Archive for Sharon Khan
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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I sadly had to miss the March Gradpad, due to an ice hockey match, but was back this month, and for a change for the morning session!
We arrived in the car park at the same time as two other gamers, and walked up together chatting (and handing over some games I'd sold), to find Paul and Ray playing a game of Set. Very soon it was a four player game of Set, with two of us joining in, while the other two heckled! I was quite good at spotting sets, but equally good at calling Set before I'd properly checked my sets, which did mean that for a while I was handing in as many cards as I was taking, until I started to be more careful. Paul was playing very half-heartedly once the rest of us arrived, but did claim a few sets (as long as somoene else claimed them!). Lee was struggling to understand the rules at first, but did eventually manage to prove that he knew them by spotting a couple of sets!
People were arriving rapidly now, so there were enough for two tables. Ray had brought Hawaii, which he knew I wanted to try, so suggested that for one table. However, Andy then was trying to get a table together for Alien Frontiers, which I wanted to try even more, so I gave my seat on the Hawaii table to someone else and moved to the adjacent table. Went up for snacks, and by the time we returned there were another table or two of people - everyone arrived in a flood today!! No-one knew Alien Frontiers, so we had to read the rules through, but the game was amazingly well-designed, with very clear icons everywhere on the board, and gameplay mostly pretty intuitive. Once we started we had a few queries, but all of them were covered very adequately by the excellent rules. All in all, very impressed with the production (including the Smartie-like pieces!). The gameplay was good too - I like these sort of dice games, where what actions you do is partly decided by what you roll, and you're managing the dice as best you can. I didn't gain any extra dice early on, between being shut out of it, and not rolling pairs, so instaed went for a heavy card strategy, while everyone else ramped up their dice as soon as possible, and used their 6s, where possible, for colonies. I lagged on points, but slowly used my spare dice each turn to improve a colony, and eventually colonised, and got two cards with points on. The cards seemed really strong, so I was then in a very strong position, and had protection too. We then realised that Paul was in a position to end the game next turn if he was lucky, so went on a points scramble. I think I made myself too much of a target in the process - knocked several points off other players by moving colonies around with one of my cards, and suddenly everyone round the table picked on me (Paul being unable to end it that turn). I vanished off for a quick cuddle with Jessica's new baby, who she'd brought to show us, and came back to a much worse position than I left!! The game only lasted one round more, and I was able to recover one point to tie second, and win on a resource tie-break. Definitely would like to play again, and maybe even acquire it. Someone did say that it didn't have much replay value, and every game was quite samey - I guess I'll have to see if that's true, but I'd happily play a second game!
Three tables finished at once, so there was then lots of discussion about what to play next. There was interest in Forbidden Island, but more people to play it that there were spaces. Colin and I were the only two who knew Forbidden Island, so we decided that one of us would play it, while the other would move to one of the other tables, when they'd decided what to play. I started explaining it, while the other tables decided what to play around me. Tobago went on one table, which I was happy to play, and the other table was deciding between a pile of games - two of them being Ora et Labora and Tournay, both of which I was keen to try - but there were 6 players, including me, interested, so I ended up on the Tobago table with one of the others. I did a quick rules explanation for it, and we started. It seemed to take a while before we discovered the first treasure, then we had several in a row, one with a curse, but none with a huge amount of treasure. Then we had a long stall where no-one could improve the treasure sites, until eventually players got them down to two cubes and used artifacts to remove the last cubes to colaim them. I was in a very good position to win the game, with 4 clues on the final treasure, especially when I saw 3,5,5,6 as my 4 cards. Sadly the very first card drawn was a curse.  I was still second, having had good presence on the earlier treasures, but definitely a case of too many eggs in one basket!!
I was then planning to head to lunch, but no-one else seemed to want to go, and there were three gamers wanting to play a game, so I ended up in a game of Industrial Waste, and decided to grab a sandwich while playing (which Colin kindly went up to the cafe about bought me in a gap between games - crab too - mmm!). None of the others knew it, so I had to explain the rules (again - seemed to be a day of lots of rules explanations!!), and then one player decided to go to lunch, so dropped out. His seat was rapidly taken by another new gamer, but that meant another rules explanation!!! The other players seemed to be conspiring against me to make me pay more for my raw materials - when anyone else put them up they would get 8 or 9, but I was regularly offered 6 or 7 - just high enough that it wasn't really worth me buying them myself, but always one lower than the going rate - grrr!! The last round one player tried to stop another from powering, and mis-calcuated slightly and had to take a loan. The player he stopped powering did still win, beating me by just one point. Quite a close game - the top three were only 4 points apart, and it was only that last turn that meant the fourth players wasn't close too.
