The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Pat’s place
Present: Lindsay, Alex, Jeff, Pat, Paul
Played: Roll through the Ages, Jet Set, The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game, Tanta Tarantel, Maori.

Small group tonight and the last session before Pat disappears with family to Europe for a month. It’s rare for Pat to miss a single Sunday session, let alone a monthful. I’m not sure who’s withdrawal will be the worst - his or ours…! :-)
Pics low-qual from the phone tonight.

Roll Through the Ages: Unfortunately for me this was just being packed away when I arrived. Fortunately for me Pat left it as a loaner until he returns from travels.
Here’s a brief summary sent in response to Tommy D’s request that he wrote for this in his BGG collection (weird - can’t figure out how to link directly to that! But, it is in this list.)

Roll Through The Ages: The Bronze Age - Roll symbolled dice to get food (to keep your VP’s), workers (buy more dice or go for VP monuments) and resources (to buy tech tree powers also worth VP’s). You get to actively choose what to pursue with your two re-rolls based on what you’ve bought so far and what your opponents are doing, all recorded via personal score pads.
There’s some nice tech tree combinations to shoot for, some engine-building vs VP trade-offs, and races to complete things first - all of which makes for an engaging game. It has the added advantage of tailoring length (using the Late Bronze Age rules) and interaction (using the optional trading element). A top-notch addition to the 30min dice arena. An 8 to start with.
Patrick

Jet Set: New(-ish) game about claiming travel routes between European cities and connecting cities to earn income and score points. Just like a train game only with planes!
Seriously, I sucked at this game and continually lamented the lack of ‘decent’ cards available from the draw. And I was taken a little by surprise when the game end trigger came around. But, I kind of know what mistakes I made and therefore how to play a better game next time around.
18 mins rules and setup; 70 mins game time.
Results: Jeff (green): 28. Pat (blue): 27. Lindsay (orange): 25. Alex (yellow): 19. Paul (purple) 16.

The Really Nasty Horse Racing Game: Fast-paced fun, with extra humour elements added in the form of puss-cards and gambling on opponents horses.
By the fourth race (of six) Pat seemed to have won most, I’d won nothing and was down to a fiver in total cash. A reversal of fortune for race 5 allowed me a £150,000 gamble on race 6, in which my horse ran 2nd and Alex’s won - giving me a £675,000 gain on that race alone and thus the game. Yay!
But bummer for Jeff. At least he kept his shirt on.
18 mins rules and setup; 53 mins game time.
Results (£’000s): Paul (white): 1000. Alex (yellow): 825. Pat (blue): 730. Lindsay (green): 405. Jeff (red): 0.

Tante Tarantel: A nice little Doris-and-Frank design that I’d seen on Pat’s game shelf for years, but never on the table.
Players move their insect tokens across a spider’s web maze to an escape section for a variable points return. The challenge is to dodge an unpredictable but hungry spider that shuffles around the web, increasing the pace of the game with each victim consumed. Two of my three insects got eaten.
27 mins incl. rules.
Results: Lindsay (green): 11. Alex (yellow): 10. Pat (blue): 9. Jeff (black): 7. Paul (red): 6.

Maori: Variant using boats that limit where on your board map you can play your new tiles. Made for a slightly longer but more interesting game, I thought.
4 mins rules and setup; 35 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 43. Lindsay (green): 38. Jeff (black): 30. Pat (blue): 29. Paul (red): 24.

Today I handed over $5 because of Carcassonne.

The HR department at our workplace recently acquired a copy of Carcassonne for the staff room, on our advice after a casual discussion about boardgames came up. Mark and I were particularly insistent that the company not end up with a copy of Monopoly.
Now, the Foosball table and the Wii are currently more popular at lunchtimes than Carcassonne. But at least we’ve broken it out a few times now. And today Liming, Mark and I introduced a newbie. It was a good four-player game, but I’m not here to report scores, etc. Rather, to document what happened next, which was a result of a discussion with our newbie after the game about what you do if you can’t play a tile. I insisted that it would be an extremely rare case, perhaps “millions to one” - I don’t actually know the probability, this was just a casual and speculative assertion…

Anyway, our newbie said that after the standard start tile was played, all open segments of road could be joined in a loop and that would present an opportunity for an unplayable tile. Without thinking, I said that you wouldn’t have a problem with unplayable tiles, and offered, “five bucks says you can’t create such an unplayable scenario within the next 5 minutes…”
Doh. I think it took less than two. I’d forgotten about the 4-road tile!

After more consideration, another was offered featuring the full city tile.
Of course I’m not saying that there are not unplayable tile circumstances in Carcassonne - the rules even allow for them. I was simply challenging the likelihood of finding one in such a brief period.
I vow to no more make rash assertions about possible game outcomes!

