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Sharon Khan
United Kingdom
Shefford
Bedfordshire
Games, games and more games!
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There were 7 of us, so we were two tables for most of the evening. There were just 6 of us initially, as James was a bit late, so we started with two 3s, Galaxy Trucker and Ra, figuring that James could join in the Galaxy Trucker when he arrived, whatever round we’d got to. I was in the Galaxy Trucker game. Round 1 was fairly tame – Sami hadn’t got quite enough lasers or men, but I’d peeked at the cards and knew what was coming, so was able to do very well – getting over 30 in the round, while Richard and Sami were both on about 10 – James arriving at the end of the first round actually ended up in second place when we gave him an average score! Second round was definitely Sami’s round – two open spaces meant everyone sped past me, and he was at the front taking the best of everything. He was about 5 ahead of me going into round 2, with James a bit behind, and Richard behind that. The last round we had double Space Billards, and the 3A ship board. Two 7s from the left on the first Space Billards, a large followed by a small, managed to separate everyone’s ship in half, except Richard’s. I was lucky that at least all my cargo was in one half, so I kept that half, but was a bit low on other bits. Then the second Space Billards hit, and James and I, who’d kept the front half of our ships, found us bombarded by asteroids, while Sami, who’d kept the back half, was fine! James eventually lost his ship, which was probably good, given that he’d lost so many components by then, and also most of his goods – his score on the round would almost certainly have been negative! Sami was able to get more points in the last round, to beat me by a few points for the win – that’s the first time in ages I haven’t won Galaxy Trucker! Meanwhile we wondered why the Ra game downstairs was taking so long – it turned out that Haley had liked it so much, that they’d played it twice!!
After that we gathered to decide the next game. Marion chose her current favourite, The Castles of Burgundy, and then was unsure what to play when Power Grid was suggested as the alternative, but decided to go with her initial decision. Power Grid was a very close game, played on the France map. Colin made some rather odd decisions early on that put him well-behind – he was obviously in an eco-friendly mood, and didn’t want to buy anything except for wind power and recycling plants – except for one coal plant mid-game, where he suddenly bought a rather inefficient coal plant and 6 coal, and pushed the price for all us heavy-coal users up rather, and caused a bit of a coal shortage at end-game! I made a mistake overbidding Sami without thinking one round, which made me rather to depend on the scarce coal. That worked out very well for Sami in the end and gave him the game, as the next power plant to turn out was an amazing uranium one, with uranium really cheap!! On the last turn Colin and I couldn’t quite manage to build the 17th house that we were all able to power, so it came down to a cash tie-break for the win, which Sami won over James, and another for third, which I lost.
We’d finished slightly before the table downstairs, so picked Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer next, my current hot game. I’ve been playing it a lot 2 player, so it was interesting noticing the differences with 4. James did very well, as all three of the rest of us went military, so his construct strategy worked incredibly well for him. They still hadn’t quite finished so we pulled out Race for the Galaxy, but they were slightly quicker packing up than we’d expected, so they had to wait a bit for us to finish.
We decided to have one large game with everyone at the end, and Richard suggested GiftTRAP. It was new to Haley, and she liked the sound of it. It turned out to be quite fun. First round no-one managed to give gifts successfully – Marion managing the best record, of giving 4 “No Way” gifts out of the 6 she gave! Sami in particular seemed to be a magnet for the gifts he’d marked as No Way, which didn’t do his getting score much good! Colin was first to reach the far end with his giving marker on the third round, but his getting was lagging behind a bit. The fourth round I managed to get both my markers to the end for the win, while Colin slipped back and Marion was the other one to get one marker on the far spot – her getting one as you might imagine – her giving was awful!
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