Next the same group chose Factory Fun, which was again new to most of them, although I'd played it with Peter before. I had a slight advantage of experience here, and was in demand to fix factory problems and offer advice all game. One of the Peter's got a really good looking factory, and lots of cash during game, but missed out on efficiency, so didn't so well at final scoring. The other two players both did less well during game, but had worked on their efficiency more, and it paid out in the end. I had a very bizarre early factory, taking lots of factories that had one input and output, all running into each other for lots of efficiency, but gaining me almost no cash at all, but it did mean that late game I had more options, as more of my colours (and board) were available.
Several more players had arrived and finished lunch by this time, one of them being Kathy, who is a huge Tigris & Euphrates fan, and knows I am too, so she suggested that. It wasn't hard to find a third to join us, although I was slightly surprised by the different board, having not seen the German reprint before. Early game it seemed to be all going my way - the others would try to knock me off the board, or stop me doing what I wanted, but I either had what I needed to win, or just found a new home for my displaced leader, or somehow added another treasure to my collection (I took five treasures, all early game). I also kept helping other players finish their part-built temples, making the second colour one of my choosing, which gave me lots of cubes each turn. By the mid-game I was getting four cubes a turn, in three colours, and then worked on adding the fourth colour to my income. A large red conflict then went in my favour, James wrongly assuming that a 4 advantage would win him it, which shifted the balance of power on one half of the board, and briefly gave me an extra red cube a turn, which helped my weakest colour. I was really struggling with green too, as after getting my green leader safely next to a green temple I never drew a single green tile for extra points, instead drawing ridiculous numbers of blue tiles (which I had lots of poitns in), or red (hence winning that conflict - at one point later in the game I had 6 red tiles!). By late game we had five temples on the board and were all amassing cubes, but my pile was still the biggest, so I ended the game by swapping tiles, before it all went wrong with a couple of large conflicts! Final score 21-14-11 - quite a high-scoring game.
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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I was at the afternoon/evening session again. I arrived with my husband having left me two-thirds of the way through a game of Power Grid: The First Sparks. It was pretty much a case of just playing the game out at that point - I don't think there was anything that could happen to change the positions, with my husband ending in third.
After that one player was keen to play Rattus, which was new to me, but we seemed to be having trouble finding a third who was interested, despite there being three tables of players milling around! One other player who also didn't know it did join us in the end, and we got started. I found it quite an enjoyable game of moving cubes around a board. I got off to a very early lead in cubes, and as a result waa pioked on heavily all game by both the others, but for a long while seemed to be prety much immune to plague, which helped quite a bit! The player who owned the game by comparison seemed to be very good at catching the plague - you only had to flip a rat tile over and he lost most of his cubes! Meanwhile the other player the game was new to was quietly amassing cubes on the other end of the board, and it was almost impossible to give him the plague, and this was enough to win him the game, with me a few cubes behind him. Quite an enjoyable game, and I'm not sure why everyone else was so reluctant to join in!
Letters from Whitechapel came next - it's pretty much become a staple game of my Gradpad session recently, as it's the only place I get to play it. I asked to be Jack this time, having only been Jack once before. The first round I deliberately killed the lady furthest from my hideout, and left them a nice trail across the board, with them always just a couple of turns behind me. Second round, and they were hot on my trail from the start, and I had to do some dodging about to avoid them, including a carriage at one point to get out of danger, and an alleyway move to get past a policeman blocking me from my hideout, before dashing in to it. Third round, and two ladies killed at opposite ends of the board. They rapidly picked up the correct trail, but assumed I'd travel further north, as I had done the first two rounds, whereas actually I headed south at high speed, and cut in from the southerly side. They moved to blocking where they thought my hideout was, but had slightly misjudged where it was, so as I was coming in from the south I was easily able to dash in, as they blocked the area just north of it. With my last known position a long way south, there was then a lot of discussion as they tried to work out possible hideout locations, narrowing it down to just three in the end. Fourth round, and they gave up chasing me after the murder, instead just letting me move around the board freely, but trying to form a dragnet around the hideout locations to stop me coming in. They got bored moving around after a while though, and I was able to plan a safe route in, dashing through an alleyway. They spotted me coming out of the alleyway, but I was then only one turn from the hideout, and it was too late to catch me. A fun game, although I think I do actually prefer being the detectives to being Jack as a rule.
