Spirit Games Wednesday Night - 2008

[Zarniwoop]

2 Jan 2008
Tonight we started the evening off with a couple of rounds of Guillotine playing with five people.
The first round was one by myself but only by 1 point, the second round was won by Ian after a particularly cut-throat round (excuse the pun).

The Second half of the evening was spent playing another 6 player Tiki! Mountain which, after a very close fought battle involving a lot of swapping places, obstacle dropping and stealing of items lead to the game being won by Ian with a very decisive final move.

This was a very good start to 2008 both games were very enjoyable and the company was good as ever.
 

[Zarniwoop]

This week we had a lot of people turn up so we split into two groups.

My Dwarves Fly
Players make a hand of 5 cards selecting from two decks a creature deck and an acion deck. They then can do one of four actions: Place a creature card in front of them; Place an ability card on existing creature card (thiers or another player); Play a battle card; or discard a card.

The main aspect of the game is the battles, each player must field the stated amount of creatures into the fight. You roll dice to determine your battle strength and 1's count towards treasure (though abilities and certain creatures change this). After the battle is over players get the chance to play event cards which can effect the outcome of the battle. These are revealed all at once and the various effects acted upon. The winner of the battle takes the treasure they found during the fight and then loses their most powerful creature from the fight to the discard pile.

The winner is the first player to reach 15 gold

I really like this game, its fun and the artwork is funny and very good. There are a few quirks in the rules but these can be ironed out by group concensus. On the whole I would recomend this to anyone to play.

We managed to get Phil & Sal playing in this game. We ended up with a 4 player game of this with Myself and Simon.
This was a fun game as always, with quite a few battles, mostly started by Phil but in the end it was a resounding win by Sal.

Gloom
This is a really "fun" game involving a very unique set of cards that are transparent with text and other items printed on them. The main aim is to make you family members as miserable as possible and then kill them off.
There are 3 kinds of cards:

Modifiers that either make a person more miserable (negative score) or make a person happier (positive score) these are either played on your own or other players families.
Events that have an effect on gamelplay, sometimes even bringing the dead back to life or preventing someone dying
Death These cards are used to kill of your characters.

Each modifier is stacked on top of your character and the current status is read by looking at the stack. As the cards are transparent some bits become covered over and others added which is a fantastic mechanic and very unique.

Some of the modifiers whilst having a negative score sometimes have additional features that can effect you like losing a turn or reducing your hand size.

Once someone has killed of all their family members the game ends and the person wih the mose negative score wins.

Settlers of Catan

The Settlers game was good as usual, the numbers were a little awkwardly place against the resources needed so there was a shortage of one or two for a while, but as usual one person managed to overcome this problem and win the game. this is a game I always enjoy.

Sherlock Holmes

This card game was interesting, You have to move from London to the country and visa versa placing cards in turn and trying to find out who has the villain cards, if you manage to keep hold of your villain/s and not be found out then you benefit from loads of extra points towards the end of the game. mulitiple rounds can be played and counted up at the end.

[Zarniwoop]

This week was another full evening where we had to split into two groups.

Our Group, consisting of Sally, Andie, Myself and Carole played a game of Infernal Contraption followed by a round of Guillotine.

For Infernal Contraption we played the unexpanded game as it was Andie's first game. The game started off fairly even then through various attacks and a bit of an own goal I managed to deplete my own parts pile and took myself out of the game. Andie was then viciously annihilated by Carole who then went on to crush Sally without any remorse  winning in style!

Guillotine was as fun as ever, this is a great little game with lots of nice cards and fun graphics. I did really bad in this game with a pretty low score leaving the other to fight over first place which I believe went to Sally (but I may wrong).

The others played a game of powergrid with the new card set. I like powergrid this another great game which is always fun to play. I have not tried it with the new cards but I'm sure I will get a chance another week.

[Zarniwoop]

The Wed nights are getting popular we filled two tables again this week!.

On Our table we played a game of Thebes with 4 people but we used the 3 Player setup rules.
Play commences over 3 years 1901 to 1903 the player take on the role of Archaeologist trying to dig for artifacts in various locations and put on exhibits with their finds.

