The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Richard’s place.
Present: Richard, Pat, Brad, Alex, Jeff, Andrew, Brian, Neil F; Paul.
Played: Brian’s Prototype, Fairy Tale, Coda, Am Fuss des Kilimandscharo, Brass, Byzantium, Robin des Bois, Mississippi Queen, Mordred, San Juan.

Richard back on deck after the school holiday season, regaling with tales of duck decapitation.

Brian’s Prototype: This is what I like to see - more game inventions getting a work-out. Thanks again for bringing this along, Brian, and good luck on the process of getting to the next step after absorbing all of the playtesters’ feedback. I empathise…!
10 mins rules and setup; 25 mins game time.

Fairy Tale: I’m pretty sure this got played twice by the same group, but I only have results for the second session.
Alex: 58. Pat: 49. Brad: 46. Jeff: 43.

Coda: No info except that this was played by Pat, Alex, Jeff and Brad while the rest of us had dinner and then moved on to Brian’s prototype.

Am Fuss des Kilimandscharo:
25 mins incl. rules. Apparently Brad won, Alex king-made, and Jeff and Pat played too.
Not all that riveting a game, I gather.

Brass: One of the two biggies for the night, with three ‘informed’ players.
I had a fascinating dilemma on the last turn, with a few options, none being rail builds. One option was to use a double card play to build a new coal mine and have this convert right away, and even yield enough money to give me a bonus end-game point, for a total of 4. Another option was to build over existing tiles of opponents, and in this case Andrew had none on the board that were of a lower level than mine. I didn’t even consider Brian’s, perhaps because of his relatively low profile throughout the game, I assumed Andrew was the one to beat.
The third option was to build a cotton mill and attempt to ship it to the external market, currently sitting two spaces above the No Demand level. If this had succeeded it would have yielded 9 points.
But the trouble with all of these options was that Andrew’s iron works held the last remaining cube on the board, and to build either coal or a cotton mill would have consumed this and yielded him 7 or 8 points.
So I chose to pass on the entire turn.
I just had to know what the external market had for me… It was a zero. That means that if I had taken the gamble with the cotton mill, Andrew would have been up 7 points and I would have been up 9, enough to have won.
10 mins setup; 50 mins Canal phase, 65 mins Rail phase (115 mins total game time).
Results (player (colour): Canal phase, Final): Brian (purple): 29, 144. Paul (green): 34, 140. Andrew (red): 23, 136.

Robin des Bois: Something from Neil’s exotic collection - looked French. English version is actually Merry Men of Sherwood.
63 mins all up. Results: Pat: 28. Jeff: 21. Neil F: 17.

Byzantium: The second biggie for the night.
130 mins incl. rules and setup.
Results: Alex (yellow): 75. Richard (green): 71. Brad (red): 45 - apparently too much Byzantine, not enough Arabs…

Mississippi Queen: This one followed Robin des Bois while Brass and Byzantium were still in progress.
Less than 60 mins game time.
Results not recorded; played by: Pat, Neil, Jeff.

San Juan: Finisher run in parallel with Mordred.
I hate Gold Mines! Alex and I got ours at about the same time close to the start of the game. They were slow to yield anything for either of us, but by game end mine had paid out exactly once, while Al’s had paid out four times.
36 mins game time.
Results: Jeff: 33. Alex: 29. Paul: 28. Brian: 23.

Mordred: Those of us left over from San Juan looked over the final minutes of this one playing out. Some upsets apparently, with Pat playing for third place on the last turn.
60 mins, incl. 5-10 mins rules.
Brad: 18. Neil: 17. Pat: 16. Richard: 11.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Pat, Brad, Rick D., Alex, Jeff, Euhan, Paul.
Played: Cartagena, Hamburgum, Yspahan, Race for the Galaxy, Hare & Tortoise, Fairy Tale, Ticket to Ride Europe, Settlers of the Stone Age, San Juan, FarFalia.

A mere seven participants tonight, but we still got through a cool 10 game titles…

Cartagena: The warmer for the evening. Alex wins comfortably in 22 minutes, with Pat a mere one card play behind. Brad was likely 3rd finisher, with Jeff, the Cartagena virgin, trailing.

