Narrative in Games

I've had a good week of gaming this week, trying to fill the hole left in my life by the absent wife and daughter. Last weekend I made it to Newcastle Gamers for their all day session on Saturday (it was my first visit in months!) and then Dave came round on Sunday night for X-Wing minis. Monday and Thursday were Games Nights, Saturday was Newcastle Gamers again and Sunday we played Twilight Imperium :-) On top of all that, Tuesday I played Codename: Vacuum at lunchtime with Dave and then in the evening it was Newcastle Playtest.

What struck me about the beginning of the week (and Twilight Imperium!) was the stand out games had great narratives. During play you felt like you were telling a story. On Saturday I'd played A Study in Emerald, Snowdonia and Battlestar Galactica among others. Those three stood out for the clearly defined story we were telling. Sunday's X-Wing minis was a blast and Dave loved it so much that he was still singing its praises at work on Monday to anyone who'd listen. We'd played three games: the introductory game, then a 50 and finally 100 point battle. In each game there was ebb and flow, critical moments when everything hung in the balance - the crap dice roll where the battered, limping Tie Fighter manages to weave between the lasers just long enough to take out the Y-Wing, the epic dice roll where the tricked out B-Wing loses its shields and takes some damage suddenly changing the balance of power dramatically. It was great: there was a story unfolding before our very eyes, and we had (some!) control over it. After Twilight Imperium we spent a good half hour (after a ten hour game!) talking about the highs and lows of the game: massive fleets mutually annihilating each other, the cheeky action card that stops someone claiming an objective, etc.

Our group even creates narrative around games so simple that they don't even have a theme. There's Helga the imaginary milkmaid who turns up when someone sends a card round a few time in No Thanks! when only they can benefit from it, and Gunther the 70s porn star who turns up in a game of [6|11] Nimmt! when someone is about to get shafted!

I was reminded of Joe Gola's awesome Amun Re session report. The game was just a framework that the story hung off. Playing the game is a form of collective story telling.

Tuesday lunchtime Dave and I sat down for our first game of Vacuum in a good couple of months. I'd mothballed Vacuum during November while I concentrated on Zombology for NaGa DeMon and then I'd been too busy in December to do anything at all really. We were trying out a new trade mechanism inspired by Dan, my Newcastle Playtest co-host. Dave and I have played at least fifty games together, and this was the first major change to Trade. We were focussed on getting our heads round the new mechanism and a feel for whether or not it worked. At the end Dave had some concerns about the fact the you discarded the trade cards into an opponent's graveyard - he didn't like the lack of control over your deck that implied (he usually runs an extremely lean deck). Thematically it made sense to me - if you trade with someone they get a trade benefit and it fit my aim that trade be a non-combative form of interaction in the game where you do something that provides a trade benefit to both player and target. Plus it was much simpler to track than the previous mechanism.

So far so good. It was one in a long series of games of Vacuum Dave and I have played and felt much like any other. We explored the solar system, Dave captured lots of locations (a favourite tactic of his) but didn't whale on me (unusual!). I focussed on researching the tech tree and striving towards the Knowledge goal, which I brought in a few turns before the end of the game. Dave's deck was unusually chubby and he couldn't get the right combination of cards together to chose a Conquest victory, so I managed to bring in the second victory condition: Exploration which he beat me on, but not by enough to win. Like the fifty games before it there wasn't a particularly overarching story to the game - we were just cracking on with it. The only stand out moments came from the exploration mechanism.

For the first fifty odd plays, the exploration mechanism involved drawing a given number of cards from a deck and picking the best one to bring into play. It was pretty dull. In September or October last year Paul Thompson suggested spicing it up: "If I'm playing a steampunk game I expect to be finding resources or exploiting natives or being attacked". Off the back of that suggestion, I changed the exploration mechanic to bring both less randomness (you choose a location to explore) and more (each location has an event on it that could be good, bad or indifferent). In our lunchtime game I'd explored Geostationary Orbit early on and found a Silicate Consciousness, adding an advanced Artificial Intelligence card to my deck very early in the game. A few turns later Dave had discovered a Heat Ray which improved the strength of all his military units. The final stand out moment was Dave's two or three attempts to explore Pluto, all of which failed with contact lost to his probe. It was noteworthy: "Pluto is hard to explore!"

That evening I played Vacuum again at Newcastle Playtest with Dan and it was a completely different experience. In the second turn Dan sent a probe to Earth-Moon L1 and discovered a really unfriendly alien race. Each turn they attacked our strongest location with a military strength of 25! At this early point in the game our total military strength was 4 or 5 each. Dan lost control of the US (his homeland) and then I promptly lost control of France (mine). All of a sudden it was the third turn of the game, neither of us controlled any territory, had any income or any real chance of capturing territory until the overwhelming might of the alien aggressors was vanquished. Going deep underground the French Resistance and the US minutemen researched martial technologies and assembled military power. Trading (what I can only imagine were packets of fags and tinned goods - that's cigarettes and canned goods for my American audience!) between each other to gain the income we needed to fund our boffins to develop some decent military units. Slowly we accrued military strength while researching other technologies and occasionally sending out a probe to try to find something helpful. Occasionally we managed to find a seam of valuable materials which we could exploit for a turn until the aliens promptly wiped them clean of human presence. Finally I got to the point where I had a couple of warships and an armada on ready alert - only 16 military strength - but I had more armadas in my deck and a reasonable chance of drawing one next turn, so I sent out a sortie and captured Atlantis. At the end of my turn I drew a new hand: all armadas! The hand was so good I had to show Dan! My next turn rolled around, and when the aliens came knocking I had 42 military strength - an auspicious number :-) I annihilated them and then sent the two unused armadas over the scorched earth to claim the US and France. Dan meanwhile had managed to launch an orbital weapons platform, ready to defend his (as yet non-existant) territories with the threat of nuclear rain from orbit. For the rest of the game we both had the large militaries we'd acquired early on to defeat the aliens. I used mine to conquer a large chunk of the solar system, Dan used his to raid my territories, safe in the knowledge that his nuclear threat would prevent reprisal - most turns I could see off his predation, but I lost several locations to him during the game. The game eventually ended when I chose Conquest as a scoring condition and Dan quickly got Knowledge in before I had a chance to get Population as the second.

The game had such a strong narrative that I had to relate it to Dave in the office the next morning (and in fact to you here). The game lasted just under an hour (not bad for Dan's second game) and fully one third of that we were under assault, severely limited in what we could do. It was hard, but it felt like we were under assault, too afraid to show our faces until we'd built up the military we'd need to defend a territory against the alien scourge. It's rare that aggressor card turns up in a game, and especially rare to see it so early. The game was unusual and totally different as a result. It's not all good news though, in his feedback email Dan described the aggressors as 'annoying' which is probably something I need to pay particular heed to.

