We played Al Rashid this week.
hmmm... the game itself is quite reasonable, a worker placement/bidding mechanism to gather resources and powers, it's not bad but nothing new.
However the problem with the game is this, first the rule book is a mess, this on it's own is not enough to put us off as clarifications are normally resolved on the 'geek. The graphic design (or lack of) is possibly the worst I have ever seen, despite being in English I couldn't read a single word of text, it was either to small that you would need a magnifiying glass to read it or it was written in a very stylized font that made it illegible, even the title on the box cover needs a bit of working out. Then the colours of the Guild Tiles are 5 different colours but they are are printed so similar that I could hardly tell the difference. Coupled with the sub 5pt type I couldn't read my own tiles let alone the ones available or owned by other players upside down over the otherside of the table, I made several mistakes due to this.
So a fairly run of the mill game that is totaly unplayable in it's current form, hope I never have to play it again.
Jo 29(tiebreak), Paul 29, Garry 25, Steve 19
5th August - Al Rashid
29th July - Locomotive Werks
For some reason I'm quite fond of train games, there's nothing in particular I like other than the theme. I guess the next step is a train set in the loft.
Locomotive Werks is about running a train factory and making sure you switch production to the right sized trains at the right time. It's quite good but the presentation makes it feel very dry. It does need to be played quickly or else it can drag, this isn't too much of a problem as the decisions are straight forward and the maths involved basic (but I obviously need to improve my basic maths!). It's one of those games where you need to know the game quite well to prevent a runaway winner, it's possible to stop them but you need to know how to do it, the game wont do it for you.
Matt 334, Jo 235, Steve 130, Garry 98, Paul 78
22nd July - Chronicle and Diamonds Club
I wasn't around this week but Matt has kindly written something up:
Diamonds Club was a bit of a 'points salad' game but the scores where really
tight at the end. There were a couple of single moves that would have changed
the result. Played in 90 minutes, pretty easy to explain from the rules and
seems to have a bit of replayability. It didn't set the world alight although
that may be because games published since have had a similar feel. Probably a
keeper, it certainly warrants a couple more plays. It was like Bora bora with
fewer rules, fewer bits (just) and it played a little faster but was not as
deep.
Matt 70, Paul 67, Steve 60
Chronicle
Paul 3, Steve 1, Matt 0, Izzy 0
8th July - The Doge Ship
I'm a bit behind on some updates so I'll keep this brief. This week we played The Doge ship.
Matt's Session Report on the 'geek
Garry 58, Matt 50, Steve 45