Hamburgum: Making history
This was the highlight of the evening for me: I actually won a game that’s not a filler! I think that’s the first time ever, isn’t it? Perhaps having Euhan and Jeff as Hamburgum newbies helped a lot…
What I did differently this game: I just picked up commodities for the first few trips around the rondel, keeping an eye out that the prices didn’t drop too much. When buildings started to appear, then I traded in for big dollops of building materials. Then a single church level, away from everyone else, then straight away built 3 or 4 buildings around this. Although initially I had my eye on cloth as a commodity to focus on (its price seemed to stay up for longer), I retained a ‘diverse portfolio’, since I wasn’t moving with ships any faster than the other players.
With building benefits starting to kick in on the following rounds of commodity production, I was able to trade up and build out the first church, for a nice 8 point bonus. It wasn’t long before the other players followed suit, but I was able to retain my momentum, and more than usual for a game like this, monitor the timing of plays by my opponents to make sure I targeted the right upcoming opportunities.
A very satisfying result, even though I expected Alex would win until about the last turn or so.
20 mins setup and rules; 100 mins game time.
Results: Paul (silver): 69. Alex (yellow): 62. Jeff (green): 53. Euhan (red): 51.

Yspahan: Even though I had been thinking about this game just in the day before, I was surprised to see it appear again after a long absence recently.
Apparently a game of “speed-Yspahan”!
All over in less than 20 mins, incl. rules and setup.
Results: Pat (blue): 94. Rick D. (green): 77. Brad (red): 69.

Race for the Galaxy: Another short & curly while Hamburgum was still in contest.
5 mins rules and setup; 25 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 45. Rick: 32. Brad: 21.

Hare & Tortoise: The David Parlett classic, brought along tonight by Euhan. Apparently there was way too much jugging of the hare, with the result that Brad overjumped. Pat won.
25 mins, start to end.

Fairy Tale: The picture here is evidence of apparently a new winning record for Pat.
15 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 60. Brad: 46. Rick D: 39.

Settlers of the Stone Age: Economic expansion and discovery, at the mercy of the dice and vindictive Neanderthals.
Despite doing well on die rolls in the first half of the game, I wasn’t pushed to take settlements so I focused on tokens instead. But Pat always looked like the winner, until it almost slipped through his fingers to Jeff!
15 mins rules and setup; 88 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 10. Jeff (white): 7. Paul (orange): 7. Euhan (red): 6.

Ticket to Ride Europe: Another game making an unexpected appearance, and being all over rather quickly…
10 mins rules and setup; 30 mins game time.
Results: Rick: 129. Brad: 110. Alex: 91.

San Juan: Yet another speed game. I don’t have precise data, but this one must have been well under half an hour, possibly 20 mins.
Results: Alex: 25+. Brad: 25-. Rick: 23.

FarFalia: The cooler for the evening. Five hands only due to the time of the night (and the fact that Alex dislikes this game!).
35 mins. Pat: 40. Rick: 33. Jeff: 32. Alex: 21. Paul: 18.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Pat, Craig, Paul.
Played: Through the Ages. Advanced game.

An unusual set of availability circumstances resulted in Craig inviting himself and Pat over to my place for some serious epic gaming ‘mid-week’. Through the Ages was already agreed ahead of time, so we suffered no down-time in deciding what to play…
In this play I felt that I had got off to a pretty good start, better in fact than my previous (first) session of this. I moved early on mining and farming efficiency and I kept my military strength at decent levels relative to my opponents - something I neglected last time. And yet for most of the game they were racing up the score chart in multiples compared to me. This could be traced to the culture points track - while they were earning 3, 4 or 5 points per turn, I was stuck back on 1. It’s back to that old plates-on-sticks thing - you’ve got so many variables to balance that it becomes easy to neglect something. I did eventually address this, but it was all too late to be in contention for this game.
Craig got the balance pretty right, building a strong military and setting a cracking pace on the CP track. Pat as expected was solid across the whole portfolio, taking good advantage of complimentary card combinations. His only gap was that his military was a little weaker than Craig’s and mine. As he pointed out after the game, we should have exploited this more. But I only ever picked up two Aggression cards all game. One was too late to be much use (and so I took an event VP instead), while the other I used conservatively (ie., didn’t sacrifice any of my troops) and it was defeated.
I gained the Pyramids early in the game, giving me a bonus action, then won a colony giving me three more. I eventually upgraded my government type to a Constitutional Monarchy, which meant that for a period I was earning 10 action points per turn. This was way out of balance, because by and large I could do little with these that was useful - my farming and production were still at medieval levels, so I couldn’t grow fast enough to fully take advantage of my turn action freedom!
At the end of the game, Pat’s combination of William Shakespeare and libraries was generating 12 CPs per turn, which couldn’t be pulled back. More plays definitely needed for me to get better at the balance and timing required to make a fist of this!
~35 mins rules and setup; 215 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 145. Craig (red): 124. Paul (white): 100.