Dave and I have had some ideas about how to bring this level of excitement to some of the other strategies in the game. I'm really excited about Vacuum again :-D

Session Report: Headingley Games Club

On Thursday Dave and I went to Hugo's games club in Leeds. I was going with the intention of trying to play Border Reivers with a bunch of people and hopefully sell some, like I had done in London the week before.

It took us about an hour to get there (it's on the 'wrong' side of Leeds), and then it took us another fifteen minutes to find the place (my trusty sense of direction failed me after we parked the car) - fortunately, Dave used his army skills and managed to navigate by the stars or something and we eventually found the place.

We walked into the venue and found a large room full of people all playing Games Workshop games such as Warhammer 40K, Blood Bowl and Warhammer Ancient Battles. I never knew they'd done an ancients game - shows how out of the loop I am. Anyway, apart from a blast from the past this wasn't what I was looking for - we were directed upstairs. Upstairs was more like it, there were eight people playing board games, including Canal Mania which I've been meaning to play for ages. There was also a back room where a small bunch of people were playing Magic: The Gathering, which was a break from their normal game of roleplay wrestling. Urrrgghh. The less said about that disturbing idea the better.

Sadly for my playing Border Reivers idea, I recognised a lot of the people from Beyond Monopoly and Psychocon. So we volunteered to join in with a game of Puerto Rico that would be starting in around half an hour. With half an hour to kill, Dave and I set up a quick 2-player game of Border Reivers. This would be Dave's fourth game, so I was expecting some stiff competition now that he had got the hang of it.

It was a good game, I can't remember an awful lot about it, I got to the mine and held it for most of the game (though Dave did Ambush me there, killing my mine workers), and there wasn't much action on the fortified border. I managed to sneak around the fortified border, exposed Dave's soft underbelly, but he blocked me off to stop me taking too much advantage. Dave built all three of his cities, while I only got two built. In the end I won with an economic victory, 44 to 14.

Then we joined in with five others for a game of Puerto Rico. This was Dave's first game of the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek so we didn't play with the expansion (which I had never seen before). I chose a shipping to the old world strategy, while Nigel and Andrew (I think that was his name) went for cash, and through that buildings. I spent most of the game skint, which hurt later on as I was unable to build anything useful. In the end the three guys from the club whooped us - final scores: Nigel 49, Andrew 46, Corran 45, me 42 and Dave 36. Not a bad score for Dave in his first game against four seasoned players.

I'm not sure I'd go there again, it's a long way for a couple of hours of gaming, we spent almost as much time in the car as we did at the club.

In other news, check out this year's April Fools Day effort on BoardGameGeek. After last year's effort (the 'admin' screen) I didn't want to miss it this year, and Aldie didn't disappoint. Sadly the Crochet tab doesn't work, so I guess I'm going to have to shelve my plans for a nice gaming shawl.

Session Report: Games With Dave

Dave came round on Tuesday night for another night of games. This time we went back to Space Hulk, which we started playing when we started doing these mid-week games nights, but we hadn't played for a few weeks.

I'd had the lion's share of the Space Hulk wins so far, but Dave was keen to visit me with pain and retribution. So we started the fourth campaign mission, with Dave playing the Space Marines first. The map for this one is symmetrical, with the marines try to get from the bottom of the map to two rooms near the top (one on each side) and hit them with a flamer. I decided to harry Dave from all sides - so I used all the Genestealer entry points, those in front, to the sides and behind. My reinforcements came in dribs and drabs from all sides and kept Dave's Terminators under attack, but I'd chosen the wrong strategy, and as I killed of the last non-flamer marines, Dave's two remaining flamer marines simultaneously hit the two targets winning him the first round.

I chose a conservative strategy for the second round, with me playing the Space Marines, and set off slowly making for one of the target rooms. Dave however had a brainwave, he only needed to keep me from one of the targets - so he concentrated his waves upon waves of Genestealers on the other side. He managed to kill one of my flamer marines just before I hit the first target, but by then he had such a wall of Genestealers I couldn't fight my way through, and eventually my second flamer marine bought the farm. Damn. 2-0 to Dave. Nice work.

It wasn't too late so we decided to slip in a quick game of Carcassonne before we called it a night. This time we used the river expansion, which Dave had never used before. I got off to a decent start, claiming a decent chunk of real estate for one of my farmers, and as the game went on not even Dave's Monastery Alley was able to get him enough points to beat me. Final scores: me 119, Dave 85.

At least I won something :-) Another great night of games. At the end Dave offered to pop along to Leeds with me tonight, and we agreed to go to the pub for a couple of pints on Sunday. I promised to make the new Jorvik prototype to take along with me - trying out the that idea Dave had ages ago.

In other news it's been a bit of a rollercoaster week for me on the games side. I've been (and am continuing to be) very busy making games, Border Reivers is rolling off the presses at a phenominal rate as I try to get as much done as possible while The Wife is away. I've now got six finished copies (two of which have been claimed), and I've another six which I will have finished apart from the tiles today or tomorrow. I've sold two copies this week, and I'm off to Hugo's games club in Leeds tonight to try to play it and sell some more tonight. Unfortunately I've also had a sale in America fall through when he realised just how bad the exchange rate is. I've also heard from the UK Games Expo - where I had hoped to release It's Alive! I was told a couple of weeks ago that they had no space - but now they have roomd for me - yeay! Unfortunately, (nothing comes without a down-side this week) it's more than twice the price I thought it was - so it's not an easy decision to make. Hmm.

Session Report: Swiggers

Last night was the last of three nights in London for work. I'd not been home since Saturday morning, and I was beginning to feel a bit fed up with the whole travel thing. Fortunately, before I left home I'd decided I'd try to get to a games club in London and promote Border Reivers. I'd contacted a couple, the email address for one of them bounced, the other replied swiftly and was friendly and welcoming. I was hoping to be able to play a couple of games of Border Reivers, and hopefully make a sale too.