After that Kingdom Builder was suggested, and as I'd been watching others play it enviously I leapt at the idea. All I can say is it strongly reminded me of Through the Desert - to the extent that it almost felt like an expansion of that with a few rules tweaks! I quite enjoyed it, but prefer the simpler more elegant Through the Desert long-term I think. Our game was quite amusing though, with one player asking "Can I do this in any order" before almost any turn, along with various other queries, and then at end-game we discovered he'd been playing a rule wrong all game, and it gave him an amazing score, as it combined well with the Hermit scoring card we had. Ah well! Our own fault for not noticing earlier!
We finished with an 8 player Crappy Birthday where it turned out I had a slight advantage, knowing more of the players well than anyone else, and getting one point from all four of them. I think I prefer Gifttrap as a game, but there's no doubt this is quicker and shorter.
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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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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, so I arrived shortly after 2pm, and my husband had just started a Nefarious. He threw me some money to give to Andy (we were buying some games off him), and then came back to hand me the car keys (oops, that could have gone wrong!), and left me in it, with me having no clue what was going wrong. I discovered Andy was right behind me, and totally free, so handed the money over, slightly bemused as to why Sami hadn't, and Ray very kindly did a short rules explanation for me. It turned out that several of the other players still weren't totally clear on the rules either (it was a 6 player game!), so my late entrance to the game didn't have too much of an impact thankfully. I had been quite keen to try this game, because of the designer obviously, but I just found it a totally pointless exercise. Yes, some of the cards are quite funny, but there didn't seem to be any sort of "strategy" - it was just pick a role (and I do wonder whether picking a role at random would be any worse than planning!), and then executing it, finding out what random effects you have from other player's buildings, then repeat. It may not have helped that we had our men pinging off the board every few minutes from the random scroll, or whatever it's called, and also had to play to 30VPs, which made it longer. I didn't dislike the experience, but did feel that I was just going through the motions. It wasn't long though, so I may try again to see if it was just a bad fist game, but I can't see my opinion changing drastically.
As the game finished another table was starting up Macao, so one player left to play that, leaving us with 5. I browsed through the pile of games to see if there were any Essen releases I hadn't tried that handled 5, and Last Will seemed the most popular choice, so we went with that. This was a game I'd liked the sound of, but we hadn't bought, so I was keen to give it a go. The game was only partially unpunched, and none of us knew the rules, so we took a while to get going, and none of us really had a clue what we were doing in the first round - just playing through the turn to see what happened. After that things gradually became clear (and Keith realised that he couldn't have played his first turn worse!) Colin's coffee started to kick in, and he set up a white card strategy, while I was trying to go action heavy and into property speculation - not a great combination, but it seemed to be losing me money at a reasonable rate. We got to turn 5 with a number of us on less than 10 cash, so it was fairly clear round 6 was going to be the last round. As it happened only 2 of us managed to go bankrupt though, and due to Colin making a mistake on the penuultimate round, I managed to win. I've given the game a preliminary 7 rating for now, but I did enjoy it, and am quite keen to play again and see if it lives up to its promise, or turns out to be a bit repetitive.
After this Colin went for a nap, and we mixed players up with another couple of tables who'd finished at the same time, and I found myself on one of two tables playing Eminent Domain, with me being the only player on the table who knew it. It turned out to be one of the oddest game of it that I've played yet. No player went heavy into research, but instead the colony deck was drilled very quickly. However, no second deck was drilled particularly, with most players having a fairly balanced deck, and deck thinning mainly being done by the main colonising players having all their colony cards on planets! All four of the other decks got down to 2 cards in fact! By end game everyone had between 7 and 9 planets out, way more than I'm used to. Two of us were Produce-Trading, and this turned out to be the difference over hte ohter players. There were a few cards from Researches, but not nearly as many as I'm used to. It went a bit longer than most games because of the way it played out, and the newer players having rules queries, but didn't feel like it was dragging much. This is one of my favourites of our new purchases, so I was glad to play it again with a different group!
