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Archive Games Sessions - May/June 2003

27th June 2003

Games Played: San Marco, Mystery Rummy: Al Capone

San Marco

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K

Nige sent me this report.

"With Garry away again it was up to your truly to provide the games report for this week. Just 3 of us this week and  one old fave and a new one to keep us company.

First up was an old fave San Marco. I think the game has been described earlier but as a recap...The game mechanics are fairly simple - you place ambassadors in certain regions on the board. Each region has a certain no of VPs associated with it depending upon whether you have the most ambassadors or second most ambassadors in that region. When the Doge comes to call you score the VPs of the region he lands in. In order to play ambassadors or move the Doge you need certain cards. A proposer splits the cards into piles and the other players select the pile that they want - In each pile there will be good cards together with negative cards that you don't want. The skill is choosing the correct pile.

Anyway Mark K started off well securing some lucrative regions and scoring with the Doge. I managed to score the least negative points so picked up an end of round bonus together with a free banishment. The second round continued with it being very close between mark k and myself. At the end of the third round it really was a 2 horse race. Mark G however held the key, He finished the last round with the fewest negative points so had the free banishment. If he banished Mark I would win - if he banished me Mark K would win. The trusty dice came to the rescue as he rolled it to determine who would be banished. Sadly my number was up so I was banished and Mark K won a close one."

Result: Mark K 59, Nige 51, Mark G 45

Ratings: Already rated

Mystery Rummy: Al Capone

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K

Nige again:

"Next up was Al Capone the new mystery rummy game. I had played the previous 3 so was looking forward to it. The game is quite similar to the previous incarnations in that you have to make melds (3 of a kind) and place them on the table to score points. where this game differs from the others is that you score more points if you have full sets of gangsters.

We played 3 rounds - the first two rounds were fairly nip and tuck with me being slightly ahead. however the third round Mark K came into his own securing TWO full sets of gangsters before going out with a deserved win.

The game itself is not really very different from the previous sets. If you don't own any of the others it is a good acquisition - however IMHO if you have the others it probably isn't worth getting .. but you pays ya money and ya takes ya choice..."

Result: Mark K 105, Nige 80, Mark G 67

Ratings: Mark K 7, Nige 7, Mark G 9

20th June 2003

Games Played: Quest for the Dragon Lords, King's Breakfast

Quest for the Dragon Lords

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

Mark G brought along this game and was keen to play it with there being only four of us. The game looks really nice and, as none of us had tried it before, we were happy to give it a try. Unfortunately, the game took a lot longer than we had anticipated so we brought it to a close after only a few rounds as we knew we wouldn't finish. It is very Risk-like with the addition of a questing element, whereby you can go off in search of treasures/discoveries that help your armies later in the game. Despite this, the main aim of the game is to attack the opposing armies and kill off their respective kings, at which point they are eliminated. Last one standing is the winner. Each player plays one of Barbarians, Elves, Dwarves or Orcs, who all have differing special abilities in battles / expansion. We all felt that some of the abilities were unbalanced with the elves having the biggest advantage while the dwarves and barbarians seem a bit weak. Still it was quite good fun and there were certainly many differing ways to try and advance.

Result: No result

Ratings: (Preliminary) Nige 5, Mark K 6, Mark G 7, Garry 5

King's Breakfast

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

We then tried out King's Breakfast, yet another new game from the Alan Moon / Aaron Weissblum partnership. This one is a quick, light card game and works pretty well as a family game. The game plays over several rounds and, on each round, a series of cards is turned face up in the centre of the table and players take as many food cards as there are of one type from the table or a single card from the draw pile. Once each player has done this, the King (dummy player) receives the remaining cards and a new round is played. When there are not enough cards to refill the table, the game ends and players score. If a player has more cards of a particular type than the King, then he scores nothing for these cards. For all remaining cards,  each one is worth the number of cards the King has of that type. The player with the highest total wins.

We all enjoyed King's Breakfast: It plays quickly and there is also the opportunity to spoil other players' plans by use of a dragon card to deplete the King's food stocks. Unfortunately, Mark G completely misunderstood one rule and, consequently, ruined his own chances. Nige, on the other hand, grabbed all the right cards at the right time and ran out a comfortable winner. A nice end of evening filler.