So I went along to Swiggers near London Bridge. I got there around 7:30pm, and there were around twenty-five people already playing games - apparently it starts at six. While waiting for a game to finish I wandered round and I was surprised to recognise so few of the games being playing. Shortly after I arrived a bunch of gents finished their games of Safari Cafe (I think that's what it was called although I can't find that in the BoardGameGeek database). I introduced myself, and Border Reivers and offered them the chance to play a game. They were up for it, so I set up a 4-player game and set about explaining the rules. The game started off fairly slowing, with Jay saving his cash in the first turn and going for the mine, Robert and John playing fairly defensively and me moving towards the mine at a fairly slow pace. Jay got to the mine first and with his first turn savings had built up a fairly healthy lead cash-wise, but he then settled down, creating a few towns at which point my slower settling (I'd only built one town) meant that I was now right next to him with far more troops than he had. He spent the money he'd saved trying to bulk up his armies for defensive purposes. I played fairly cagily, making sure I had armies left defending my cities and getting a Militia for defence as soon as I could. Robert built up extensively, and just as he built his second city (and was very low on armies), Jay hit him with a successful Insurrection. Robert didn't play much of a part in the remainder of the game, he took a while to recover, hindered further by his terrible luck on the reinforcement rolls. I managed to wrestle the mine from Jay, and then keep him on the back foot by heading toward his soft underbelly whenever he tried to threaten me at the mine. John came for me in the last couple of turns, and he did manage to push me back, but my defence in depth strategy paid off as he was unable to destroy one of my settlements and hence stop me winning economically.

After the game Jay bought a copy, but the others said they wouldn't have anyone to play it with. Still, Jay said he knew a few people who might like it, and selling a copy to one third of the people I played it with is a result in my book. I was complemented on the production value too, which is always nice.

Border Reivers continues to sell over the internet, but it sells very well when I play it with people and explain the rules to them, so I should really make more of an effort to get to games clubs or whatever and introduce the game to as many people as possible.

I'm off to Denmark tomorrow to spend a weekend with The Wife who I've not seen for a couple of weeks. I'm really looking forward to it...

Session Report: Dave At Mine

On Wednesday Dave came round for a night of gaming. We had nothing in particular lined up, but Dave brought along his copy of Memoir '44 just in case. It seemed like a good choice for the evening so we set up the next scenario we had to play: Sword Beach - an amphibious assault. As usual we played both sides, I started as the Axis, defending the beach and then played the Allies in the second game. In the first game I took full advantage of the dug in positions I had with bunkers, infantry in cover and artillery to rain fire on Dave's waterlogged minions. I seemed to be doing pretty well (for me!), holding my own and wreaking some damage on Dave's special forces (who had the wrong insignia as Dave was keen to point out) and armour. However, Dave's special forces were mint and they caused a lot of damage in return once they got a bit closer. It came right down to the wire, with Dave and I both on four out of the five needed victory points. However, it was Dave's turn and I had some weak looking units within range of him, and he promptly finished them off, getting the victory point needed to win the first leg. Ding, ding! Round two. In the second leg tried to emulate Dave's successful strategy, but he brought his reserves out of cover to attack and this just overwhelmed me as I left a decent chunk of my troops in the water in reserve. Dave slaughtered me, quickly racking up the five kills need to win, while I could only manage two in return. Dave two, Jack nil.

Memoir '44 had taken about an hour and a half, and I didn't want to finish too late as I wanted to phone The Wife. So we chose Lost Cities as a nice quick filler to wrap up with. Dave had played fairly recently at one of my games nights so we were able to get stuck in pretty quickly. Dave's winning streak continued as he beat me 43 - 24 in the first game, but we played best of three, and I won the other two games, saving myself from a complete washout. Final scores: me 23, Dave -34 and me 60, Dave 25.

It was another fun evening, it's nice to hang out and play games with Dave, especially with The Wife away - I need the company. It's been a while now since we played Space Hulk, or any of our prototypes - hopefully that'll happen in the next few weeks - I was enjoying both of those.

Session Report: In Which I Don't Finish Caylus!

Last night I went round to Paul's for Monday night games again. I had to be up at 4:45am the next morning to go to Birmingham for a conference with work though - so I was hoping to finish early. First up was Spence's copy of Fluxx. I'd heard bad things about this on the Internet, so I was a bit wary of it, and to be honest I didn't take to it at all. During the three games we played the rules conspired to seriously reduce our choices each turn - for a lot of the time we had to play all the cards we had earn turn. It felt like we were just mechanically performing actions until the game was over - far too chaotic to be able to plan anything and it seemed pretty much random who won. Although I didn't enjoy it, Lisa did like, and the others seemed to think it was fun on occasion. I guess it's just one I don't enjoy. Winners: Lisa and Greg twice.

When Vin arrived we set up a game of Caylus with the five of us. I'd not played this in a while, and I enjoy it so I was keen to play. I got off to a fairly good start building a lot of castle components in the first couple of stages, but only building a single building. I'd used the favours I got to boost my score though and I was in second place. Then I glanced at my watch. It was 10:20pm, with probably an hour left to play and I had to get up in six and a half hours time. It was not good, I had to call it a night or I'd never manage to get up in the morning and catch my train. So I made my apologies and left feeling wretched. I hate walking out halfway through - it's really rude. About the only saving grace is that I don't think Caylus would suffer if someone pulls out. Who won? I've no idea. Let's say me.

A disappointing night all told - and mostly my own stupid fault, but there you go. It was still good fun as the conversation was very entertaining yet again.

Games Night: Dave's

Monday night I went round to Dave's for some games again. I'd brought his copy of Border Reivers, plus my It's Alive! prototype and my Pirates of the Spanish Main fleet. Dave wanted to christen his copy of Border Reivers first - so we set up a two player game. Dave won the toss, and laid out a fairly constrained map with more scenery in the middle than I like. I chose the end further from the mine (not sure why) and then we were off. Dave got to the mine before me and put a lot of armies in there to defend it, while simultaneously start to clear land for a new settlement. It's worth noting that Dave got a free reinforcement of both types army and card (Market) in his first turn - so he was off to a flying start. Despite this is was actually a really close game. I managed to successfully attack the mine, Dave won it back and I got it again. We both used Insurrections to attack fairly undefended cities, and I used a Reiving Party to trying to steal from him, while he used Siege Engines a couple of times to aid his attacking of my defences. I managed to break away on the cash front, while Dave continued to spend and receive armies, forcing me to spend my large lead to defend myself. It was one of those back and forth games where it's not clear who's going to win at all. My favourite moment was when Dave used an Insurrection to attack my city, little did he know that I had a Militia to defend with! Dave attacks, I reveal my Militia: 'Ha! My grocers are armed with...' Dave: 'That's a Market not a Militia!' Me:'Arse! It looks they're armed with fruit. Houston, we're in trouble.' Even armed only with fruit they managed to defend themselves though - the city lived to see another day. In the end I managed to wrest an advantage and won - thought it was very close.