Venue: Brian’s place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Brad, Rick D., Andrew, Craig, Alex, Neil M., Paul.
Played: Fairy Tale, Brass, Siena, Lost Valley, Industrial Waste, Bohnanza.

Down a few regulars this session, but up a few irregulars with Craig and Rick D. able to join in tonight. While the game count was on the low side, the quality was high. Except for pictures - sorry.

Fairy Tale: These are notes I scribbled following the players’ explanations. Apart from the scores, this probably means little except to regular players of FT…
Pat went yellow - 51. Brad went green and brown - 41. Alex went black - 26. The theory is that black is unwinnable, and that its saving grace is the pictures.

Brass: A long game of Brass, but two new inductees in Craig and Rick.
About 40 mins setup and rules; 133 mins game time.
Results: Brian (purple): 115. Rick D. (yellow): 103. Craig (green): 93. Andrew (red): 90.

Siena: Take it easy; take a senesi
This game has provided a fascinating experience every time it’s been played and although it’s been a while since this has seen the light of day it was greeted with enthusiasm tonight. We played with a full compliment of five players, which was going to make for some tight competition on the sale of goods and a diversity of strategies…
Pat and Brad were the first to make the leap from Peasant to Merchant, and I followed soon after. I think the three of us were particularly keen to get our hands on as many senesi cards as quickly as possible. Pat kept complaining about his draws - even paying $15 to take a choice of two “1″s. I rarely take these types of complaints seriously, but after he’d taken four of these he chose to show us his hand - yes indeed - all 1s! Bummer for him.
Alex and Neil chose to hang back as Peasants for a bit longer and take advantage of the higher turn-over goods trading. In fact, Alex stayed a Peasant for maybe more than half of the game, at one stage accumulating over $250 in personal wealth! This was with the help of a Mule card on a double-production of corn, wine and oil all at once on the same turn.
For me, life as a Merchant was a bitter-sweet affair; more bitter than sweet. Perhaps I left my wealth level just slightly too high, because I was struggling to get the good income-generating cloth and spice cards. On the few occasions that I did, players moving before me (usually Neil) would trip and reset the commodity tracks, denying me the income opportunities each turn! So I shifted to the Firenze road and used this a few times, but even this was hard work. It also raised a point of controversy: Does road income qualify for senesi cards? We eventually decided that it did, although we think we never played this in any of our previous playings. I ended up scoring a few senesi 2s and 3s from this (sweet), but it was along with wheel-spinning while all the other players progressed comfortably towards Bankership (bitter). I was left as the last Merchant, and to make matters worse I was suckered into spending $26 on a value-1 artista card that I bid sight-unseen on (even more bitter).
I finally managed to jump into Banker world with two turns left to spare - not enough, unfortunately, to get a token into the tower. Inn courtesans stymied my movement, and Pat’s driving of two Calandrinos wound down my cash enough to make building an impossibility for me. I did, however, have enough to outbid everyone on Alex’s last turn of an artista card - a more rewarding value-4 for this. It even left me enough to finish in first position on remaining cash, hence another +2 points.
But overall, while Siena remains an intriguing and richly-themed game, it is certainly hard to play well, especially with 5 players mixing it up. Extra evidence of this is Brad winning (by a whisker!), but unable to say why (ie; unable to explain whatever it was he did consistently that was better than anyone else). And that’s a reflection on the game, by the way, not Brad. Incidentally the pic highlights Brad’s leading position on the wealth track after turn 3, which he asked me to take as evidence, in anticipation of a poor performance tonight!
About 30 mins rules and setup, although with much rules explanation embedded in game play. 182 mins game time.
Results: Brad (red): 48 (and the highest level in the tower). Pat (blue): 48. Neil M. (orange): 45. Paul (green): 42. Alex (yellow): 41.

