playing it though, so we decided to play a filler while waiting for him to finish, and pulled out Race for the Galaxy. It was a very odd game - Colin went into blue worlds, settled two, and also got consumer markets, then spent the rest of the game doing Consume x2, Trade. Meanwhile both James and I went heavy military. Not odd so far you say?! Well, the odd thing was that neither James or I saw a large military world all game (or even many small ones!), as they all went Colin's way, while Colin couldn't find any 6 development for his blue strategy, and ended up building out a 6 development that got him 2 points late game, as it was the best he could get! Final scores were unsurprisingly quite low, but Colin did have just enough with his consumption strategy to beat my military/development strategy that wasn't working, and James was doing even worse.
After that we had a quick drinks break, and set up Letters from Whitechapel. We drew for Jack, and Colin was Jack. I got just one policeman while the other got two. Paul was in charge in the first turn, and distributed us accordingly. Jack killed on the second turn, and we were hot on the trail from early on, but always a couple of steps behind him. We finally lost him in the top of the board, having pretty much surrounded him, and knew his hideout was within two of a certain square (or possibly another one, if he'd done his route backwards to what we expected). The next round James was in charge of the police, and moved all but one of the ladies close to our clump of policemen, meanwhile walking the other about as far awat as he could get. Unsurprisingly this was the one Jack killed, and it meant we had a long chase before we could pick up any trail. However, once we did, we had advanced in such a way that he had to dodge us to get to his hideout, and he only had a turn or so to spare, and we knew it was three squares from a particular point near the bottom of the board - which meant that there were about six spaces mid-board that were possible. The third round two ladies were killed, and we rapidly found that the one on the top left was the active trail, quite lose to the first kill. This gave Colin, as Jack, some problems, as he really wanted to visit the original crime scene but wasn't allowed. We rapidly cornered him and he used a carriage to break through the net. He then turned south and we lost him briefly, trying to blockade the area we thought was his hideout while picking up his trail. Finally on turn 13 we were pretty sure we had tracked him down to a particular location, and then had the choice of trying to arrest all possible locations, which we thought we could do, or blockading all options out to his hideout and stopping him reaching home. We eventually decided on the second safer option, and Jack walked straight into me while trying to get to his hideout. Success, but then the best games of this game are the ones where Jack gets caught after a good chase - if Jack tries too hard to win, it's less fun for the detectives.
Next I suggested Fauna, knowing it was a favourite of two of the players in the group as well as me. We then had a toilet break, and James decided the animal cards needed protecting, and gave them to Maddy while he was absent. I suggested that Maddy might like to join us, so we played 5 player. The first two cards were bats, of very different dimensions, and it soon became clear that Paul knew an awful lot about bats, and he pulled into an amazing lead! However, the third animal was a shark, and Colin lost an awful lot of points by following Paul's lead, while actually I was better on sea creatures! We checked the rules about less than 3 cubes, otherwise Colin would have been on just 1 cube the next round, then proceeded, with a lemming, and then an unidentifiable lizard, that could have been any size or location from the sparse information in the picture! Finally we had a fish, and I was correct in my guess that it was a river fish, but didn't know enough to know it was an African one! James went past the finishing line, and Maddy cleaned up on points on the last round to take second, overtaking both Paul and I in the process. The less said about Colin's score the better!
After that we merged with another table, and half the players chose to play Outpost, but having played that the night before I wanted something different. Paul had to vanish briefly to put something in his car, so the other three of us played a few hands of Identik while we were waiting. Ray proved to be fairly terrible at drawing, but quick and accurate at attempting to draw what was described, which was often enough, and also quite good at describing himself. Robin's drawings were much more artistic, but often missing key features which lost him points. My extra experience helped I think, as I was more likely to know the key features that needed describing/drawing, and I won by a few points. Lots of laughter though!
Then we were torn between Egizia, Royal Palace and Stone Age. We nearly gained a fifth player who was hovering, but then realised that they were all 4 players, so he joined someone else instead. We eventually chose Egizia, which Paul then recognised - he'd thought it was a new game. Early on I went for all the grain fields that appeared, meaning that other players were struggling to upgrade workers, or if they did had to starve them, Robin in particular losing a lot of points in two rounds from starvation. Paul made it his mission in the game to go to all three building locations in every round, and this strategy seemed to pay off in VPs. Ray was keeping up though, while Robin and I were lagging rather. However, I was taking a lot of cards from the Sphinx and was hopeful these would catch me up end-game. However, they all involved getting lots of blocks in the needle, and as the graves started with a high number, followed shortly after by two more, everyone else was also competing to build it! This meant I easily got the points for the needle being built, but not the ones for getting 5 stones in myself, as there wasn't enough space - grrr! Final game scores were a tie between Ray and Paul, with me just one point behind. Very close!!!
After that we went for Royal Palace, which was new to Paul this time, in fact new to all three of them. I taught them the rules and we got started. The gate was in the middle, for the first time for me, but the blue/purple stone squares were in the corners, so slightly harder to get to. Ray went for a card strategy instead, taking the bonus tile that let him see 3 more each time, and drilling the deck for good cards (often movement ones). Paul went cash collecting, and amassed an impressive amount of cash, which he later realised was fairly useless, as tiles got progressively cheaper. I went for lots and lots of tiles from teh board, particularly round the edges, and prioritised ones that got me extra men, and other bonuses such as movement adn extra people. I didn't take any high scoring tiles, but at end game did have nearly twice as many as everyone else, and that, combined with getting 2 points or more on every board edge, put me comfortably ahead of everyone else. It was close between the other three though, with only a few points separating them all.
We then introduced Paul to Identik - he was worried he wasn't going to be particularly good at it, but he did fine - and this time Ray was able to tie with me for the win. We finished with Dixit Odyssey, starting 4 player, but putting a 5th player in halfway through on an average score. It was a very odd game, as on every round but one either everyone guessed right, or no-one did. My "Pass" clue did confuse everyone, and with no cards that looked like they fit, I did fluke just one person picking me. It ended in a three way tie too - ties for wins did seem to be a feature of the day.
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