The second game of the night was Pirates of the Spanish Main which we'd played recently. We set up for a quick thirty point battle, and I made a decision to add a six point coin to the pot of available coins - my reasoning being that I'd use fast ships with small holds to try to track it down quickly. I ended up with three ships and three fairly cheap crew. Dave chose two ships (one four-masted beast) and a couple of expensive crew, including Admiral Morgan who had the potential to be brilliant. I set out to the nearby islands and quickly found my six-value coin, Dave raided one of the islands near him and started to close with one of his smaller ships armed with a firepot specialist. I brought my Captained ship to bear on that ship using it's longer guns and ability to move and shoot to quickly dispatch the small two-master. Dave's bigger ship came over to engage. Fortunately for me Admiral Morgan's ability to act twice on a particular die roll wasn't coming up for Dave, and though I had to run away to begin with, I brought a second ship over for back-up and managed to maneouvre my Captained ship into range of his ship while out of range of his shorter range front and back guns. I managed to sink that one too, so it was game over. In conclusion I think the Captain is priceless, Admiral Morgan not so much, especially with bad die rolls a factor - he's very expensive (five points) too.

We had time for a quick game of Carcassonne: The Castle after Pirates. Dave and I both drew for the largest house, so neither of us got the biggest open space bonus, and I foolishly wasted a 'score an unfinished road' counter I picked up near the end of the game. In the end the game was decided by the markets, and I had quite a lot, so I snuck my third win of the night. Final scores: me 91, Dave 76.

Another great night of gaming :-)

Session Report: Monday at Paul's

Last night I went round to Paul's for Monday night gaming and, for the first time, The Wife joined us - yay!

There was no Vin this week, but Lisa joined in and Greg and Spence made it so it was a full table. We started before Spence arrived, so we set up a 5-player game of Guillotine to get us in the mood. It seemed like my run of bad Guillotine luck (or ability) from the previous night was due to continue, as I struggled to get any valuable nobles. But it was good fun as ever, and the good company made up for my inability to behead the rich and famous. The Wife did remarkably well, storming through the bourgeoisie, and as a result stormed to an impressive victory. The final scores: The Wife 24, Lisa 18, Greg & Paul 16, me 14.

Spence arrived during Guillotine, so we had to choose a 6-player game next. Luckily Greg had brought Power Grid, so we broke that out and started explaining the rules to The Wife who was the only person not to have played it before. The Wife and I lagged a bit to begin with, no bad thing really as you get first access to the fuels and the connections, while Spence, Paul and Greg steamed ahead. Somewhere around the middle I thought I was in with a chance, but unfortunately I peeked too early. I connected to twelve cities when I could only power ten, and that put me first in the turn order for the final turn. The good news was that I was able to get the power plant I needed to power the fourteen cities needed to win the game. The bad news was that I was last to buy fuel and make connections and so I had to pay over the odds once everyone had tried to screw me. In the end I was four cash short of connecting to fourteen cities while Greg did it with plenty of cash to spare. Still it was a very close game, and I enjoyed it - I think Power Grid scales up to six surprisingly well. Final Scores: Greg 14, me 13 (24 cash), Spence 13 (22 cash), Paul 12 (105 cash), Lisa 12 (36 cash), The Wife 12 (22 cash).

Session Report: Dave At Mine

Last night Dave came round again for games. Due to being busy I'd not had time to learn the rules for any new games, so we stuck with some tried and tested favourites. Dave had recently bought Guillotine one of the favourites at Paul's Monday night games which he brought along with Carcassonne: The Castle which I had played a few times at Christmas. Dave also wanted to play Border Reivers again - yeay!

First up was Guillotine, a delightfully silly card game where you get to decapitate the French. I'd not played this 2-player before, and I wasn't even sure if it supported two players. Unfortunately Wizards of the Coast neglected to tell me on the box, so after much searching I had to check the rules. Two to five. Excellent. We played three games, I sneaked the first one, Dave creamed me in the second and then in the third I had a huge score (despite two -1 Martyrs and a -2 action card from Dave) and was convinced that I'd won, but Dave had equalled me to draw the game and the series. I'd collected the Piss Boy though, so I like to think I won the moral victory ;-) Final scores: Dave 23, me 25; then Dave 31, me 23; finally Dave 39, me 39.

Next up we played Border Reivers and due to a slack few days when it comes to construction I have no finished games and my copy is still missing loads of tiles as I've been raiding it for spares when I cock one up. So we played with my old prototype with nasty, lurid tiles, but lovely hand-scultped FIMO pieces. Dave won the toss and chose a central location for the mine, and feeling aggressive I went for the start location nearest to the mine and decided to contest it. I got to the mine first, but Dave built a couple of early towns and wrested the mine from me in fairly short order. I fought back, re-claiming the mine and building a Market to boost my income. Dave forced me out of the mine for a second time, so it was time to get medieval on his ass, and I went for cards and got my hands on an Insurrection (cue evil laugh: mwoa ha ha ha). After having just settled two towns and won the mine for a second time Dave was a little exposed, I knew he didn't have any hidden cards, so the Militia wasn't prepared to defend his city, so I went for it. My Insurrection came up trumps destroying his city in a blaze of glory and the tide had turned. Dave tried to save himself, pulling two armies back from the mine to upgrade one of his towns into a second city, but that left the mine with only one army defending it, and I managed to destroy that then his second (and only) city. It was a bit harsh to open up with the Insurrection, but I figured Dave had played recently and knew the risk of my hidden card. Hopefully I've not put him off the game :-) In hindsight, I think I would have left the mine in his position too, moving the one remaining army back to the tower or city where it would gain a numerical boost in combat at the expense of losing the mine. Dave had a reasonable amount of money at that stage, and would likely have rebuilt fairly quickly. Final result: I won my military victory.

We decided to round out the evening with a couple of quick games of Carcassonne : The Castle. Dave had played this before being introduced to vanilla Carcassonne, while I had only been introduced to it at Christmas. I really like this one, but it takes a completely different mindset from vanilla Carcassonne as the unfinished houses, towers and roads don't score at the end of the game. I won both games in the end, having done slightly better on the markets. Final scores: Dave 52, me 63; second game Dave 67, me 87.

Another great night of gameage. I'm really enjoying approximately one night a week of gaming either with Paul and chums or Dave. Next week hopefully it will be at Paul's as I'm off to Paris for work later in the week.

Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Monday night I went round to Paul's for Monday night games for the first time in ages. Mt trip to San Francisco had got in the way of a couple and I think I'd missed the one before that too.

Not long after I arrived Spence and Greg got there, and seeing as Vin can be a little tardy we set up a quick 4-player game of Die Mauer. As it's out of print Paul had knocked together his own copy, so we played with that. It's a quick and simple game of bluffing and second-guessing. Each turn the current player chooses one of their remaining pieces to play. The other players have to guess what they played. All players reveal their choices simultaneously. If nobody chose the same piece as the current player, the current player adds their chosen piece to either end of a wall that the players are building jointly in the middle of the table. If someone else chose the same piece they get to play instead. The winner is the first to run out of pieces. It's slightly more complicated that that, but not much. I enjoyed this one - good fun with enough variables to make the guessing interesting - I can see why Paul wanted his own copy. Final Scores: Spence 0, me 5, Paul 6 and Greg 26.