It was now dinner-time, but I decided to get settled into a game first, and then go upstairs to get my sandwiches, rather than miss out (as has been known!). One player picked up Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, and as it was another new release, and from a designer I sometimes like, I was keen to join - and volunteered to teach from the rules if we didn't have anyone who knew it. Luckily this wasn't needed - a player who knew the game joined us to make a fourth, and taught it to us much quicker than I would have done from reading the rules! Dashed upstairs and got the last tuna melt panini and some chocolate cake - mmmm - and brought it down to eat while listening to the rules. We then got started. The experienced player seemed to get a rather better start than the rest of us, and was rapidly bankrupting us by stealing all our money, amassing a huge pile in front of him, and playing way more cards than anyone else. Everyone else was fairly aimlessly playing pieces on the board, trying things out, as they learned the mechanics. I suddenly realised that there were 7 pain counters on the board - with some help from me - and that I was in a good position to win (my win condition was 8 of them). Meanwhile we were trying to stop James getting to 50 cash, as it really looked like that was his win-condition! On my next turn I added two pain counters on the board, the other two new players didn't know enough to realise that I might be about to win, and James couldnt's top me, so the game ended - and we had only just started the second deck!!!! (And had about three turns each!). As that felt a bit unsatifying, we decided to play again, now we understood it better (and James meanwhile revealed that money wasn't his goal anyway, that was just coincidence!). The next game was the exact opposite of the first one - players were much more aware of the various goals, and three times I was prevented from winning, despite having my win condition at the end of turn (you need it at the start of you turn to win), James also came close numerous times, and Keith was only 1 cash short at the end of the game. The deck ran out in the end, and it turned out that no-one had that win-condition, so the game went to scoring, something that we'd been told nothing about, other than it might happen! We counted up, having not played for it at all, and I had well over 100 points, while everyone else was only on 50 points!! Pure coincidence, but I wasn't going to turn down a win!!
Keith then produced a TieBreaker deck of cards, and while packing up we had a bit of fun with a few of them - I was surprised that I hadn't even heard of their existence - not that I'd care anyway, I'm quite happy to have ties in games!! Managed to pack away the man from it in Discworld, so had to hurriedly retrieve it, and then it was on to the next game.
It was getting quite late now, with just an hour left to play. There was 6 of us, after various people had decided whether to leave or stay, so we split into two threes. I said that I'd better play with Colin, as we were leaving together, and James with Dave, so that left the other two players to join either pair for games. Colin and I were joined with Robin, and as Colin was extremely tired by now, we stuck to fillers. Just as we opened the box of the first, Fairy Tale, all the lights went out (were they trying to tell us something?). The usual arm-waving trick got the majority back on, but for some reason the strip by the window didn't go back on, so those of us sitting on the tables there had to move! I haven't played Fairy Tale much, and playing it again reminded me how much more I enjoy 7 Wonders - Fairy Tale just seems to be lacking slightly, although it's hard to say quite what's missing. Next we went for R-Eco, which was new to Robin, and we all managed to hold off from garbage dumping for a long while before first I, and then Robin, succumbed. Colin held out a bit longer, but I eventually made a move that forced him to dump (even if it wasn't the best move for me, I think it was better than him getting points from never dumping!). Fun little filler - shame it gets forgotten about nowadays. Then we played a very quick Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age - trying to prove Robin wrong when he said we wouldn't get it in in the time! It almost came down to a three-way tie, but Robin rolled pestilence on the last turn for -2 for himself, putting him 2 behind. We had forgotten what the tie-break was and not recorded goods remaining, so we called it a tie. We finished with a quick Escalation!, joined by first Paul (escaping from a mammoth Ninjato game), and then Timothy (as the rest of his table left - we blamed the bad average score he started with on Robin!). I had an absolute disaster in round 2 which meant I was last by miles, and it came down to the last hand deciding which of Colin and Paul was to win.
Yet another enjoyable Gradpad - I hope to have some more fun again there next month!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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This time I had a very short time at Gradpad, as we had been invited to a friend's birthday dinner that evening, so the time my husband and I had to share was shorter than normal. I had the morning session, 4 hours of it.
