28th June - 4 games at Garry's

My other half was away for a week so we had a chance to play for a full day. After coffee, danish pastries and croissants (yum) we started with a game of Wabash Cannonball. This is one of the Winsome games from last years Essen, There are 4 railroads and each player gets the chance to buy shares in these companies via an auction. The money raised is used by the company to build track, which is controlled by the player with the most shares. There are also a few other things you can do to enhance the value of the company as your network snakes west. At the end of each round a dividend is paid to the owners of the shares based on the value of each company, the winner is the person with the most cash.
None of us really knew what we were doing and we only started to 'get it' about half way through. It's a really clever game and I liked it a lot, if only the production quality was a bit better, it's a typical Winsome home DTP effort (or lack of effort) I think I'll have to have a bash at making a decent board.

Richard 77, Steve 48, Jo 45, Garry 34

Next was Ice Flow which Steve had bought at the UK Games Expo. It's a very nicely produce game about crossing the Baring Strait from Alaska to Russia. You have 3 men and ou have to make your way via the icebergs making sure you avoid the polar bears along the way.

I must admit that with 4 players I did feel as though it was a bit chaotic, mind you this was only my first play so now that I know how it works the next few games may be different.

Richard won

After a bite to eat we had a go at Pandemic, I'd not played before but it wasn't too difficult to learn and as it's a co-operative game it was easy to pick things up as we went along. It's quite a well themed game and it brought back memories of the TV show 'Survivors' that I watched back in the 70s.

Make sure you wash your hands before playing

Pandemic is a co-operative game which means that your are not playing against each other but against the game system, there is no winner or loser you all win or lose against the game. I'd not played this type of game before and it does feel a little odd as we had a little discussion about what we should do before each turn. Luckily our group is quite well balanced but if you were playing with a control freak or a very bossy person I could imagine it wouldn't be much fun. Over all I enjoyed it but I wold need to play a few more time before I made up my mind. It's also plays single player as well which might be good for when you can't find any opponents.

We started off OK and seemed to start getting things under control and even managed to cure a few diseases but unfortunately the Italians succumbed to the fatal blue cubeitis so we all lost.

We all failed.

Finally we played Oregon. This is a Hans im Gluck game released at last years Essen. I did play it during the show and thought 'meh' but the others assured me that it was a good game.

I forgot to take a photo so here's a postcard from Oregon

It uses cards to drive the placement of of meeples and various buildings on a squared grid. I started off OK and was even in the lead at one point but a duff run of cards meant I ended up having to put a lot of pieces in the far corner and I dropped behind. Not a bad game but I still think it's a bit 'meh'.

Jo 81, Steve 71, Richard 66, Garry 49

17th June - Cuba

Another shot at Cuba this week. There were only 3 of us this time and as we knew how to play it didn't take so long. Richard seemed to hit on a winning strategy with the Dam and Golf Course and then making sure that he got the Water Subsidy thus gaining a lot of VPs, Steve and I tried to stop him but he always managed to have more cash when it came to the votes at the end of each round.

Water water everywhere...

I tried to keep a flow of VPs coming in with the large hotel but it wasn't enough. Next time we'll have to keep an eye out to make sure that someone doesn't get the same chance as Richard.

Richard 74, Steve 68, Garry 60

3th June - Tinners' Trail & TtR card game

Steve and Richard went to the UK Games Expro this weekend and came back with a pile of new games. It was Richards choice and he choose Tinner's Trail I was really pleased as of all the games I'd read about in reviews of the Expro it was the one I was most interested in. Tinner's Trail is a new Martin Wallace game and is part of the Treefrog line of games. The Treefrog games have all wooden components (tree - wood, see what he's done there) .

It's a game of Cornish tin mining and the goal is to extract as much tin and copper as possible, sell it for cash and use the cash to spend on external investments which are victory points. The game is set over 4 turns and each turn is divided into 10 days. On your turn you can choose from a variety action some of which take more days than others, so you take and action and move your marker along the days track, the turn order is constantly changing from turn to turn as the rear most marker denotes who's turn is next.
The mines are bought at auction and you need to plan your purchases carefully, this part of the game reminded me of the auctions in Power Grid, time it right and you can pick a bargain, get it wrong and everyone will bid the price up. The cost of extracting the tin and copper is determined by the amount of water in your mine. the more water, the more expensive it is. You can remove the amout of water your mines by adding things like a port or a train, some of these will also help neighbouring mines so you have to plan your mine purchases carefully. I've never been a big fan of some of Martin Wallace's games but this is lighter and less fiddly than his normal fare, there's still a lot going on and you have to keep your wits about you.