Result: Nige 85, Garry 72, Mark K 69, Mark G 3

Ratings: Nige 7, Garry 7, Mark K 7, Mark G 7

13th June 2003

Games Played: Mystery of the Abbey, Res Publica

Mystery of the Abbey

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Dean, John

Nige sent me the following report:

"With Garry absent for another week (has he a new secretary or something?) I decided to write the game report for this week.

I had recently purchased Mystery of the abbey" and was keen to give it a try. Having read the rules I must confess I was a little bit disappointed as it seemed a little too"cluedoesque" in its gameplay. However I could not have been more wrong.

The objective of the game is to find out who killed Brother Aldemo. There are 24 suspects all monks who have different traits eg from different orders, fat or thin, cleanshaven or bearded etc. Players are dealt suspect cards at the start of the game as so can eliminate suspects and by asking questions eliminate other suspects. Where the game is different is that the suspect cards pass from one player to another so it is difficult to keep track of which suspect is where and by going into different rooms certain game altering events can happen. Victory points are awarded for making revelations about the culprit and for finally unmasking the killer.

The game started fairly quickly with all monks leaving the chapel in search of clues. Dean felt the urge to confess and picked up some early vital clues from other players. Mark K and I raced off to the parlour to pick up the spare suspect cards. Once all these had gone then the real questioning began. Mark G visited the library and ended up knowing all my secrets.

My starting hand contained mainly novices so I set about finding out whether it was a brother or father had done the deed. Triumphantly announcing it was a brother as I had about 6 possible culprits who were all brothers I picked up the first VPs of the game. Sadly what I hadn't realised was  that everyone else had seen all of the brothers except one so Brother "Cadfael" Kennett sneeked in with a win

A hugely enjoyable game which is my fave of the year so far (just about beating Amun Re). Any deduction game must always be compared to Cluedo and it is much better than that - even better that Cluedo super sleuth."

Result: Mark K, Nige, Mark G=Dean=John

Ratings: Mark K 7, Nige 9, Mark G 8, Dean 8, John 8

Res Publica

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Dean, John

Result: John 24, Dean 23, Mark G 17, Mark K 16, Nige 13

Ratings: John 6, Dean 7, Mark G 7, Mark K 7, Nige 7

6th June 2003

Games Played: The Mob, Und Tschuss, Liar's Dice

The Mob

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Dean, John

Result: Mark K (10G + 10K + Under Boss + Mama); Nige (10G + 10K + Hitman); Mark G (7G + 90K + Don); Dean (7G + 90K + Mama); John (6G + 65K)

Ratings: Mark K 6, Nige 6, Mark G 7, Dean 7, John 8

Und Tschuss

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Dean, John

Result: Mark K 56, John 41, Mark G 24, Nige 20, Dean 10

Ratings: Mark K 7, John 6, Mark G 7, Nige 6, Dean 8

Liar's Dice

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Dean, John

Result: Mark G, Mark K, Nige, Dean

Ratings: Dean 6, Others already rated

16th May 2003

Games Played: Rheinlander, Message To The Czar

Rheinlander

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

A quick report on this session as I'm just off on holiday. Four of us this week and Nige had brought Rheinlander with him and was keen to play. It had been a long while since any of us had played this and it took quite a while to go back through the rules. We still didn't appreciate one of the placement rules until part way through, but I don't think it had a major impact. We also misread the archbishop rule initially but again made sure this didn't affect play.

There weren't too many battles between duchies in this game. Previously when I've played, ownership has changed hands pretty frequently but nobody seemed to have the right cards to force battles. The main battle was between Nige and I for a valuable 12 point area, which I managed to protect after it changing hands a couple of times. The two Marks kept threatening to battle over another large area but both played to defend what they already had. At the end Mark K had the advantage over the rest of us in terms of dukes played, but I managed to ease him out by having the more valuable duchies and the spoils of my battle with Nige.