After the early arrivals had all bought their morning coffee/snack (a yummy chocolate brownie-like thing in my case!), we split into two tables for the first game. Vikings and Peloponnes were suggested, and I ended up on the Peloponnes table, with James, who liked the game and knew it well, and Mike, who'd played it a couple of times but a long time ago and needed a refresher. Just as we were about to start a fourth player turned up, so he joined in, and I did a hurried rules explanation as it was totally new to him. We always play with the first expansion, but not the second one. James got very good wood/stone income early on, and was out-producing the rest of us on luxury goods very quickly; meanwhile I was grain-heavy, which meant I had no trouble feeding my population - but I was having problems getting as many people as I'd like! Mike went for a more balanced game, and Hans ignored population and grain totally and went more for buildings. The supply rounds came up nicely spaced for once, and the only early disaster was the luxuries one, so it was a fairly predictable game and hence quite high-scoring. At the end game I just beat James, as it turned out from a decision he made on the last turn - he overbid me for the tile I really wanted, so I went for a different tile, but then realised that due to a miscalculation on my part it was better for me, and if James had instead gone for that tile he would have won, as although his score would have been lower, mine was lower still!! Mike was considerably behind as he couldn't feel his massive population, while Hans had unfortunately not understood the final scoring (my use of the word "minimum" had not been understood), so only had 3 people and finished way behind.
Jessica had arrived while we were playing, and as I was keen to play Fresco and knew she liked it, we settled on that next. James joined us, and also Ray, so we were four players, all of whom had played it a few times before, but not for a while. Jessica surprised everyone by buying the central tile on the first turn - I hadn't even thought it would be possible!! James got three tiles early on and converted them to get one small cube a turn, but then struggled with cash so said afterwards that he thought that was a mistake. I had a real problem with far too many red cubes, but was struggling to get other colours with them to make useful cube combinations for tiles - however, it meant I built up quite a stockpile of cubes, but was last in the turn order, so when I did start buying Fresco pieces, I went flying past the rest score-wise. I also woke up last pretty much every day, which meant I was very happy and the extra man, and not-spending cash, which turned out to give me the win, as the extra cash just pushed me past James on the last turn. Jessica got herself in a bit of a feedback loop early game after buying that expensive tile, as she was unhappy from getting up early, but was unable to promote her happiness much or get much money because she had one less man, but as no-one would go past her score-wise, she was always last to pick her wake-up time tiles were expensive for her and her happiness kept going down.
We finished just in time for lunch, and I was desperate to play Letters from Whitechapel next, we had to wait for the Pantheon game to finish so Paul could join us, so I dashed upstairs and grabbed a quick lunch with Jessica - Sticky Toffee Pudding, yum!!! Then Jessica and I set up the board and explained the basic rules to a fourth player we'd convinced to join us, and Paul dashed upstairs after his game finished and brought his lunch down to eat while playing. Our first chase we managed to keep hot on Jack's tile the whole time, and even got him trapped in an area briefly, before he escaped via an alleyway and reached his hideout. However, such a close chase meant we knew almost exactly where his hideout was, so we were looking good to catch him on the second night. A slight waterfall on the board as Paul knocked over his cup of water had caused a slight diversion mid-chase, but luckily no real damage was done - it looked at first like the board would be marked in a couple of places, but once it all dried it looked like it would be fine! We went through a lot of toilet roll drying off components though!!! Anyway, the second chase started, and we picked up his trail quickly, with some lucky moves from Jessica giving us some early information. However, then the trail went completely dead, and I think we must have made a false assumption somewhere, as from something Paul said, we were missing something obvious that he'd done (Paul was Jack), but at least we knew where he was headed, and we were trying to block the main routes there to make it difficult for him to get there. At that point I had to hand over to Sami, so I don't know quite how the chase ended, but apparently they did catch Jack on that second night, just before he reached the hideout, by a very roundabout route! I really want to get this game - it's a real shame it appears to be out of print everywhere!!!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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This month it was a record-breaking heatwave day, but I was still going to get my gaming fix in - getting the gaming session, while my husband took the kids out to a climbing area and a picnic. We arrived quite early, so there were just the 4 of us for the first game, and Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer was the filler of choice while waiting for others to arrive. I was still trying to make a non-military strategy work for me (it never seems to!), so went that way, but my right-hand neighbour seemed to be doing it better! Meanwhile Martin to my left went military - and more military - and more military! At the end of the game his deck consisted of pretty much the entire Heavy Infantry deck (we only had two left!!), and only 3 other cards - one of them a Void card to thin his deck!
