The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Neil and Alison F.’s place.
Present: Richard, Brad, Alex, Neil M., Phil, Pat, Mark, Brian, Euhan, Alison, Neil F., Paul.
Played: Techno Witches, Geister Treppe, Elk Fest, Viva Topo, Corsari, 6 Tage Rennen, Intrigue, Bonaparte at Marengo, Ticket to Ride Marklin, Shining Path, Ca$h ‘n Gun$, Carcassonne The Discovery, Far Falia, Münchhausen, Attribute.

Neil combined his monthly themed games day with our usual Sunday night session for a huge night of games. The theme for July was war games, although these were all well over by the time I arrived. That is, with the exception of Bonaparte at Marengo, to be played later by Richard and Phil.
So lots of games played in the night hours tonight, mostly light fare, in fact many of them targeted at children since this is Alison and Neil’s specialty at Caterpillar Games. I’m not sure that I’ve got notes on everything played after 6:30, so I welcome anyone filling in the gaps for me.
Thanks for your hospitality, Neil and Alison.
Thanks again to Brad for the pics, especially the one of Pat with the guns trained on him! Reminds me of that last scene in the Blues Brothers…
Update! Previously missing information provided by Neil F., shown in blue text!

The first game played was Mice and Men(?). A dice bluffing game where you choose to woose out mouse style, be a leader of men Henry V style or just follow John Howard style. This was a whole lot of fun with Alex a clear winner closely followed by Brad, Neil M., Al and myself (Neil F.)

Techno Witches: Alex was busy gluing pieces together on this one when I arrived. Neil M. smashed all the other witches followed by Alex, Al and Brad still on the witch take off pad apparently.

Geister Treppe: Also known as Spooky Stairs, first introduced to me at the Expo last month by Pat. Four kids race to the top of the stairs by die roll. Roll a ghost and your playing piece is covered up by a ghost. Roll a ghost again, and you can swap one ghost-covered token with another on the track. Glance away for a second and you’ll forget where your piece is!
10 minutes of silliness, prompting Richard to suggest as an upcoming poll topic of, “is there any game not improved by the addition of beer”.
Phil won, followed by me, then Richard then Brian.

Elk Fest: Played by Neil F. and Pat alongside our Geister Treppe. I was so engrossed in the latter that I didn’t even see what this one was about. All over in 5 minutes. Pat got his moose over to the other side of the river much quicker than I (Neil F.) did. He has delicate flicking fingers that Pat.

Viva Topo: Another kid’s game with chunky wooden pieces! This one is a ludo variant. You own four mice that are chased around a board by a cat. If you can run one of your mice into a corner mouse hole haven in time, you can avoid the cat and grab a wedge of cheese. The value of the cheese blocks goes up with each successive corner, but so does the risk of the cat catching you. Kind of funny. Play quickly.
Pat won the first game that we played by the incorrect rules (failed to move one of our mice if we rolled the cat on the die). So we played again.
Results: Pat (blue): 9. Paul (green): 9. Brian (yellow): 5. Richard (red): 3.

Corsari: Phil, Euhan, and Neil F. played this one. Don’t know the result; pizza turned up in the middle of it!
Corsari was started but depleted sugar levels forced me to abandon after the first hand which had Euhan in front followed by Phil then I (NF).

Unknown game, apparently another with witches?
The witches game was Mago Magino. Don’t know players or results.

6 Tage Rennen (Updated entry)
No doubt to mark the Tour de France, currently in progress. Nice pic, Brad.
Two races held with the scores being:
1st race Pat 15, Alex 9, Brad and Neil 7, Euhan 5
2nd Race Euhan 17, Alex 14, Brad and Neil 5, Pat 3
A fun velodrome style race game that was very thematic Keirin feel to it - hey there’s an idea for a variant - where you need to work together in the pelaton if there is a breakaway and if you breakaway by yourself you end up being caught.

