The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Craig’s place
Present: Pat, Brian, Alex, Jeff, Richard, Craig, Paul.
Played: Java, Le Havre, Mustang, Tain, King of Siam, Genesis, Royal Palace, Maori, Bang!

Entry title today is a reference to the venue (Craig’s place) and the theme of some of our games (Mustang and Bang!).
Sorry about the picture quality today. Still getting used to the ‘new’ Nokia phone camera…

Le Havre: I didn’t play this but it was the first thing I spotted when I arrived. Might have been the longest game played in this session.
Results: Jeff (green): 136. Alex (purple): 71. Brian (red): 117.

Java: This was on at the other the other end of table to Le Havre. It was getting towards the end and the brain-burning was starting to kick in, with each player taking at least 5 minutes to work through their last turn! Richard nudged it out by one point.
Results: Richard (black): 107. Pat (blue): 106. Craig (red): 75.

Mustang: This is one of a haul of Polish designed-and-published games from a recent online retailer sale, and the first with a Western theme tonight. In this one you capture horsey tokens by playing Poker-like hands, with the interest being in taking tokens from your opponents. Unfortunately, in our game, even this aspect wasn’t all that interesting.
13 mins rules and setup; 19 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 21. Craig: 17. Richard: 16. Paul: 10.

Tain: Our second Polish invention for the night. This one is about cattle rustling, although in tribal Ireland rather than North American prairies.
I thought there would be some promise with this one, given the bluffing aspect. However, turns seemed to play out as almost pure guess-work, leaving no interest in the bluff plays. Despite Craig having lost 3 of his tokens (two boys and the Chieftain’s daughter) and all of his red jewel tokens, he still won easily by ensuring a consistent capture of cattle.
It would be good to try this with others, specifically Alex and Richard, to see if the subtle bluffing elements really can arise. Disappointingly they didn’t in this session.
15 mins rules and setup; 25 mins game time.
Results: Craig (red): 31. Paul (green): 24. Pat (blue): 23.

King of Siam: From afar the artwork on the board reminded me of Martin Wallace’s Struggle of Empires. I have no further commentary on this one, except that it seems to be played in teams of two. And I don’t understand the score results - 3 + 1/40 …?
55 mins incl. rules and setup.
Results: Richard + Brian: 3+1/40. Jeff + Alex: 3.

Genesis: Pre-historic tile-laying from Dr Knizia, apparently a few years old now, although this is the first time appearing in our group.
Elegantly simple rules and game play. I can see this being rolled out as a good 20-30 min filler. Despite the box cover art joke showing early man hunting a sabre-tooth tiger, with a brachiosaur in the background. And none of them are even slightly interested in the exploding volcano right behind them.
6 mins rules and setup; 24 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 33. Brian: 31. Richard, Paul: 26.

Royal Palace: Didn’t get a close look at this one, but from afar looked quite interesting. I also understand it was the second time it got played tonight, so it must have something going for it.
65 mins incl. rules and setup.
Results: Alex: 75. Craig: 69. Jeff: 57.

Maori: Very strongly reminiscent of Vikings, perhaps because the same artists worked on both titles. But I would also guess that the designer Gunter Burkhardt was inspired by Michael Kiesling’s design. But also much simpler. The end snuck up on me a little, but a nice game, which places it in the same canoe as Genesis - a really decent, aesthetically-pleasing 1/2hr settler.
32 mins incl. rules and setup.
Results: Richard: 45. Pat: 34. Brian: 24. Paul: 21.

Bang!: 24 mins for the first game (incl. rules). Craig was the Sheriff, but managed to get himself shot after not too many turns.
Pat left before the second game, which ran for 32 mins. Alex the Sheriff killed the outlaw Richard, before being shot by Brian, another outlaw, who therefore won along with Craig. Jeff was the renegade, I was the deputy, but everyone else guessed it was the other way around.
Pleasant shooting fun, once you can past the confusing rules for the various card effects.