With no sign of Vin, we decided to play our perennial filler: Guillotine. It's chaotic, and there's very little strategy involved but I still really enjoy this one, the humour, the illustration and the speed all combine to make a really fun game. I didn't have many good cards during the game but I still managed to off King Louis and in the very last turn I got the Master Spy too, which was enough to force a draw: Spence 20, me 20, with Greg and Paul scoring 17 & 16 (though I'm not sure which scored which!).

Vin arrived during Guillotine, so the final game of the night was destined to be a 5-player, and we opted for Alhambra Dirk Henn's game of building gardens set in the medieval Moorish palace. I've played this once before at Paul's and was crushed - I just couldn't get to grips with getting the cards I needed to buy the high-scoring tiles. Once again I suffered, I managed to get an almost-monopoly on the lowest scoring Blue tiles, but could never afford the highest scoring purple and green ones. Right from the off I was lagging behind, and it was only my decent wall-length that earnt me the ignominious title of joint loser!

It was a great evening, the humour was fullsome and coarse, the games were fun and I joint won one - so a good night all in all.

Session Report: My Games Night

On Saturday I hosted another games night at my house. We seem to have got a good list of attendees, as even with a few last minute cancellations we still had plenty of people for games.

Karen and Jochen were the first to arrive, and while we were waiting for others to arrive we started a game of vanilla Carcassonne. I usually get stuck into the farming early on, but this time I didn't and as expected the fields all filled up quite quickly. In my experience the farming is claimed very quickly, especially with more players, and once I was a couple of meeples behind I couldn't be bothered to get into the escalation game of continually raising the number of farmers you've got. Karen and Jochen both farmed quite hard, with Karen left without meeples to place on a few occasions later in the game. I did quite well with cloisters, and alright with cities, but come the end the farmers carried it with Karen winning, Jochen coming second, me third and The Wife last.

While we played Carcasonne, Dave and Pip had arrived, and they had a quick game of Lost Cities while waiting for a few others to arrive. After we'd finished Carcassonne, we set up a game of Ticket to Ride, which I'm beginning to lose a bit of interest in. I loved it the first time I played, and I've played it a lot since, but now it's beginning to pale on me - I'm not sure why. Anyway Karen, Jochen and The Wife were keen, so we set it up. I chose to keep two of my initial tickets (Los Angeles - Miami and Portland - Phoenix), and started trying to connect along the bottom of the map. The Wife and I fought a bit, firstly with me blocking a route she needed, and then she returned the favour. I got both routes completed by about two-thirds of the way through the game, and at around this point both Karen and Jochen went for extra tickets. Karen and The Wife were competing over the longest route, while I was just trying to claim some of the longer sections for the extra points. I managed to end the game, and I'd caught everyone by surprise, so they weren't really able to use their last turns effectively. In the end I won, since I'd managed to sneak the longest route, and I'd completed two expensive tickets. Karen and Jochen cames second and third, with The Wife bringing up the rear. This wasn't like her at all - she usually trounces me!

While we'd been playing Ticket to Ride, Paul and Rebecca had arrived and played Carcassonne with Dave and Pip, and now we were all finished we swapped around a bit. Dave and Paul wanted to play Border Reivers, so we set that up, while The Wife requested Codename: Monster, so the others played that 5-player.

Border Reivers started off badly for me with Dave winning a free army on his first turn, and then choosing not to spend money on reinforcements. I spent heavily (as is my usual strategy) and was largely unsuccessful at the beginning. Dave managed to get the mine, while Paul fortified his area of the board. I found myself in a position that several people have emailed me about - how to beat someone who saves rather than spends. I've always maintained that a saver is vulnerable to a spender as the spender will get more reinforcements and can attack with cards and armies. Which I did. I attacked Dave at the mine and managed to wrest it from him, and simultaneously used Insurrection to attack one of his cities. With Dave on the back foot I started looking North to Paul. Paul had been spending too, though he was less lucky on the dice rolls, so I didn't have to worry so much about him from an economic victory point of view. I started saving, and attacked Paul's border forcing him to spend more. In the end I won an ecomonic victory. The boys seemed to enjoy the game too.

With the other table all gamed out, we pinched Monster back, and played a couple of games of that, with Paul winning both.

Another successful games night!

Session Report: Games At Dave's

I went round to Dave's again for games this evening. Dave had suggested Memoir '44, Pirates of the Spanish Main and Codename: Monster. I got there a little late and had to leave fairly early, but we had time to play another Memoir '44 scenario where the Allies parachute into a small town from both sides, and one game of Pirates.

I started playing the Memoir '44 scenario as the allies, and I was sorely trounced by Dave's single unit of armour on my right flank. I tried to stay away from the armour, but Dave chased me down one unit at a time and slaughtered me. It was ugly. Fortunately, we were going to play it the other way round, and this time I'd have the armour :-). Didn't help much. Dave ganged up on my armour and destroyed them in fairly short order. It didn't help that I had four cards, three of which were for the centre, where I had no troops after the first turn or two. At one point I even had four cards for the centre and I had to discard one to get something useful. Dave creamed me again, a convincing win for him.

Next up was Pirates, and I was keen to redeem myself. We played a thirty point battle, Dave choosing a bunch of crew and three ships, while I picked two three-masters, a single mast ship and a Captain. Dave started first and came for me with two ships and went for an island with the third. I went for the other island near Dave with my biggest ship, and for another island with my other big ship. My single mast ship sailed in support for the one going near Dave. I managed to pick up treasure from the nearest island to me, and then drop it off at my home island and bring my Captained ship to bear. In the meantime I had collected the gold from the island nearest Dave and sunk his smallest ship using the big ship and the little one-mast one. Dave brought his larger ship over, and sent his other back to base to unload and then come and help. Fortunately for me, I now had a Captained ship (allowing me to move and shoot in a single turn) and my small ship to attack his nearest ship and provide cover for the big ship who managed to pick up another island's worth of treasure and drop it off at my home island winning the game. But not before I'd sunk another of Dave's ships. Ah sweet, sweet revenge.

It was even better as I'm reading a lot of the Aubrey/Maturin series of books by Patrick O'Brien at the moment, about the Napoleonic wars - it really makes the game better as I've got a really good sense of what it would be like to fight such battles.

All in all another good night of gaming, I'm enjoying Memoir '44, and it was nice to break out Pirates which I'd not played for ages. It was a shame I had to leave early, and we didn't get to play Monster, but there'll be another time...

In other news I sent a draft contract to the designer of Monster, and the haggling has begun...