There were a few more gamers arriving by now, so after a drinks and snacks run we split into three tables. I was left with four gamers, one of whom had to leave in 20 minutes to meet his parents, so suggested Race for the Galaxy as a quick filler. One of the four said he had to check his email, so would do that rather than play and would be back by the time we finished, but the other three of us sat down to play it. I think James and I surprised Richard by our speed of play though - we're used to a very fast-moving Race for the Galaxy, and with no goals, and he was amazed when he looked at his watch at the end to find it had taken just 12 minutes to play - he couldn't believe that was possible!!
Then we had a long pause, while we played the "What to play next?" game. We were waiting for Mike to return from checking his email, but more players kept arriving, and every time a group settled on a game, another player would walk in and mess it up! Eventually we put Captain Jack's Gold on the table, and found 4 for it, and let the others sort themselves out! We had a rather long confused rules explanation, thanks to the translation being rather a work in progress, and no-one knowing the game, but once we started playing it all turned out to be very intuitive in fact, and captured the pirate feel quite well - especially when Mike went very aggressive and started boarding everyone's boats as soon as they had any cargo!! I meanwhile had a bit of a stowaway problem! It was quite fun anyway, although not exactly deep strategy!
It was just five minutes to lunchtime when we finished, so I suggested The Bucket King - one of my favourite fillers. I had a really odd starting hand - 7 red cards, and two other suits split 3/2. Luckily for me, my right-hand neighbour seemed to be short in the same suits, so my pyramid stayed relatively intact, just losing the odd bucket from the top. Meanwhile both me and my right hand neighbour starting with red every time we lost a bucket was having a rather bad effect on the next two players round the table, as both had red buckets rather low in their pyramid, and not quite such strong red hands as us! Their habit of always playing green rapidly knocked out the next player round from them - he seemed to have no greens at all!!
After a very yummy lunch, we then played a filler while waiting for other two finish eating - another Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, 3 player. One player, playing military but also with a lot of cash in his deck, got a ridiculous amount of card draw, adn finished the game very quickly when three turns in succession he draw most of his deck, getting about 8 cash/military and over 10 of the other each turn! Meanwhile the other two of us would plonk down a hand of 5 cards and do something useless like beat up a cultist or buy a Mystic! Bit of a walkover!
My last game of the session was Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game, which I asked a friend to bring along so I could play. Four of us sat down to play it, while various other played the "What to play next?" game around us. Sadly the "What to play next?" game didn't work too well, and left two players out of a game, one of whom preferred to watch us than play 2 player. In the end two players stepped out of our game and let them take over instead, and played a different game 2 player. It was an intersting game - trying to find a Mysterious Room and defeat the monster in it. I was the Cleric, but rather than keeping with my party and healing them, I did have an apparently annoying tendency to wander off and explore, and they were desperately trying to chase after me to be healed! Eventually they all caught me up, stood in a nice crowd to get my +2 AC bonus if they were on the same tile as me, and I walked into the middle of them, and drew an Encounter card that turned me into a Cave Bear, that immediately attacked all of them!!! Oops! The next turn we discovered the Mysterious Chamber and the monster within - who didn't look too bad, and I remember saying "This is going quite well for once". Unfortunately when we killed him, he turned in to an enraged upgraded monster, who did either 2 or 3 damage to all adjacent when he attacked, and flung them two tiles away. At the same time we also discovered some monsters to liked to explore for us, so monsters were appearing from all directions! Then just to top it all off, a Rolling Boulder trap went off on top of us (all standing in a crowd under it, of course!), doing 2 damage to everyone instantly. It wasn't much longer before we were all lying down unconscious, and no amount of healing surges could save us!
My husband turned up just after we finished, so that was the end of my Gradpad gaming session - I went home and enjoyed an evening outside in weather that was definitely not normal for October!!