In order to perform a dig players must do research and get specialist knowledge in the region they wish to dig. Each turn a player can move, take an action (Research, Dig or put on an exhibition). There are 4 cards on the board which represent specialist knowledge, general knowledge, rumours or specialist cards. Each of these cards is tied to a specific city on the board and has a cost in weeks associated with it. There is a track around the edge of the board marked in weeks, each move on the board following lines marked on each cost 1 week per step.

When players have accumlated knowledge they can move to a site and attempt to dig for artifacts, the first player to try a dig gets a 1 point treasure for free. Each player has a disc which turn to indicate how much knowledge they have of the site ( a combination of specilaist and general ) they look at how many weeks they want to spend digging and this then tells them how many tokens they can pull out of a bag for that site. The bag contains various artifcats of different valus plus 2 book tokens (one general one specialist) plus a number of blanks tokens. Any blank tokens pulled are placed back in the bag. Each player can only dig once at each site per year unless they get a special permit card allowing an extra dig by discarding it.

Exhibition cards turn up as play progresses and to colect these the player needs to have the requesit number of artifacts from the indicated sites, be in the city marked on the card and spend the number of weeks indicated to put on the exhibition. Small exhibitions are worth 4 victory points and large ones are worth 5.

There are also congress cards which go up in value the more of them you have.

Winning the game, after the last player completes the last year the victory points are added up and the player with the most wins.

Points are awarded as follows:
The player with the most specialist in a site gets 5 points, if tied then each player tied gets 3.
Each artifact is worth points (1-7)
Congress cards (1-28)

If you play a 4 player game as laid out in the rules the game plays differently to other numbers of players. This is because the game is played over 2 years in a 4 player rather than the normal 3 years. Having less time significantly changes tactics and strategies.

We've found that for a 4 player game if you set it up the same as a 3 player game it works much better.

The other table played a game of Race for the Galaxy.
Explore, Settle, Develop, Trade, Consume, or Produce? Which do you need the most? Which of Earth's former colonies will be most successful at settling the galaxy, now that JumpDrive exists? Who will discover the secrets of the mysteriously vanished Alien Overlords? Your goal: to build the most prosperous and powerful space empire!

[Zarniwoop]

We split into groups again this week, our group consisted of Myself, Carole, Sally, Phil & Philsy.
The others played a 4 player Infernal Contraption.

We decided to play Valley of the Mammoths After a little bit of time setting things up we started playing using the additional fire rules.

With a five player game the board is quite crowded and thus there is quite a bit of player interaction on the board. There also seemed to be a glut of animals on the south end of the board leading to Phil & Sal having a lean winter. Also with a little help from bad events, Tribal fights and food shortages their tribes became extinct, as we forgot about the resurrection rule. Still as it turned out the others had finished their game and most of them had decided to call it a night leaving Simon on his own so him and Phil had a game of something together whilst we finshed ours.

[Zarniwoop]

As usual we had two tables of games being played.

The other table was deeply involved in a Game of Antler Island.

Whilst on our table Roy wanted to try out his new copy of Power Grid.
This is a classic game and has made a few appearances at the Wednesday night games. The basic premise is you are trying to buildpower stations to power a network of houses. During the game you bid for power stations, pay for resources to power them and build your network of houses. The game is won by the person who can power the most of their network at the end, not the one with the largest network.

The game we played was very close and the networks built by each player had gotten large, but in the end the winner was Richard who not only managed to build a large network but had managed his resources well enough to power the most at the end game. Very enjoyable and always fun to play. The pieces are of high quality and the artwork superb.

[Zarniwoop]

Tonight both tables were playing Pandemic.

The premise of the game is your team are trying to eradicate four deadly diseases spreading across the globe. You work together to try and get the resources to develop a cure for the diseases. Each team member has particular strengths that aid in the eradication of the diseases and you must cooperate in order to maximise your chances of beating the pandemic.

Each turn you can take up to 4 actions,
Examples are moving to an adjacent city or if you are at a research centre you can move straight to another city with a research centre for 1 action. Remove a cube of virus from the city you are in. Build a research centre if you have the card for that city in your hand.

Certain characters allow you to do more with these actions as a special ability, like the Medic can remove all cubes from a city for 1 action.

On your turn you take your actions, you then draw 2 player cards and then draw infection cards acting on them by placing cubes on those cities. If a city already has 3 cubes of the same disease on it then you have an outbreak placing 1 cube of that disease on all adjacent connected cities, if they then get more than 3 cubes the infection spreads wider.