Result: Garry 41, Mark K 34, Mark G 32, Nige 28

Ratings: Garry 7, Mark K 7, Mark G 8, Nige 8

Message To The Czar

Players: Mark G, Nige, Mark K, Garry

This is the re-themed version of Muscat and is a race to deliver your message to the Czar before everybody else. This is done by moving couriers from village to village towards the Czar's palace. However, you can only move out of a village once the building in which you are staying has three occupants and only two of them get to move, leaving one behind. Once you reach the palace, you then have to get past the guards by accumulating enough gold with which to bribe them.

This was interesting enough in terms of planning your placement of couriers to get to the palace efficiently, but it seemed a bit too dry and analytical, which can cause downtime in our group. Nige, Mark K and I fairly quickly got our messages to the outskirts of the Czar's palace but Mark G was pegged back a bit with not much chance of advancing further until one of the rest of us got to the palace. Nige made one placement error which handed me a quick path to the palace and I then took my time - two turns- to accumulate sufficient gold to bypass the guards and deliver my message. Not bad but not interesting enough to get played very regularly.

Result: Garry = winner

Ratings: Garry 6, Mark K 5, Mark G 5, Nige 5

9th May 2003

Games Played: Acquire, Ohne Furcht Und Adel

Acquire

Players: Mark G, Nige, Dean, John, Mark K, Garry 

We had a new face at our session this week. Dean joined us for the first time and seemed to have a good time so I expect we may see him again. This boosted our numbers to six and, as I hadn’t brought anything that played with that number, Mark K brought out a number of older games for us to choose from. First up was Acquire, which is rightly considered a classic and is a game I’m always happy to play. This was a great game, not because I won, but because the whole complexion of the game changed on one turn.

Money was pretty tight as takeovers early on were few and far between. Mark K and Nige managed to boost their cash as everyone started to run out of money and I just managed to force a takeover in time to get me a second place majority in the defunct chain and some vital cash, before my cash dried up completely. However, in doing so, I damaged Dean’s chances of any cashflow very badly and he then suffered  greatly as a result. Despite my cash reprieve, Nige and Mark K continued to benefit from later mergers, but the game changed when Tower (a chain of 10) was taken over by Continental (also 10) to allow Mark G to get hold of some cash. Now Tower had been the early battleground for shares and I had managed to grab first place with Mark G second with all the other shares having been sold as well. Few Continental shares had been sold up to this point and everyone was keen to exchange 2 for 1. As Continental now looked very strong, the next turn was mine and I immediately merged American into it to again exchange shares and guarantee me the majority in Continental. Nobody had seen the Tower takeover coming and it was really interesting to see how great an impact that one move had made. Until that point, my instincts put Nige and Mark K ahead of the rest whereas at the end of the game, I won by a fair margin. Good stuff.

Result: Garry 44200, Nige 33700, Mark K 33100, Dean 24700, John 16000, Mark G 15200

Ratings: Garry 8, Nige 8, Mark K 9, Dean 6, John 5, Mark G 8

Ohne Furcht Und Adel

Players: Mark G, Nige, Dean, John, Mark K, Garry 

We then picked Ohne Furcht Und Adel or Citadels if you prefer, a game I’m not overly keen on but everyone else seems to enjoy a lot. I can appreciate it as a good design – it’s just never sparkled for me. Maybe I’m getting like Nige and it’s too much fun. 

John seemed to go for the thief strategy, one which can work ok providing you pick the right character to steal from. John didn’t – almost every time. Dean built a few early cheap buildings and then spent a fair amount of time trying to protect them from the soldier by either picking the assassin and killing the soldier, the bishop whom the soldier can’t attack, or the soldier himself. He also managed to build the purple building which is worth 8 points at the end but only costs 6 to build, as did Nige.

I used the architect a couple of times to good effect and managed to get to 7 buildings, but this included a couple of single pointers. I managed to protect them for one turn and on the next turn I took a chance with the architect again. Much to my surprise, I avoided being assassinated by Mark G, who was sitting immediately to my right and so stood a fairly good chance of tagging me. However, John the thief stole my stash of gold, so I gambled on picking another low cost card to erect my 8^th building. A lowly Tavern emerged and I accomplished my goal, with just enough points to claim the victory.

Result: Garry 25, John 21, Dean=Nige 20, Mark K 17, Mark G 15

Ratings: Dean 9, everyone else already rated

This page was last updated on 22 November 2004