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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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This month it was my turn for the evening session. I turned up at the University Centre at 3pm, expecting to feed the kids and change the youngest one's nappy for half an hour before finding a game, but my husband saw me and beckoned me over to a game of Olympos, and said I could take over as he'd only had one turn. After a brief rules explanation from him, and a bit more added by the other players round the table I said I was happy to start. I then had some minor confusion on my first two turns, taking over a wood region, and then trying to spend woods to buy a tile that needed pots - the colours in this game are appalling, and it's very hard to tell the difference when you're learning. Anyway, I bought one that got me cheap tiles, and another with a sword on, took over a few regions, used the resources to buy tiles, and then was heading for some buildings in the bottom row, when I realised I had a problem - how on earth to get enough of the symbols you needed to buy the bottom tiles - a rule that had been missed was that each tile in the column contributed to the cost - luckily I'd bought all the tiles out of just two rows, so that wasn't a problem! Then I had a problem - one of my opponent's took out my white region and I spotted a flaw in the game - one of us had to give in and agree to not get the white regions, or we'd be back and forth taking each other's regions for the rest of the game. I gave in, and let him have the three white tile I was after, buying 2 large buildings instead. Meanwhile another play was got by the Zeus tokens - as everyone round the table got 2 Zeus tokens in the same round, just before he passed the card and had to discard all his Destiny cards - not pleasant for him! Discovered a few more final scoring rules in the end-game, but they didn't change my overall impression of the game, which was something that was just too fiddly and dull, and with a combat mechanic I didn't like. I would play this again if pushed, but not otherwise.
After that one player wanted a 15 minute break, so I asked to play Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer, a game I discovered last week and love! We borrowed someone else's copy, that had the expansion in it, and it makes the game even better!! I went heavy military while the other two went for cash, one going heavily into constructs. Unfortunately it wasn't a very good game for military, and my lack of cash started to hurt me in the late game especially, when often there was nothing for me to attack in the central row.
Then Maddy was looking for a game, so we pulled out Gnadenlos!, and were surprised to hear it was new to her. It was a fairly fun game, with lots of spectators by the end, as all the other games in the room finished.
After that we had 12 players milling around looking for games. Various games were suggested - Underground, Agricola, Troyes, Dixit to mention just a few. It soon became apparent taht Troyes and Underground were the most popular, so players interested in those two games separated to two tables, with me joining the On the Underground table. We discovered that dropping a black line on the floor made it almost impossible to find, with the dark carpet!! Tim was winning all the early game, but late game his network kept getting bypassed, whereas I was regularly getting two points for routes running along both colours of my track, so I started to pull ahead and ended up victorious.
We finished about the same time as another table again, so had the "What to play next?" game all over again. This time the choice seemed to be between one of the Spiel games, played 4 player or something else. I chose the something else, Letters from Whitechapel, and the other table decided on 7 Wonders. Paul asked to be Jack, as he'd played already that day as detective. We explained the basic rules to the new players and were off. First murder in the east, where no-one was near, so it took a while to pin down his route and we ended up 3 steps behind him and in the south when he reached his hideout. Next murder was in the north, so we spread out to try and catch him as he came south, but he managed to dodge us fairly effectively as he went round the northwest, so it took a while to pin him down again - and the trail went cold in the exact same area again, but with us 2 steps behind him. Third night and the double murder - we sent two detectives each way, with the fifth hanging around the likely routes to where we suspected the hideout was. He went rather further south than we expected, so we didn't catch any sight of him until quite a way into the night, and were again 3 steps behind him when he vanished again, in exactly the same location. Grrrrr!!! Fourth night, and you'd think it would be easy, but no - we managed to make a mistake on one of the deductions on night 3, and removed a possible location that we shouldn't have done, and he slipped the net, and made his way back to his hideout, which proved to be right next to the place the trail had gone dead each time - we'd assumed it was a slightly different area from the way the chases had gone. Grrrr!!! We had some consolation during the chases though, with Colin, who was spectating for the last bit, doing runs up to the Grads Cafe for scones for everyone - they do a particularly nice cheese scone there, and warm too!!
We were reaching the end of the night, so finished with a couple of lighter games before the room was locked up - Dixit and The Bucket King - where Paul was eliminated amazingly quickly, thanks to a 9 card blue hand! (Unsurprisingly Colin, sitting to his left, lost all his blue buckets quite early on!).
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