by Ben Bateson
Not just a chronologue of our bumper session of Good Friday gaming, but this is precisely the 100th blog post since I started recording the RoWBGers exploits on BGG - presumably a little over two years ago.So, we started promptly after the lunch session, at 3pm. JP and I were first to arrived an settled to a round of All Creatures Big and Small. Played with the now-mandatory 'More Buildings' expansion, it proved a diverse experience: John building his farm to labyrinth sizes with a mish-mash of buildings and
Becky had apparently sprinted down the pub rather than taking a long walk, for she arrived puffing and panting, shortly after Gordon, who was perusing rule books and generally raring to go. As a relatively gentle opener, we opted for Vikings, and ironed out some of the varying rules interpretations between John's literal online approach and Becky's florid reading of the rules. Gordon professed himself impressed (perhaps winning was something of a factor) and immediately requested another game, which he also won, pipping Becky by a single point. The game continues its record of never disappointing us, and as we discussed afterwards seems to have plenty of longevity.
There was ample time for something more meaty before dinner, and John had brought along Macao, which he was keen to put before our noses. Teaching Gordon proved to be simpler than I remembered, and we duly embarked upon shipping to Europe. John looked to be putting together a healthy combo based around the dark city spaces, but Becky stormed back in the closing stages with an epic shipping run and picking generally almost exactly the same dice as John. I tried to restrict myself to 3-4 cube colours with modest success, but the dice weren't kind near the end of the game (are they ever?). John took it in the end, but he was pushed hard by Becky all the way.
I'm still ultimately unconvinced by Macao. I'm sure the forums are resplendent with many stories of massive combos and massive final turns, but for the large part it is still unmanageable, largely unstrategisable and frustrating. It is a long way from supplanting Notre Dame in my estimation of Feld games.
Pushing onwards, we ordered dinner and sandwiched it with a couple of rounds of Love Letter, that beguilingly simple little deduction game (with an oddly-familiar looking princess: who is she modelled on?). True to form I failed to win a single round in either game, proudly climaxing by clashing the Countess against the Prince on my first turn in each of the last two rounds. Gordon and Becky took a round each while my mind was still on chef Cristo's lovely bobotie (Tony - this is not rude...).
With Boydells both junior and senior rocking up, we had six and choices became a little limited. Luckily I had my fresh new 7 Wondersexpansions to investigate, so we dealt out a couple of games (one vanilla; one with Leaders) for a comparative exercise. Both, in typical fashion, were won by Tony by a single point - firstly over John, then Gordon. I went spectacularly yellow-card crazy with my Leaders combo in the second game, but forgot about the rather more crucial need of actually picking up some points.
Leaders was generally pronounced as adding a lot while not complicating very much (although to watch the shenanigans over the deal and which decks of cards were supposed to be where and who owned which Wonder, you wouldn't think so). I remain a little sceptical that it removes breadth from your initial strategy - am I really supposed to make an informed decision as to which Leaders I want before the opening deal? - but can't deny that it adds plenty of legs to this deceptively playable game.
Tony had also provided a gaming solution for six in the shape of Peloponnes, a bidding/valuation/civ-lite sort of game with lots of disasters, not least in the innuendo-laden teaching and setup phase. The bidding looks initially similar to the outbid-and-bounce to another tile of Keyflower, but it actually played more similar to the delightful Lancaster as bidders on the prime spots quickly got bounced down the chain. The disaster-chit draw is surely a misjudgement, though, resulting in an unmanageable accumulation of problems towards the games climax. Tony finished dead last, which is apparently his nominal position for the game, and first spot was taken by Benedict, although there might have been some charitable interpretations of 'taking money' and 'losing people to plague' which deprived me of a deserved win. I think Peloponnes would be well worth another try, but perhaps with three or four and some house ruling of the disasters.
With the evening starting to wrap itself up (already?), we moved onto King of Tokyo which - well - probably shouldn't have been advertised for six. Tony and I promptly occupied Tokyo and then didn't really achieve anything else, being eliminated in short order and reduced to reminding other people when they needed to add points. Gordon got perhaps a little bit too enthusiastic about his win.
Some were homeward-bound, but there was still time for a quick 3P of the beautiful Divinare with Becky and Gordon. The more I play this, the more I love it, but crucially the more I over-analyse it as well, which led to some quite agonising decisions. Things went into the third round with just two points separating Gordon and I, but Becky stormed through with a massive ten points at the last, pipping us both for the victory. Well, at least I was in contention in this one...