Paul's Games Night

Last night was Paul's second games night of 2007, but I missed the last one due to coming back from Bristol, so this was my first.

It was Paul, Andy, Greg and I with Lisa joining in for the first game of Diamant. Diamant was fun as usual, I tried my tried, tested and rarely successful technique of running away as soon as there were a decent number of gems left on cards, and this time it worked! I won the game of Diamant, while poor Greg and Paul didn't get any gems at all. I only had 19 though, so it was fairly low scoring.

During Diamant Spence arrived, and after Diamant Lisa left, so there were five of us again. I offered the boys the chance to play the Monster prototype which I was keen to test with more players (the original submission only supported 2-4 players - I've tweaked it to hopefully support up to 6, but I've not tested it with more than 4 yet though) the boys agreed so I set it up and explained the game to them.

I was surprised by how keen they were to pay over the odds for cards, while I played a more restrained game. It was fun, and despite me winning, the boys were up for a second game. I won that one too, but I got a good vibe from the boys, and some good advice about the design too, so it was definitely worth taking round.

I was three for three, and Paul suggested breaking out Falling, a card game he'd got from a friend over Christmas. Spence had heard of it before, so he was appointed Rules Monkey and he duly explained the game. There wasn't an awful lot to it, but the reading of the rules failed to communicate just how chaotic the game was. One player sat out each round, dealing the cards (a fairly complicated role in itself), while the others frantically played cards on themselves and others, or moved cards around in an attempt to be the last player to hit the ground. It was mad, with arms and cards flying all over the place, and after six games (of which I only won one), we couldn't decide whether we liked the game, though most of us agreed that it was fun. Which I suppose means we liked it in one way.

Another great games night. I'm going to miss next week's as I'm in San Francisco, but I'm already looking forward to the one after than.

In other news, I'm now meeting the potential Monster artist on Saturday, rather than tomorrow evening - so I guess I'm going to have to cut my visit to Beyond Monopoly short :-(

Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Last night I went round to Paul's again for his weekly games night. He'd asked me to bring Puerto Rico this week, which I did, but I got there quite late, so I wasn't sure if we'd have time.

When I finally arrived I realised the others had waited for me! Bless them. With Vin still to come, we set up a quick game of Guillotine for the four of us: Andy, Greg, Paul and I. Andy got off to a great start (I think his first turn put him on three times as many points as the rest of us, thanks to a Double Feature card), and the rest of us spent the game trying to scupper him. Andy was delighted (he doesn't usually win), and even though I wasn't winning (or even coming close until fairly near the end), I really enjoyed this one again. It's funny, it's fast and it seats loads - great stuff. Final scores: Andy 24, me 19, Greg 18 and Paul 14.

During Guillotine, Vin arrived, so as soon as that was over we set up Puerto Rico, for a 5-player with all of us.

I love Puerto Rico, but I'm not very good at it. I recently looked at an online strategy guide for the first time, and with that in mind I tried a different strategy during this game, eschewing quarries, and instead trying to get loads of money together with an idea of building factories/wharves/big buildings. I met some of those goals (Factory), but Greg had managed to fill up his island far quicker than I was expecting, so I built the Residence big building in the final turn - but didn't even get a chance to get it occupied, hence missing out on most of the points. Greg's speedy finish caught a few of us out - so he won handsomely: Greg 35, Paul, 30, me 30, Vin 25, Andy 23.

Puerto Rico went surprisingly fast with a bunch of players who all knew what they were doing, so we had time at the end for another quick filler. We chose Diamant.

Lisa joined us for this one, and while we were playing I was bearing in mind Hugo's criticisms of Diamant. If you play the game purely as a press-your-luck game, only considering the likelihood of a second disaster coming out then I think the game would be a bit dull, but the bit I enjoy is trying to second-guess my opponents, and take the lion's share of the remaining gems on the way out. Is this a winning strategy? Nope. I don't think I've ever won, but every time I escape on my own and claim a few gems from the cards I get a little hit of 'I win', from choosing the right time to leave so that I don't have to share - and I still enjoy it. Paul didn't have any gems after the first four mines, but he still managed to beat me, so that'll give you an idea of just how bad a strategy it is :-) Final scores: Vin 28, Lisa 14, Paul 11, me 9, Greg 8, Andy 5.

Yet another great evening of games and top company, very entertaining. Highlights would have to be Greg's expletive outbursts and his apoplexy when I quoted from the Planetary graphic novel at him :-) Sadly, that's my last one before Christmas, so I've got four weeks of cold turkey.

Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Monday night I went round to Paul's again for games. Paul had asked me to bring Settlers of Catan plus the 5-6 player expansion, and Ticket To Ride to get Lisa to join in with us.

First up was Ticket To Ride by Alan R. Moon. Andy, Greg, Lisa, Paul and I set up a 5-player game, and just as we got started Spence arrived. Since Lisa hadn't played before Spence played with her. The game was a good one, Lisa was winning through most of the game, and also got her hands on the longest route in fairly short order. Spence suggested a few long routes too, which helped. I got a couple of fairly short tickets early on and then tried to keep up on points by claiming some long routes - but I was beaten to a few of them. In the end Lisa didn't complete all her routes, but she still won by a mile: Lisa 102, Andy 84, me 84, Paul 80 and Greg 69. I was also amazed at the number of rules that I had wrong in the numerous games I'd previously played - loads of them!

The second game of the night was Settlers of Catan and the 5/6 player expansion. I'd not played this in absolutely ages, and I thought that the 5/6 player slowed things down too much. I was right. Despite a very entertaining game in terms of Settlers humour ('I've got wood for sheep', 'I've wood and two stones'), the game did seem to drag. With everyone being given the chance build after everyone's turn the game lasts a lot longer. Spence seemed to be the man to beat throughout the game as he collected a staggering amount of sheep and wood, and built lots of cities - but at the last moment Paul stole the longest road and beat us all to 10 points. Paul 10, Spence 8, Greg 7, me 7, Andy 6 and Lisa 4.

It was another great evening of games - thanks Paul!

In other news I did the gluing for the tiles of the next batch of Border Reivers last night, and I made a bunch of rulebooks too. The next thing to do is to start labelling the boxes which I plan to start tomorrow morning - I've got the day off work for a second interview for the promotion at work which is down in London, and I don't need to leave home until lunchtime.

Session Report: Beyond Monopoly

Yesterday I spent the day at Beyond Monopoly for the first time in a couple of months. I'd missed the last few due to family commitments, holidays and production. It felt good to be back.