Lost Valley: A relatively short game as Alex made the river turn back on itself.
12 mins rules and setup; 27 mins game time.
Results: Alex: 10. Craig: 10. Rick D: 8.

Industrial Waste: The accidental industrialist
I believe Brian had been hanging out to play this for a while, so Pat lugged this around in his games bag for some weeks. It finally got an airing tonight with the same three players that played this last time at Pat’s place…
I had no strategy in this game, feeling entirely at the mercy of the card draws. Eg., I had resolved to push my waste reduction track as far along as I could, but I managed to get my hands on exactly two Innovation cards in the whole game. Because the first of these came with a Hiring/Firing, I used it for this instead to reduce my fixed costs each turn.
So my turns were spent largely on production and waste accumulation, with the occasional waste offset card, insufficient to keep me out of the yellow and red zones. Waste accidents hurt me twice! But my factory was stuck on level 14 (the lowest) for almost the whole game, while my opponents managed to rip up this chart and probably make just as much money overall anyway. For a few turns Brian looked like he was threatening to push over the game-ending 20, until Pat finally did this for what felt like a short game.
12 mins setup and rules; 35 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 35. Brian (red): 32. Paul (green): 31.

Bohnanza: Only the late-stayers left for this one, but five seemed like a good number for Bohnanza. After some discussion of whether to play one of the expansions (High Bohn or Bohnaparte), we settled on the base game rather than trying to learn a new rules set at this time of the night.
I got a fairly good deal and some good draws early up, and after about three rounds had banked about 5 cards. Pat refused to trade with me, so to get one of his offers I proposed to spend 3 cards of my lead on a third beanfield - an act generally associated with not being able to win. But this served me well a few times during the game, and getting it early I guess can be a good advantage…
5 mins rules and setup; 45 mins game time. Results: Paul: 17. Pat: 16. Rick D: 14. Alex: 11. Brian: 9.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Pat, Brian, Euhan, Richard, Nick, Brad, Alex, Jeff, Neil M., Neil F., Paul.
Played: Kogworks, Pandemic, Farfalia, Chang Cheng, Shogun, Thurn & Taxis, Hamburgum, Robber Knights, Mordred, San Juan.

Another huge night of games - certainly the biggest that Thornleigh has seen for a while. Also the biggest for beer consumption for a long time. None of us are OTT beer drinkers, but I dropped a lot of empties into the recycling bin on Sunday night. A signal perhaps, for the momentum-gathering ConTrail ‘08 (or should that be III?), now a mere four weeks away…

Kogworks: Curious-looking game of little plastic cogs on pegs that instantly reminded me of Logi-Geister, a game that I played with my 5- and 3-year-olds just this same morning.
I don’t seem to have any results recorded for this, although I know that Alex played with someone…

Pandemic: Nick brought this one - something apparently new from Z-Man. In this case a co-operative game in which players assume different specialisations to collectively combat diseases that threaten the planet.
This was played no fewer than three times (at about half an hour each play), with a rotation of participants, apparently with the objective that “we’ll beat this thing, if it’s the last thing we do…”.
First game: About 30 mins long. Pandemic defeated Alex, Pat, Nick and Euhan.
Second game: 5 mins rules and setup; 38 mins game time. The pandemic wins again (apparently SARS this time), against Neil F., Pat, Nick and Al.
Third game: 30 mins total. Yet again the disease wins, this time against Richard, Neil M. and Nick.

Farfalia: Played in ‘filler mode’ only, with just five hands as we waited for Neils to arrive.
5 mins rules and setup; 32 minutes for 5 hands.
Results: Jeff: 42. Brad: 33. Brian: 31. Richard: 23. Paul: 20.

Chang Cheng:
Great wall. Disappointed I didn’t a pic of this one – it certainly looked good…
8 mins rules and setup; 33 mins game time.
Results: Alex (red): 23. Pat (blue): 17. Neil F. (purple): 8. Nick (green): 6.

