The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Richard’s place
Present: Alex, Jeff, Neil M., Brad, Brian, Pat, Richard B., Richard V., Paul.
Played: Alex’s new game design, Im Reich der Wüstensöhne, Mordred, Key Harvest, Elfenland, Pandemic, Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg.

Guess what I saw high in the clear sky this afternoon?
That’s it - right there…
The countdown to ConTrail 2009 has begun..

Alex’s new game design: I won’t reveal any details here publicly for now, but this is quite a neat new piece of creativity from the Afman. Concept is quite simple, involving a risk-taking die rolling system. Intro rules took about 12 minutes, with a playing time of 50 minutes for four players.
A few of the features may want some tweaking, but this is pretty good. I’m keen to see the next version, Alex.
Results: Jeff: 9. Alex: 8. Pat: 6. Paul: 4.

Im Reich der Wüstensöhne: This was some shiny new game of Richard’s, apparently involving deserts and camels. Looked interesting.
Results: Richard V. (blue): 31. Euhan (orange): 25. Richard B. (red): 25.

Mordred: One of the players below added the following annotation to my score record notes, which I assume implies that the game took longer than expected: (a bit of time).
Results: Brian: 28. Neil M: 24. Brad: 22.

Key Harvest: Brand new game brought by Pat, running with the farming theme. Players grow their farms by filling spaces on their own hex tile board (farmland), but each tile space is a unique piece in the game (defined simply alphanumeric coordinates, Acquire-style. The core growth mechanism is to move tiles from the draft to your holding area, and associate them with a price in terms of commodities. On your next turn (or later) you can ‘plant’ your new land tiles at a cost of the commodities you previously invested, provided one of your opponents hasn’t already bought your tiles from you in the meantime. The positive is that you’ve increased your commodity holdings, but most of the points in the game come from tiles on your farmland. It becomes a crafty balance in your choice of tiles from the draft and the price you set to acquire (or sell) them, and this choice is particularly at the start of the game – something I wasn’t able to get right, anyhoo.
24 mins rules & setup; 81 mins game time.
Results: Alex (brown): 25. Jeff (orange): 24. Pat (yellow): 22. Paul (green): 19.

Elfenland: Judging from the scores, this was obviously a competitive session of putting in the boot.
About 13 mins rules & setup; 75 mins game time.
Results: Richard V: 18 (+1 card). Richard B: 18 (+0). Euhan: 18 (+0). Brad: 17. Neil M: 17. Brian: 15.

Pandemic: It would hardly be a 2009 session without at least one cooperative game. For tonight it was all about the war on germs.
49 minutes.
Jeff: Dispatcher. Pat: Researcher. Alex: Scientist. Paul: Medic. We win.

Die Kutschfahrt zur Teufelsburg: More cooperation (of sorts – team based), once we’d figured out player alignments, which didn’t take too long. The real challenge was identifying the location of the relevant artefacts. At one point I had two of our opponents’ Goblets and a bag, as well as one or two other artefacts in reserve, so I felt confident we would keep them some distance from winning. But, I had no idea where two of our three keys were, leading me to think that we’d be stuck in a stalemate for some time to come. But eventually the Order’s weight of numbers in artefact possession allowed us to overwhelm the Brotherhood, and Richard was able to locate all of our keys.
65 mins.
Richard, Brian and Paul, The Order of Open Secrets, eventually defeated Jeff, Pat and Alex, The Brotherhood of True Lies.

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Lindsay, Craig, Alex, Jeff, Neil M., Neil F., Richard, Brian, Pat, Paul.
Played: Fairy Tale, Lost Cities the Board Game, Go West, Vino, Spiel der Türme, Survive!, Stone Age, Edel, Stein & Reich, Formula Motor Racing, Mü.

More overdue catch-ups, and tonight was apparently free of co-operative games, despite some residual discussion of recent playings of LotR.

Fairy Tale: The standard opener.
Pat, Alex, Jeff, Lindsay.
Don’t know who won.
(Is this entry identical to the one for the last session..?)

Lost Cities TBG: After giving Pat, Alex, Jeff and Lindsay a quick tutorial, it was pointed out to me by Pat that in recent playings with my family I had been playing this wrong! In particular, I had been playing that there was only ever a single discard pile. I see now that in fact, there is a separate discard pile for each colour. Oh well.
Results: Pat: 475. Neil M: 315. Jeff: 305. Alex: 285.

Go West:
Results: Craig: 62. Richard: 50. Brian: 42.

Vino: I’m sorry I missed the start of this, since I don’t mind the occasional bit of Vino. Perhaps ConTrail 2009 will present an opportunity…
Results: Jeff: 27. Brian: 26. Richard: 25. Neil M: 24.

Spiel der Türme (Game of Towers): Abstracty game brought by Richard, but presented to Lindsay and me by Neil F. With so many pieces all over the board I found this difficult to analyse and play, and the game progressed painfully slowly (not due to A-P on my part alone, I will point out!).
Lindsay managed to out-manouevre us with the crafty square moves, that obviously Neil and I completely missed seeing. Not my preferred type of game.
9 mins rules & setup; 60 mins game time.
Results: Lindsay (green): 23. Paul (purple): 3. Neil F. (blue): 0.

Survive!: Brought by Neil; from a distance looked like a retro- lifeboats and desert-island kind of thing. Curious - I’d be keen to have a look-in on this one next time Neil is around.
Results: Pat: 13. Neil F: 10. Craig: 6.

Stone Age: Resource management and victory point earning. Alex whinged throughout about being out of contention. Of course, he won.
77 mins.
Results: Alex (yellow): 203. Paul (green): 181. Lindsay (red): 163

Edel, Stein & Reich:
Results: Neil F: 98. Pat: 94. Craig: 92.

Formula Motor Racing: 15 mins filler while we were waiting for Vino to end on the other table.
Results: Pat: 10. Craig: 6. Alex: 6. Paul: 3. Lindsay: 0,1 or 2, or some other number.

Mü: Trick-taking, risk-taking craziness. I was doing well (in the lead) until it was my turn to go crazy with a ridiculous bid of 8 cards. It pulled me down by 57 points into negative territory, and in the ensuing hands I couldn’t do enough to climb out of the hole.
80 min.
Results: Pat: 167. Lindsay: 125. Jeff: 101. Alex: 96. Paul: 21.