As I arrived, Andy, Alan and Rob were going to play Saboteur by Frederic Moyersoen, and they offered me a seat. By the time we'd got the game set up Adrian, Mike and Paul D had joined in too. We played a single round, then Adrian, Mike and Paul left to play Oltre Mare. Fortunately we were able to pick up Wolfgang, Kevin and Keith who filled the seats. We eight played another two rounds. I'm still not convinced about Saboteur, I like the idea of two teams both playing co-operatively against each other, I like the idea of hidden roles so that you don't know who is one your side. But somehow it just doesn't seem to come together. I spent large periods of the rounds with no useful cards to play, and even when I did I couldn't play a card which would keep my role secret. It was alright, but I'm not enamoured of it. Final scores: Rob 8, Andy 7, Alan 6, Adrian 3, Mike 3, Me 3, Wolfgang 2, Kevin 0, Keith 0.

My second game of the day was Modern Art an auction game by Reiner Knizia. Rob, Alan and I were nearly joined by Hugo of Bode Gueims, but he sat out in the end to let Jeff and his Wife (whose name I've forgotten) play with us. I'd not played Modern Art before, and I enjoyed it - it covers an awful lot of different types of auction as you bid for works by different artists, trying to gauge which artist will be the most popular. It's very interesting, as you get to choose which paintings to offer for sale, and then bid for them - bearing in mind that the money you spend goes to the person who is offering the painting. I didn't think much of the artwork, the Pop Art ones were ok, the rest were crap though. It's hard to gauge how much to pay, Rob, Alan and I were fairly conservative in our spending while Jeff and his Wife spent money like water. In the end it paid off for them: Jeff 462, Jeff's Wife 444, Me 391, Rob 358, Alan 242.

Over our lunch break I introduced Alan to Hive and we played a couple of games. I really like Hive, it appears so simple on the face of it, but with so many choices to make it's surprisingly deep. I managed to beat Alan twice, but I'd imagine now he's got a couple of games under his belt he'll beat me fairly soon.

After lunch Alan (who was fast turning into my games chum of the day) wanted something a bit meatier. It was time to break out one of Jon's freebies. Jon had tried to prise some free games out of publishers at Essen for the club - it worked - he came back with sixty-odd. We chose Shogun by Dirk Henn, a re-themed version of Wallenstein.

We were joined by Hugo, Paul and Andrew for a 5-player. After punching it out we started going through the rules, since none of us had played it before. The rules seemed a little intimating, and there were lots of components but the pieces looked beautiful and I'd heard good things about Wallenstein (it's ranked very highly on BoardGameGeek. After the first turn it was pretty straightforward, and I really enjoyed it - the theme helped, I'm a big fan of feudal Japan as a setting for games, books and films. There was a nice balance of combat and resource management. I'm not convinced about the battle-tower as a method for resolving combat, but it's a nice component so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now. At the end of the first year I was winning, having a lot of territories, and a good mix of buildings, however in the second round I lost a few territories and was pipped at the post by Paul. Final scores: Paul 47, Me 45, Hugo 43, Alan 40 and Andrew 24.

The final game of the day was a nice quick game of Diamant by Alan R. Moon and Bruno Faidutti. Paul had to leave, so it was just Alan, Andrew, Hugo and I.

I'd played this before at Paul's games night so I knew what to expect. It's a fast and fun press-your-luck filler. We played the five mines, with Hugo building up a fairly unassailable lead early on. The middle mines were really unlucky drawing lots of disasters right at the beginning. After a few cards I was the only person left in the last mine, again we'd had a lot of disasters so the others pulled out. I chose to stay in and try to beat Hugo's score, but I quickly hit another disaster and lost everything. Final scores: Hugo 68, Andrew 36, Alan 24, Me 21.

It was a really good day - I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the evening I did some construction, finishing the boxes for the next batch.

Session Report: Paul's Game Night

I got round to Paul's again last night for Monday night games. It was Andy, Greg, Paul and I. We first set up a game of Flanderen 1302 by Wolfgang Panning and Hans-Joerg Brehm. Andy and Paul explained the rules to Greg and I who sat there looking bemused. I don't know about Greg but I certainly didn't really have a clue what I doing for at least half of the game. In the game you collaberate to build six cities: Leuven, Gent, Ieper (Ypres herein after referred as Leper), Brugge, Utrecht and Luik. When a city is finished it is scored - with the player who built the most of their districts in the city getting the lions-share of the points. You can also increase the value of a city by building a religious district, or build a district belonging to the neutral player to scupper your opponents. Since you can't place two districts of the same colour next to each other neutral placement can make things really awkward for the others. You also have a limited number of the pieces of each of three different shapes, making things still more complicated. I scored low for the first few cities, but then I started to get the hang of it. Then I ran out of pieces! Paul and Greg were winning by a fairly long chalk, but they had got their points early and Andy and I did fairly well out of the last few cities. In the end the scores were fairly close: Greg 46, Me 42, Andy 36, Paul 34 and neutral 8. Greg and I set out to try and beat the neutral player, so in some senses we won!

We finish the night off with a couple of quick and chaotic games of Guillotine by Paul Peterson. It's fast, it's funny and it's great fun. The more I play this one the more I like it, despite the complete inability to plan a strategy. The cards are entertaining and well-illustrated in a comic fashion. I seem to do alright at this one - first game: Paul 17, Me 17, Greg 12, Andy 11; second game: Greg 23, Me 22, Paul 19 and Andy 12.

Yet another very enjoyable games night at Paul's. I really need to make more of an effort to get there more often.

More Mission: Red Planet

We had a second game of Mission: Red Planet before we left Bristol yesterday. This time I chose more adventurous bonus cards at the beginning as the +2 I'd chosen in the first game was pretty lame, with everyone else getting around 6-8 points for theirs. I got +8 if you have the most astronauts on Mars. At that point I made a concious choice to play the recruiter early, so that I could play those characters which get me two (or three) astronauts onto ships twice. I also tried to play the Explorer in the scoring rounds to maximise the number of locations I would score. Fairly early on I played the Scientist, and got a second bonus card that was worth 6 (I think) if you collected the most of the most expensive ore. So I was aiming for those territories too.

After the second scoring during the turn eight, I was winning by a hefty amount, although Matt was definitely getting more astronauts on the planet. However, it all went a bit Pete Tong in the end. I'd used up my Explorers in turns five and eight, the first two scoring rounds, which were worth as much combined as the final scoring. With my healthy lead I was the person to target so I was attacked a couple of times with Soldiers and the like, and those who chose the Explorer in the final round were able to out-maneouvre me on the surface. As a result Suzy got the most of the most expensive element and Matt had the most astronauts on Mars. Neither of my bonus cards scored me any points. Plus I'd lost control of a couple of territories in the final turn, and hence didn't score very well. The Wife managed to surprise herself as much as the rest of us by completing both her bonus cards in the final turn and getting the bonus for having the most ice tokens. Final scores: The Wife 40, Matt 39, Suzy 33, Me 30.