Thanks to Liming for the pics, taken with his HTC Hero.

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Pat, Brian, Richard, Alex, Jeff, Lawrence, Nick, Paul.
Played: Lightning Reaction, Manga Manga, Masters Gallery, Princes of Machu Picchu, Gloria Mundi, Fairy Tale, Witch’s Brew, Lawrence’s Game, King’s Breakfast, Maori, Africa.

We welcomed game designer Lawrence R. to the session tonight. A few of us first met Lawrence at the recent Sydney Protospiel run by Boardgames Australia and even played some of his game designs since. In addition, we got in a bunch of good game-playing tonight.
Also, I’m pleased to say, much better pictures here tonight (video segment notwithstanding). Check out some of the full-sizes in the pics.

Lightning Reaction: This one was inspired by Pass the Bomb from last week, as another simple game concept to really raise anxiety levels. In addition to the standard pictures, I thought I’d try to capture some of the live action too. (Unfortunately the output quality of my $20 video camera (yes, $20) is not so good with indoor shots under artificial light. Audio is not too pleasant either. But hey - you get the idea…). And yes, I know - I can’t spell “lightning”. Sue me.
Pat won.

Manga Manga: Much-maligned real-time card game that I observed briefly, until I was diverted by Nick’s arrival with Masters Gallery.
6 mins rules and setup; 17 mins game time.
Results: Jeff: 6. Pat: 4. Alex, Brian, Lawrence: 1. Richard: 0.

Masters Galllery: This is like a Modern Art variant, without auctions. We only played 2-player, and it seems to be designed for this, although I don’t see why it couldn’t support more players. Also apparently designed for four or five rounds, we played just two to sync up with the Manga Mangans.
18 mins incl. rules and setup. 2 rounds only.
Results: Nick: 58. Paul: 53.

Princes of Machu Picchu: Those crazy Incans.
Seriously, from a distance at least, this did look like my kind of game. I’d be keen to have a go at this next time it appears on the games table.
23 mins rules & setup; 86 mins game time.
Results: Richard: 45. Brian, Nick: 44. Lawrence: 39.

Gloria Mundi: I admit I wasn’t so enthusiastic about this offering when it appeared, based on previous experiences with it. But, as with many games, I was prepared to give it another chance.
While my earliest building choice was a bit of a dud, I eventually made up for that with later purchases and eventually specialised in green blocks (farms) and buildings, with a white (legions) backup. Some false starts with the Gold and I never held these cards, let alone add buildings. Hence obtaining Gold tokens was really difficult. But I managed to pick up just enough to add more farm buildings and somehow finessed that these were mainly vp generators. By about halfway through the game I was just pulling ahead on the score track, and by 3/4 the others considered themselves playing for place. This is such a rare outcome (ie., for me to win a game like this by such a significant margin) that I can’t help but wonder whether we’ve still got some of the rules wrong …
13 mins rules & setup; 75 mins game time.
Results: Paul (smoky): 40. Jeff (green): 25. Alex (orange): 24. Pat (blue): 21.

Fairy Tale: Between-games filler. I played this, without actually knowing what I was doing, which was kind of fun, in a strange way. Particularly satisfying in not coming last, which maybe says more about the game than the players…
About 10 mins.
Results: Pat: 42. Alex: 34. Paul: 26. Jeff: 20.

Witch’s Brew: Other end of the table to Lawrence’s home brew.
5 mins rules & setup; 40 mins game time.
Results: Alex: 29. Pat: 27. Jeff: 17.

Lawrence’s game: Other end of the table to Witch’s Brew. Which reminds me – Mark actually showed up briefly, but not to play any games! Importantly, he did bring some of his actual home brew – as in chilli beer! Thanks Mark.
BTW, I’m deliberatly leaving out details here of game prototypes to respect confidentiality whilst in a pre-published state. I’m in a phase of enjoying original design prototypes at the moment, and will continue to hassle Richard and Alex (and anyone else!) to get a move-on with their designs too.
5 mins rules; 40 mins game time for 3 rounds.

King’s Breakfast: More filler-fodder.
Not long. (Thanks for the time-keeping details, Alex.)
Results: Pat: 98. Alex: 96. Jeff: 68.

Maori: The intention was to introduce Lawrence to another new game, but he had to leave before we really got started. Pat, Brian and I finished it through. Pat creamed us.
7 mins rules & setup; 40 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 56. Brian: 32. Paul: 25.