This game is unpredictable the first game I played went really quickly as the 3 of us failed to control a major outbreak in Asia resulting in a swift completion of the outbreak track ending the game. The second game lasted a bit longer but again we failed to contain a major outbreak.

As a team you are trying to control the outbreaks whilst attempting to develop the cures. To develop a cure you need to collect 5 cards of the same colour and then when you are at a research centre use an action to discard them thus developing the cure. Then once all the cubes of this disease are removed it prevents any further outbreaks and you can ignore infection cards for this disease.

This game is just FUN. It is a cooperative game, and you do need to work together utilizing each team member's strength to its best.

We played two games of it the same night after the first ones quick finish and I'm sure I will be playing this one again.

After failing to save the world twice we decided to try something a little differenet and played a game of Samurai.

This is a beautiful game. The components of this game are of very good quality and very much in line with the whole theme.

The game is deceptively easy to learn but will take time to master the right strategies to win.
You collect pieces from the board either a Buddha, Rice Field or High Helmet by placing tiles around them which various amounts of influence marked on them. Once the item is completely surrounded by tiles the player with the most influence takes the item, if there is a tie the piece is removed and placed next to the board. You have five tiles in your hand and the rest are face down in front of your screen which you use to restock you hand as you play.

In a 3 or 4 player game your captured pieces are stored behind the screen so you never quite know what the other players have got which is what makes the game so strategic is you have to plan carefully what pieces you go for.

It is a very tactical game and leaves you with a lot to think about but plays reasonably fast. There is a certain amount of luck involved in getting the right tile you need to play at the right time but this just adds to the tension and leaves plenty of room for re-playability.

The unique scoring system means that just when you think you may have a winning position it suddenly swings in favour of one of you opponents. If you have the most of 2 or more of the pieces you Win, if more than one player has the most of a piece (ie player 1 has most Rice Fields, Player 2 has most Buddhas) they set aside those pieces and count the pieces they have left and the winner is the one with the most.

I would definitely recommend this one for your collection.

[Zarniwoop]

One table was playing Pandemic again whilst our table had a game of Mag-Blast.

Mag-Blast is a FUN game, each player has a command ship and a series of fleet ship's surrounding it. The idea is that you are trying to shoot down your opposing fleets and destroy the command ship. The last ship standing is the winner.

Whilst the game should normally be played fairly fast as this was the first game for most of us it did not flow well as people were getting to grips with the rules and what the various cards did. That said it was still good fun and I can see the potential of it once players are familiar with what they need to do.

You place your fleet cards around your Command ship card and each fleet ship can fire once at an enemy ship. You can only target a ship on the same zone as the one firing which is where the ability to move you ships around can come in handy. You also need to make sure you have no gaps in your fleet where other players can then target your command ship directly.

To fire a ships turret you need to have a blast card with the appropriate coloured turret matching that of your ship. If you successfully hit the target ship the blast card is placed under that ship to show its accumulated damage. Once you have as much damage under your ship as it's hull strength is destroyed and placed in the discard pile.

You can reinforce your fleet by discard cards with resource markers either 3 with the same type of resource icon or 1 of each type. You can then draw a new fleet ship to be placed in a zone of your choice. You can have a Max of 3 fleet ships per zone.

You can have carriers that can launch squadrons these are very powerful as once used the squadron returns to your hand unlike blast cards. However, the damage they deal is temporary so if you do not destroy a ship with that damage it will be wasted. Squadrons can also be used to defend against other players squadrons and sometimes this results in both squadrons being discarded.

Overall this is a fun game and once familiar will be fast paced, the unique targeting system for blasts is that you have to make a suitable noise when attacking if you fail to make one the shot misses (as we were learning we skipped this.. we may have missed out on a vitally fun part of the game though  )


To finish the evening off we decided to play an old classic Settlers of Catan but we decided to play with the two small expansions The Great River
 and The Fisherman of Catan.

Settlers is always a great game and is never the same twice the addition of these expansions adds some unique twists that give players extra ways to score victory points or effect the gameplay. I thouroughly enjoyed this combination and would recommend both these expansions to anyone and I feel they work very well together.

[Zarniwoop]

Only a small handful of us tonight so we played a few shorter games.