Intrigue: Another card game, I think. The verbal report I got back from this one was simply that Pat won because he was the best bullshitter. And he did it with a smile, apparently.
Results: Pat: 138. Alex: 132. Neil F.: 110. Brad: 102. Euhan: 92.
Before we commenced we made a pact that what happens on the game table stays on the game table. Fortunately we did this as there was threats of death, accusations of bullshit, nepotism, reverse nepotism, favouritism, prostitution, Christmas holding and down right lying. I personally think we played this game quite nicely with each other and would like another shot with the same crew another time. Oh and Brad and Euhan gave the game to Pat just to spite the more intelligent negotiations of Alex and I.

Bonaparte at Marengo: Richard and Phil seemed to carry on the wargaming activities with this block (or block-like?) battle of Napoleon versus Austria.
Approx 2 hrs. Richard (The Austrians) defeated Phil (Bonaparte).

Ticket to Ride Marklin: Staying on track vs. running off the rails (sorry)
This was the most serious game for me all night. For those that don’t know the Marklin edition, the main differences to the other TtRs are a) the inclusion of the passengers feature; and b) bonus awarded to the player with the most successfully-completed destination tickets, and not for the longest continuous track. Also, there is a wild card (locomotive type) that can be used on 4+ line segments and is not subject to the usual locomotive draw restrictions, and the setting is entirely within Germany. There are a few 7-length routes, lots of little 1-lengths (in the west and south), no stations and no requirements for tunnelling or locomotive use on any sections (unlike the Europe edition).
The passenger system is quite nice, and a bit reminiscent for me of other (non-TtR) train games, although arguably a lot simpler. When you place a section of track, you may optionally play one of your three passenger pieces into a city you’ve just connected to. On a later turn, you can run your passenger through connected cities and pick the points tokens for each city you pass through. Do them early, because the tokens are ordered in decreasing value, so later visitors to a given city get fewer points, or none at all when they run out!
I felt like I had a reasonable start, but within a few turns, all players seemed to be doing about equally as well. Mark had never played any of the Ticket to Rides before, but he was confidently laying his track down. In fact, he seemed to doing this almost with abandon, I thought, which I put down to newbie naivety. Despite my occasional hints that he probably wanted to build up his hand of cards a bit more before laying down so much track, he stuck to his plan.
Of course the results now show that he had the right strategy, and it was me who had the wrong one, or just bad luck (more likely the former). By about two-thirds of the way through the game it was becoming obvious that I was in deep trouble, wondering if I would even hold off Brian for third position on the score track. Neil cemented his place at or near the top with a killer passenger run, earning about 25 points on a single turn. I left my passenger runs far too late, just trying to hold out the extra turn or two for that extra line segment to pick up a few more tokens. Of course, in a 4p game that’ll kill ya!
In the final 15mins or so, my hopes of drawing more destination tickets just evaporated, while Mark seemed to do this two or three times, including in his very last turn. By the end of the game he had a total of seven: five that he completed and two that he dropped. Although Neil M. had also done well, particularly with passengers and routes, another point of difference was Mark’s track choices. He had on average longer track lengths than Neil (or the rest of us), including two “7”s (for 18 points each). Well done.
Despite my abysmal performance, this seems to be the most interesting variant in the whole TtR series, and given the choice I’ll lean towards the Marklin edition in the future. Look forward to playing this one again.
25 minutes rules; 85 minutes game time.

Results (base with passengers+destination tickets=total): Mark (red): 114+36+10 bonus = 160. Neil M. (purple): 110+30=140. Brian (yellow): 98+38=136. Paul (white): 94+27=121.

Shining Path: Not exactly a wargame, I guess, but another niche 2-player for Phil and Richard, this one about guerrilla warfare (I’m guessing) in Peru. Apparently after some time the game was called. Who won? “Nobody won. The people were the losers…”.
Oh well.

Ca$h ‘n Gun$: Much mayhem to be heard from the other room from the reservoir dogs.
Reported results: Neil F.: 90. Brad: 80. Euhan: 65. Alex: 60. Pat: 0 (in fact, dead). Excellent pic, presumably illustrating the key moment in the game for Pat. He must have known it was coming - although not completely visible here, I’m sure the gun under his chin is his own.
We all wanted to play something meatier after Intrigue so Pat suggested Cash N Guns (That Bootleggers game in Albury has really shifted his frontal lobes). However he was more prophetic than Cayce on Chocolate and foresaw his demise following his brilliant win in Intrigue. It happened in the third round. The rest of us played out a tight affair with threats to life and questioning the size of one’s kahunas.

