by Ben Bateson
After having fretted over the impossibilities of six gamers' on Carl Crook's new Facebook emporium, it was sod's law that presented me with exactly that conundrum on Friday. Luckily, we had the back room of the White Lion and the freedom to stretch our legs a little.Our weekly 'wait for Tony' game was King Of Tokyo, a game at which I was nominally unbeaten, but my tooled-up Cyber Bunny (I won't play unless I can be Cyber Bunny) fell victim in short order to Gordon's Gigazaur, who went on to something of an unhurried win.
Splitting, as was sensible under the circumstances, into two tables of three, Gordon learned all about Snowdonia under the tutelage of Boydell, Dave and the latest expansion/customisation/novelty line. And he made it two from two, with an impressive win.
Meanwhile, Becky and I indoctrinated John in the ways of Die Burgen von Burgundy (or 'Die Burgen-die-Burgen-die-Burgen-die-Burgen' as it seems to be compulsory to re-name it, while doing approximate impressions of the Swedish Chef). And he was a fast learner: picking up an array of 'auto-adjustment' yellow tiles and building towards an animal-laying bonanza (steady, now...). I was proud of picking up some 58 points in bonuses at the end, but it wasn't enough to overhaul a massive 239 points from JP.
Burgundy is very much flavour of the month for me at the minute. Introduced to the online implementation by the afformentioned Crooked one, I love the range of optimisation required from just a pair of dice, and the oft-used cliche of 'multiple routes to victory' is definitely applicable. The design of variation in the player boards is a subtle but clever part of the strategy too. I am less enamoured by the fiddliness and the quite inane colour scheme, but I can live with that.
In one of those rare moments of serendipity, both games finished promptly, allowing us to move on to 'something a bit quicker' before Tony had to turn in. He selected Guildhall, a popular choice with Becky and Dave, and the Ledburghian stole the game out from under her nose just when she was organising herself for the winning move. Myself, I am yet to play Guildhall, but I will confess it looks intriguing and am definitely keen to pick it up at some point: perhaps without the apparently essential home-schooling approach that Terra Mystica will require.
John, Gordon and I amused ourselves with a massively under-rated game here on BGG: Artus. It's gotten a bad press because of people complaining they can't strategise it and that it's random and chaotic, but I rather think that they're missing the point. We had a terrific game with an uproarious end where Gordon - who had been leading throughout - succumbed to the minus-50 point card and John sneaked in for a last minute win just as I thought I'd sewn things up. Nothing chaotic about a game where all players have to use exactly the same set of actions...
Just time for a closer, and what better option than Coloretto? I still know of very few games that can match it for tension and tight decision-making. Playing a full-on gambling approach, I thought my 28 points had sewn things up, but had reckoned without Dave to my right, who declared 36 points with no negatives. Outstanding performance.
I didn't even come CLOSE to winning anything this week, but would I have swapped out any one of the games we played? Not on your life.