We had a quick game of Bloody Legacy which was very cutthroat with everyone taken down to 1 life except Phil who eventually won but it was down to the last life each between me and Phil and he got me when I had no defence left 

We then had a couple of rounds of Guillotine which went very quickly but as always were really good fun.

We "persuaded" a couple of the roleplayers (Arnu and Snakes in the Tiki lounge) to stay after their game to play a game of Samurai.

To round the evening off we dusted off an old classic and played a game of Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. This is always an enjoyable game and should be part of anyone's collection it works well with 2 or more players. Phil managed another victory (the gaming gods were with him that evening

[Zarniwoop]

We had a good turnout this week.

The first table started with a game of Pandemic whilst we setup on the other table to play a game of Mwahahaha!.

Mwahahaha! is immense fun you take on the role of one of the mad genius/scientist etc who wants to take over the world. You get to pick one doomsday machine from a set of three. Each device requires different resources to power and your character is allowed to convert various resource cards into resources in differing amounts and one resource they are not able to convert but can sacrifice cards at creation phase to get resources of this type.

During creation you can trade with other players, spend cards to get resources up to your limit  or buy empire cards (which may allow you to convert more of your resource card value into resources) and Minion Cards (which help you to steal empire cards or resources from other players). One nasty twist is there are a number of betrayal cards in the resource deck, when trading with players you can claim this as any resource you like. Once you get someone to trade you get the resource you want and they get nothing!

During the rivalry phase you get to use your minions to steal resources or empire cards. They have a number associated with the resource and this determines how many dice you roll. If you are stealing resources from another players machine they get 2 dice for resources on the doomsday device plus any extras from their minions they can use in defense. It's then a matter of a straight roll off counting successes, any missing dice are treated as 2's. This rolling mechanic is used throughout the game and is very simple and elegant.

Next comes the Domination phase where everyone gets to threaten a City, State, Country or the World. Each step requires much more resources to fire up and requires more successes to gain the spoils of victory. On a successful threat you will be given a number of resources depending on the machine and the level you used it at. You can use each level twice for free then each subsequent use will incur humiliation penalties.  If you fail you can either slink away incurring the humiliation penalty or you can blow up the City, State or Country gaining a +1die bonus but losing your doomsday device. You can discard your doomsday device and select another one from a set of three at this point as well.

The game is won when someone builds enough resources to power the doomsday device to World Domination level and succeeds in the threat.

This was really fun, but does play a lot longer than it says on the tin.

The pieces are very colourful and the artwork suits the theme very well.

[Zarniwoop]

We had two tables of gamers tonight, the first table played a game of Race for the Galaxy.

Our table started with a game of Blue Moon City this is a wonderful game, simple to play and full of beautiful artwork and pieces. After a fairly close game I finally made the final sacrifice at the Obelisk to win the game.

Our second game was Samurai this is a great strategic game which is always fun to play. After struggling to get going in this game I finally thought I had caught up until the end of game reveal where I did not manage the most of any of the pieces so was knocked out of the running for winner. It is one of those games where you never really know where you are in the running and that adds to the enjoyment of the game.

After spending late nights shifting stuff from the old shop into the current one Phil fancied an early night so we packed up early and helped shift some final pieces from the old shop to take back to his house for storage!.

[Zarniwoop]

We split over two tables again tonight. Richard had a prototype new version of Risk, which looked very cool in dark grey colour scheme which contasted well with the coloured player pieces. By all accounts it played very well and there was much banter coming from their table which can only be a good sign.

After looking around the wares in the shop for a while Philsy turned up so we sat down for a game of Dragonland. Each player takes 3 pawns of red, green and blue and places the first on the board starting from any pf the 3 starting caves. After that each player rolls two dice and can move 2 of their 3 pawns using the value on the dice. As you move around the board you can stop at volcanoes and collect various gems, dragon eggs and tokens. You can collect a gem of any colour or an egg and the token or all of the gems that match your pawns colour. To score you have to have a complete set of dragon egg and a gem of each colour though you can use clear gems as any coloured gem this scores 10, you get 1 point for any the rest of the pieces you have. However, you require a ring on your pawn or you have to lose all the gems that match its colour. The various tokens allow you to perform extra tasks or movements. If you roll a 4 you can call a dragon to the volcano you are in or fly a dragon in your volcano to another one (the colour has to match your pawn). Some tokens you take stay in the volcanoes (dragons, rings) when you reach a volcano with a ring you can elect to take a ring instead of one of the other items. It was a close game between Carole and Philsy who eventually won by 1 point, I confess I failed to grasp the scoring and managed to easily come last!!.