Africa: This is a game that looks great, but hasn’t been played here for a long time – I had always been a little disappointed that there wasn’t too much to this. Having said that, Richard, Alex and Jeff seemed to get some enjoyment from it tonight. Maybe it’s just a matter of accepting that this is simply a light, set-collecting and score optimising game.
10 mins rules & setup; 40 mins game time.
Results: Alex: 90. Richard: 78. Jeff: 74.

Venue: Richard’s place
Present: Pat, Brian, Andrew, Brad, Alex, Jeff, Neil F., Tommy, Richard, Paul.
Played: Die Heisse Schlacht, Oasis, Witch’s Brew, Rocketville, Timbuktu, Fredericus, Nottingham, Pass the Bomb.

Title refers simply to the fact that my two ‘big’ games tonight were about camels and deserts. We should have done Durch die Wüste and Yspahan to complete the set…
Pics again from the phone cam (to be posted tomorrow, perhaps), so not so great. Sorry.

Die Heisse Schlacht: Balls of steel/ Balls of polycarbonite variant: If you choose to roll 2 or all 3 dice at once and make it 7 or under, you get the legal move and an extra one or two spaces backward or forward, to help you cross the scoring line or land on another player’s token. Jeff played in true do-or-die spirit by taking this risk frequently. He didn’t win, but he did earn respect. So important in a game about a restaurant buffet service.
17 mins game time.
Results: Brad: 18. Pat: 15. Neil F: 14. Jeff: 13. Paul: 11. Alex: 3.

Oasis: Offer cards from your face-down deck, build camel trains and land segments on the board, gain scoring tokens to make your board placements worth something.
I was going well early on with a great pick-up of camel scorers, but then my camel train potential was cut off by a bastard play by Andrew. Ouch.
12 mins rules and setup; 48 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 107. Brad (black): 88. Andrew (red): 86. Paul (yellow): 66. Jeff (green): 61.

I should add that my casual table-singing was insulted during this session. I don’t know what some of you guys thought I was singing, but on finding and presenting this I can now feel fully vindicated. I sounded exactly like this, and I don’t understand why you didn’t get it - presumably you’ve never heard this one before…?

(”Send your camel to bed…”? Hmmm… Moving on.)

Witch’s Brew: Played on the other table.
About 10 mins rules and setup; 40 mins game time.
Results: Tommy: 20. Richard: 14. Brian: 13. Alex: 12. Neil F: 11.

Rocketville: This was played on the other table to Timbuktu. I avoided it because I vaguely recalled less than favourable reviews.
So I asked the players afterwards - did it suck? Yes, was the answer, but it was funny, and therefore worthwhile.
Alex kindly transcribed the results in my notebook and wrote “yup yup yup” against Brian’s score result. Some explanation and discussion on this afterwards about Alex being ‘Brianed’ during this game. Maybe this is a new verb to enter the gamer’s lexicon? I think the definition would be similar to being “pussed”, with the difference being that as a result of a combination of actions carried out by Brian in his unique style..!
45 mins incl. rules & setup.
Results: Brian: 26. Alex: 20. Brad: 10. Andrew: 9. Pat: 7.

Timbuktu: Camels, deserts and deduction. This was an enjoyable session, although I couldn’t help but be sympathetic for Tommy, who lost his camel-carried goods with excruciating frequency.
By the end, Jeff and I managed to retain all but four each of our goods tokens. Unfortunately for me, his combinations were worth slightly more than mine…
About 10 mins rules & setup; 75 mins game time.
Results: Jeff (blue): 133. Paul (black): 125. Richard (orange): 100. Neil F. (red): 85. Tommy (green): 28.

Fredericus: “Vewy well - I shall fwee… Dewickus!”
About 26 mins.
Results: Brian: 17. Alex: 16. Brad, Pat: 12.

Nottingham: Two or three years old - although anew-to-us title from Uwe Rosenburg. Collect sets of cards to score points, or play a revealed card to rob or force a ‘trade’ (in various ways) with the cards from other players’ hands. OK game for so many people (supports 7), but I had to continuely refer to the player aid for an explanation of every card’s action. I suspect that without this player aid, most people would give up on this very quickly…
12 mins rules & setup; 33 mins game time.
Results: Richard (purple): 50. Tommy (grey): 41. Pat (blue): 38. Paul (white), Jeff (green): 35. Alex (yellow): 28. Brian (red): 25.

Pass the Bomb: A family fun game to finish off the night, and we dragged in Karen in who was still wandering around. Ridiculously funny and frantic, there is a genuine anxiety with the handling of the ticking bomb. As I said, I felt like I needed a sedative to calm myself down after playing this!
25 mins.
Results: Karen survives. Paul the last to be blown up, then in order Richard, Alex, Tommy, Brian, Pat, Jeff.