The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Paul’s place
Present: Alex, Richard, Brian, Pat, Paul
Played: Money, Ra the Dice Game, Wildlife, Indiana Jones Top Trumps, Corsari.

Pat miss a Sunday night session?! Outrageous! The best response was from Neil F., who said, “I’ve fallen off my chair and refuse to get up”.
But everything worked out ok - he managed to escape his social commitment at about 8pm, and turned up before we finished Ra the Dice Game…

Money: An old Knizia piece to get things started. I wouldn’t have thought of picking this, but it was good to see it get an airing (even if I didn’t play!).
Results: Alex: 940. Richard: 720. Brian: 470.

Ra: The Dice Game: At last I got to have a play at this. Quite reminiscent of Roll Through the Ages, although distinguished by strong alignment with the original Ra tile collection goals. It did take me half the game to get a good sense of how to play ‘well’ with given dice rolls. Then the impact and decision-making of catastrophes took me by surprise. But, I really like this - it is quite light and a good length, produces a good level of tension, and it’s clear and easy to see what the strategies are of each of the other players. Nice one.
In this playing, Richard would have easily come in second, and maybe nudged Alex for first, if he’d been able to get his rivers to flood!
9 mins rules and setup; 38 mins game time.
Results: Alex (yellow): 27. Paul (green): 18. Richard (blue), Brian (red): 12.

Wildlife: It’s a long time since this one has been played in our group (and maybe the first time for Brian?), although Pat might have have more recent experience with his Thursday nighters. Pat was particularly successful in getting control of the special abilities cards (at one point I’m sure he had about 8 of them), and also in bidding for new tile placements. In his card bids, Pat was apparently unconcerned with moving negative on the score track in order to win bids, especially near the start of the game, which is something the rest of us were either not comfortable with or just not ‘used to’ doing.
It was this approach and differentiation from the rest of us that no doubt set him up for the overwhelming win, despite attempts in the last few turns to pare back his advantages! Good lessons all round there.
24 mins rules and setup; 90 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 95. Brian (green): 77. Richard (orange): 75. Paul (brown): 51. Alex (yellow): 42.

Indiana Jones Top Trumps: I understand this was spotted in our kids’ game box by Pat, so the call went up. I guess it keeps up the diversity of games played, not that anyone’s counting. ;-)
We played a variant known by Alex that keeps the natural game length to something reasonable for what it is.
4 mins game choice debate and rules explan (for Alex’s variant); 11 mins game time.
Results: Pat: 14. Alex: 5. Paul: 11.

Corsari: Well-worn closing favourite for this particular group of three gamers.
44 mins game time; 6 hands.
Results (lower is better): Alex: 73. Pat: 85. Paul: 103.