Carcassonne The Discovery: Best in class
I first and last played Leo Colovini’s take on Carcassonne months ago, in the German Neues Land edition, and it struck me then as the best in the series. I saw that Neil M. had brought this one along with him for the past few weeks, so in the absence of any other suggestions l proposed it be played.
Certain aspects take a bit of getting used to, in particular the scoring of mountain regions as remarked on by the other players. But like the other Carcassonnes, its strengths are in its simplicity and elegance of design, while its weakness, mitigated in part by weight of numbers (of tiles), is in the luck of the draw.
After this playing it remains as the best one of the Carrcassonne series for me (so far, that is. I still haven’t played all of the variants). It’s hard to explain the appeal, but it has something to do with the scale of the game I think. Maybe I just find continents and islands intrinsically more interesting than cities and rivers. But I certainly do like how the mountain scoring system works: Capture a mountain range and you’re the king of all you can see.
15 minutes rules; 45 minutes game time.
Results: Neil M. (green): 72. Paul (black): 60. Alison (blue): 54. Brian (yellow): 38.

Far Falia: Another card game, apparently about butterflies. This one has a twist in the results that doesn’t entirely make sense to me yet. The final scores were as follows:
Brad: 32. Pat: 27. Alex: 25. Neil F.: 24. Euhan: 16.
There were two winners, namely Brad and Pat. Neither of them were more a winner than the other, despite the scores above. All other players were considered losers.
Farfalia is a trick taking game with a difference. The premise is Farfalia is a nature magazine that sends out a brief on the type of stories (photos?) it is after. So as you take tricks you build up your portfolio and get points depending on how many stories(pictures) you collect that hand.

Münchhausen: Pants on fire
Very funny bluff and double-bluff. Players take turns to hear the offers of a single card, valued between 3 and 8 (for a 6p game), from each of the other players. The active player takes one of the offers and either adds it face down and unseen to their scoring pile, or challenges the truth of it by flipping it over. If it was indeed a lie, the giver takes the card back into their hand, while the active player may place into their scoring pile (face down) any of their held cards. If the giver was telling the truth, they get to add another of their cards into their own score pile, while the receiver must take the played card into their hand. Play then passes left.
Hilarious, but don’t take it too seriously! A look at the scores suggests Pat just wasn’t trusted as much as the other players in this game. Funny, that.
5 minutes rules; 20 minutes game time.
Results: Neil F. (orange): 29. Brian (red): 25. Paul (green): 16. Alex (yellow): 13. Alison (purple): 12. Pat (blue): 6.

Attribute: It’s got sheep
Another recent release from Z-Man that I believe Neil F. picked up in Albury. Better than I expected it would be, and reminiscent of Apples to Apples.
Each turn you hold 5 adjective/adverb Attribute cards, and a fresh face-down green “+” sheep or a red “-” sheep (you get to see yours, but no-one else’s). The active player then announces a thing/person, etc., and then you play one of your Attribute cards on top of your sheep. Play an Attribute that matches the announced thing if you have a green sheep. Play an Attribute that doesn’t match (an antonym) if you have a red sheep. All players then reveal, and then you have to “snap” the card of any one other player that you think is holding a green sheep. If you’re right, you score the Attribute card as a point. If you’re wrong (ie., you picked a red sheep), you have to return a point card. If you had a red sheep that was not picked by another player, then you score the played Attribute card.
Sounds simple? We had to do a walk-through turn before we all got it, and even then it still took another turn for some of us to get it! But by the third turn, we all got it!
Funny, interesting, and a good filler. Scores another plus from Alex because “…it had sheep”.
9 minutes rules and demo turn; 30 minutes game time (3 or 4 rounds for 6 players).
Results: Pat: 18. Paul: 16. Neil F. and Alison: 12. Alex: 11. Brian 10.