I'm off to Paul's tonight for more games - woohoo! Session report up tomorrow all being well.

Session Report: Space Hulk And More

Tuesday night Dave came round again for games. As before, the headline act was Space Hulk the old Games Workshop game with a very similar feel to the Aliens film. As a bonus, this week we had a warm-up act: a game of Dave's own devising.

We set up Dave's game and he talked me through the rules - it was interesting being on the other side of this, in the last few months I've explained the rules of Border Reivers a lot, but this was the first time I'd ever played another designer's prototype. I'll not go into much detail of Dave's game as it's his job to decide how much information about the game he wants to make public and when, what I'll try to do is get across how the evening felt from a playtester's point of view.

First impressions of the game were good, the prototype was well-made and visually interesting, and I could tell from one look at the board what the theme was. If anything, the prototype was over-produced, as this was the first time Dave had played the game, so a lot will change over the coming months. While he explained the game Dave was quite self-deprecating, which I was told I was doing at The Cast Are Dice - it's obviously a common reflex. However, if you start disparaging the game you've designed, you'll put players off. The game had several things I really liked: fixed length; a clearly defined beginning, middle and end; some excellent events. It also had it's fair share of weaknesses, as you would expect from a game in the very early stages of development. The first few plays of one of my games are awful, as it takes time and practice to take the ideas in your head and turn them into something that works in reality. It came in at around an hour, and although I was at a loose end a couple of times, at no point was I bored or regretting playing it - a good sign.

After the game, we went through the notes I had taken about the things I liked and disliked about the game. We discussed possible solutions to some problems the game had and ideas for ways the game could be changed. It reminded me how much my playtesters had influenced the design of Border Reivers, especially The Wife and Mal, who contributed some excellent ideas to the finished game. One of the things I do is keep a list of people who have playtested a game I'm working on - they definitely deserve a mention in the rules for their contributions.

I'd definitely be up for playing it again, and I'll be interested to watch another designer's game evolve over the coming months. Perhaps we'll play Jorvik or Sennon next time too...

After that we played a couple more games of Space Hulk. We played the second mission again (I was the Genestealers this time), and then the third mission from one end only. Again, I really enjoyed the Space Hulk, good clean fun, and since I was the stealers both times, I got a side order of vicious disemboweling of my enemies with my good, clean fun. The theming of Space Hulk is really well done, when playing as the marines you feel very claustrophobic as the unknown numbers of enemies swarm around your limited troops. Coupled with the enhanced maneourveability and faster top speed of the stealers you feel very vulnerable. I remember a computer version, which really laid the claustrophobia on thick - the cramped corridors felt tiny when a stealer swarmed towards one of your marines, followed by static as contact was lost...

Both sides have definite tactics, with the stealers wanting to stay out of LOS for as long as possible. They are also far more powerful when they attack in waves, that way you can maximise the chance of a weapon jam being capitalised upon by a stealer, as you will undoubtedly lose a few before the weapon jams. Marines on the other hand want to keep as much distance between themselves and the stealers as possible, and excel when they can cover a long approach with overwatch fire. Great stuff.

In the end I won all three games that evening, I'm keen for more though :-)

I had hoped to do a load of construction this weekend, however I might have to go to Bristol instead. The reviewer from the BBC magazine had some difficulty getting their head round the game, and wanted to play it with my parents (which would be a case of the blind leading the blind :-) ), and conveniently there's a do on, in preparation for my sister's wedding this weekend so I've an excuse to be down in Bristol. We shall see.

Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Monday night I finally managed to get to Paul's games night. He's cancelled a few weeks due to illness, and on the occassions that he did hold it, I've had to cry off for various reasons. It was great to be back. Paul's still not back to his usual self, and due to new babies and various other reasons we were down a few regulars, so it was just Paul, Greg, Vin and I.

While we waited for Vin to arrive, we played a couple of games of Hey! That's My Fish! with Paul's wife Lisa joining in. Lisa, is very much in the vein of The Wife, i.e. she won both games convincingly. Still, despite being soundly whooped, I love this game. It's so quick and simple, and yet there's a surprising amount of strategic depth, with every move from the initial placement of penguins onwards being a wealth of options, and each of those options begetting more options in a very wide decision tree. Once you factor in the chance to screw your opponents out of fish, and the gut-wrenching decisions caused by only being able to move one penguin each turn, it's a fast and very fun game. The only real downside is the ludicrous box size in relation to the contents. It's a very wasteful box, both in terms of raw materials and space, and with my environmental concerns and tiny flat that might be enough to put me off buying it.

When Vin arrived we had another quick game of Hey! That's My Fish! This was the scene of two awful puns:

He's really ice-olated

and:

I'm hard of herring

These set the scene for the rest of the evening - silly and entertaining :-) Coupled with Vin's choice of music (he had DJ rights due to his imminent birthday), I also received an education - even if none of us could agree on the genre of the bands. Final scores for H!TMF!: Lisa 29, Paul 28, Greg 21, Me 20; Lisa 34, Greg 23, Paul 21, Me 18; Me 29, Greg 22, Paul 20, Vin 20.

The second game of the night was Masons. This was the second time I had played, but that didn't help much, after a slow start for Paul, I soon dropped into last place, but through frantic swapping of cards (a catch-up mechanism only available to the losing players) I managed to get a couple of decent cards for the final scoring round, and ended up acquitting myself respectably, if not admirably. I like Masons, but it doesn't grab me as an excellent game - it'll be interesting to see how that changes with more plays. Final scores: Greg 147, Paul 137, Me 133, Vin 121.

We wrapped up the evening with a game of Niagara. This was only my second game of Niagara, and again I really enjoyed it. Very quick and fun, with some really innovative mechanics and gimmicks. This time I could play more strategically, and I really enjoyed trying to second guess my opponents. I nearly won, but Paul managed to stop me by stealing my gems. In the next turn he had to do it again to Greg to stop him winning, but then Greg won the turn after anyway. Final scores: Greg one of each, Paul 6, Me 4, Vin 4.

Another great night of games - no new games this time, but some really good ones I'd played before, in the company of friends - an evening well spent. Plus, as an added bonus, I scrounged a lift from Greg this week, so I was able to have a beer - bonus!

In other news, Yehuda recommends a very interesting article on The Journal of Board Game Design considering Board Game Designers as auteurs. I can say without a doubt I don't consider myself an auteur - with a body of work of one published game there's no opportunity for common themes, mechanics or artistic statements throughout my output. Or 100%, depending on your outlook - either way I'm not one.

In addition, last night Dave came round for games again last night. We played the first public game of his game design, plus some more Space Hulk. Session Report up tomorrow.