We then played a 4 player game of Shear Panic with Sally, after unpacking all the little sheep and running quickly through the rules we started off. Things got off to a good start for myself and Philsy but not so good for Sally. As we pushed through the various fields there was much shenanigans and just as Sally was catching up there was a cruel shearing of one of her sheep taking it out of the game, and I must confess that was my fault. In the end Philsy won but I was close and the other were not that far behind either.

We rounded the evening off with a game of Guillotine which is always a fun game and was a perfect end to the evening. I managed to pull a win out of this one but again it was very close.

[Zarniwoop]

We had two tables of gamers this week again.
The first table ending up playing Perikles which seemed to be going well.

We started our session with a game of Stone Age this was a very beautiful game, the board, the pieces, the cards are extremely good quality and the artwork is superb. It has a fantastic theme and setting reflected well in the gameplay. Each turn players allocate their initial supply of people onto various areas on the board to try and collect resources, build (and gain Victory Points), collect cards, gain tools, forage for food or increase your bank of people.

Each area has limited space for people except for the forage field which has unlimited capacity. For each person you have in a resource area (Food,Wood, Brick, Stone, Gold) you roll 1 dice, each resource has a point cost you spend the points rolled to buy the resource. Starting with the first player you place your people in these areas, however you can only place people in one area at a time and you can not increase them on further turns. Play rotates around the players until all the people have been placed, then starting with the first player you resolve the action for each set of people. The order you do them in is your choice and you will find that doing them in the right order helps you improve your options during this part. After each player has completed this you then have to pay 1 piece of food for every person you have, if you do not have enough you pay the difference in resources if that is still not enough you lose points.

Cards you collect give you bonuses, some immediate, some for collecting enough different types and others give special Victory points based on what you have built, the number of people etc. A very popular area is the one that increases your food production (so you start getting food for free) however there is only one space there so its usually the first or second player that ends up taking this.

I really enjoyed this game and will look forward to playing it again real soon. I lost completely but still enjoyed the game and will now have a better idea of what to do for future sessions.

Philsy was victorious (by a long way) with Neil and Carole not far behind. I was not even in sight of the rest but then at least I had some points.

This would make a worthwhile addition to anyone's collection.

We finished the evening off with a game of Mag-Blast this is a very neat little game and plays well. After a brief catch up on the rules we started off and much fun ensued. After initially complaing he had smaller ships than everyone else in the final shoot-up with Carole, Neil won the game. I was the first casualty followed not long after by Philsy.

Another good evening at the shop look forward to next week when I hope to get another game of Mwahahaha!.

[Zarniwoop]

The other table of gamers played Glory to Rome which appeared to go down well with most of them.

Our table played a game of My Dwarves Fly with myself Carole and Phil which was going Carole's way until Phil had a better offer from the other table to try out the new version of Glory to Rome at which point we packed it away. We then managed to drag Sally away from the computer to have a nice game of Blue Moon City which is always a good game easy to pick up. It was a close fought battle and very enjoyable game.

[Zarniwoop]

This week we twisted Philsy's arm and got in another game of Mwahahaha! so we could get a better grip of the rules. Once again this was a fun game, though we seemed to struggle a bit more this time around. IT was a very close game but after some seriously sneaky play from Carole she pipped everyone to the post of World Domination and won the game.

We then played a game of Medievalia which is a very interesting game but does seem to be one of those games where the expected playtime is vastly underestimated. You have a hand of 8 cards and city placed in front of them. Through the game you use the resource on one card, by tapping it, to bring other cards from your hand into play. Often you need a combination in order to do this. The same mechanic is used to construct buildings from one of the piles setup on at the start of the game. Once you have characters placed in front of you you can send those to neighbouring players areas to ransack and destroy their resources. You can protect your areas by placing buildings or people in them. There is a lot going on in this game and I can see it will take a while to get to grips with the various aspects of it. I enjoyed it, but it's not one I would buy, that said I would play it again.

The other table started looking at With Sword and Shield but I think they ended up giving up on the idea and played something else. They then played another game of Race for the Galaxy