Shogun: This was the biggie for the night and once they were underway we didn’t hear much from this table for the next 21/2 - 3 hrs.
~30-45 mins setup and rules; 135-150 mins game time (180 mins total).
Results: Brian (red): 54. Euhan (yellow): 44. Jeff (blue): 43. Brad (black): 42.

Thurn & Taxis: Taking turns
This was a light-ish diversion for three of us while the other guys conquered each other in feudal Japan, or teamed up to battle the spread of global diseases.
I got myself off to a good start by being the first to fill the large central area (Baiern?) before moving on to the periphery. It was more than halfway through the game before I started paying any attention to what either of my opponents were doing. At Richard’s prompting, I took one useless card (to me) from the face-up set in order to deny Neil the last in the Baiern collection. It turned out that Neil had the required card in his hand anyway, so I was misled into a wasted play, either in good faith or by cunning deviousness.
This was a successful first-time playing by Richard, which surprised me (not that it was successful, but that he’d never played this before). The scores indicate much more spacing between our performances than I would have expected - the whole game felt a lot closer than it actually was according to the final score count. But on his last turn Richard did manage to use all of his pieces, score his 7-long coach route, and pick up three tokens, including one worth 6 points for the first to get a post office in every region.
19 mins rules and setup; 52 mins game time.
Results: Richard (red): 31. Paul (green): 23. Neil M (blue): 17.

Hamburgum: Hamburger Gum
This was the title I kept ’seeing’ when looking at the box edge side on, suggesting some strange junk food convergence that I imagined in tiny individually-wrapped packages… Anyway, after looking carefully at the box and repeating the correct name to myself several times I think I finally got it to sink in. So this was the big new one for the night (for me at least), with a whole new set of rules to learn. The core rondel mechanism reflected three fundamental action types: Production (beer, cloth, sugar); Trading (selling commodities, or buying building materials); Building (ships, town buildings, church components/levels). Town buildings (generally) increase your production yield, the building of ships enhances your trading power, and church building provides you with the tokens that ultimately score you points. The development engine is therefore commodity-trade-trade-build.
I felt that I was doing ok at this at first, as I scooped up commodities and traded away for cash and building materials in turn. But I seemed to be making my decisions slower than everyone else - no sooner would I complete one turn action when the order was whipped back around to me again and I’d have to face the agony of choice once more. I found the range of available actions so overwhelming that it almost paralysing! Furthermore, after a while I began to notice that although I was cash-comfortable, perhaps more so than the other players, I was considerably behind on the score chart. I too could be buying buildings and church levels, but I had neglected this largely until about halfway through the game. And it wasn’t until well after the game was over that I discovered what a losing battle ship building could turn out to be. As players began to score the ship tokens, your expensive little ship builds would gradually get nudged down the ship line to worthlessness! Hence there are some important lessons in timing to learn here…
By the time I started to catch up with buildings and church building levels, it was too late, and I was getting mediocre scores on the tiles I did manage to gain. Perhaps I was still sub-consciously thinking about hamburger-flavoured chewing gum. By the end of the game I felt that whole thing had just been a bit too rushed, and as with many absorbing games I play for the first time, there were aspects of this game that kept awake that night thinking about them – this is a good sign for a game, and I look forward to another playing as soon as possible!
27 mins rules and setup; 60 mins game time. Results: Pat (blue): 87. Alex (yellow): 80. Neil F (silver): 62. Paul (green): 57.

Robber Knights: A filler for Neil M. and Richard after the last game of Pandemic.
40 mins total.
Richard: 26. Neil M: 23.

Mordred: Dice combat in Wales again.
10 mins rules and setup; 25 mins game time. Pat, Brian, Richard; no results given…

San Juan: Another filler/night ender, and a first-time playing for Jeff. His rate of building and apparent ROI on production cards had me convinced that he would win comfortably. I struggled with production, trading and building, and both Brad and I were severely disappointed with our Gold Mines – not a single result for either of us after a total of 10-15 attempts!
However, I did manage to play a Chapel in about the third turn, and pick up 9 points for tucked cards at the game end. My points score equalled Al’s at 29, but I had 3 cards left over to his one. Hooray!
5 mins rules and setup; 45 mins game time.
Results: Paul: 29 (+3 in the hand). Alex: 29 (+1). Jeff: 25. Brad: 24.