As none of us had played it before we weren't too sure of the best strategies I managed to get all 6 of my mines on the board by the 3rd turn and by the end of the game had extracted all the ore, I was quite pleased with this, I also spent as much as I could afford on VPs early in the game when you can buy more for your money. This seems to have worked quite well for me as I managed a rare win. Now that we've got the hang of it things may be very different the next time we play.

Garry 113, Steve 101, Richard, 93

With a bit of time left over we had a go at the Ticket to Ride Card Game. It's hardly surprising that this is a card game version of the popular board game, I had high hopes for this as in general I've liked most of Alan Moon's designs. The card play is similar to the board game where you can choose any 2 exposed cards or take them blind from the face down stack. You also have a set of destination cards to choose from the same way as the board game, these card have several coloured dots on which correspond to the colours of the train cards. Whare the game differs is that you can play a set of card face up on the table in front of you, 3 different coloured cards or as many as you like of a single colour stacked on top of each other. The next player can play the same colour as you unless he can play more is which case all of yours end up in the discard pile.


At the begining of your next turn if you have any cards left in front of you you take one card of each colour and place them face down. At the end of the game these cards are matched against the destination tickets in your hand and points are scored. I thought it worked quite well with one exception, Once you've placed the won cards down in front of you you're not allowed to look at them again so you need a pretty good memory, after a short while I'd completely forgotten what cards I'd won and felt lost, I just wanted the game to end . Richard and Steve (who had played at the weekend) both said that it takes a bit of getting used too. hmmm... I'm not sure about this one and I'm not fussed if I don't play it again.

Steve 128, Richard 110, Garry 26

27th May - Cuba

Another chance to cross an Essen '07 purchase off the list of unplayed games. Cuba is a beautifully produced game by Eggertspeil, also avaible in English from Rio Grande. Like a lot of games the idea is to get as many victory points as possible and of course there's more than one way of doing this.

Look at all the lovely bits!

Each player has their own board where they can store resources and products and also build a variety of buildings. When you construct a building you cover over a field that is producing reources so you have to balance what you build with what you cover over. You also buy goods at market, ship items for VPs in the harbour and influence new laws governing tax and market conditions, there's a lot going on and of course you can't do everything you'd like to. Basically you're building a victory point engine, and choosing the best combination of buildings and resources etc. will gain you the most VPs.

As this was the first time we'd played (with the exception of Jo) it took us a while to get through the rules and get going, none of us really knew what the best strategy would be so we just flew by the seat of our pants, well I did. I had a go a producing rum, Jo set up a golfing resort and I can't remember what Steve and Richard did (no doubt they'll chime in later). The game ends after 6 rounds so you have to plan what you want to do carefully, it can be difficult to recover from a bad mistake.

Several people have commented on the 'geek that it's like a bit of Puerto Rico, and bit of Caylus, a bit of Pillars of the Earth and a few others as well. I can see their point but don't ALL games borrow something from others along the way. A really good game, and I look forward to working out some of the strategies.

I think I may have lost the final scores

20th May - Power Grid

5 players this week. It was my choice so decided to cross another Essen '07 purchase off the list of unplayed games, it was the turn of the new Power Gird power plant cards. We were also playing on the Central European map.



It was quite a tight game with everyone ending up very close to each other at the end of the game. Aga also helped us with our pronunciation of Polish placenames as well. I brought the game to a close by building my 15th city, I would have liked to have had a couple of more turns but the game was going to finish anyway and if I had held back I would have ended up miles behind.

Richard 16, Neil 15, Steve 15, Garry 15, Aga 14 (cash was a tie-breaker)

13th May - Puerto Rico

This week and old classic, Puerto Rico. Now I'm not about to describe this game to you because if you're reading this blog the chances are that you know all about Puerto rico, it's been number one on the boardgamegeek website for as long as I can remember.



It's been at least a year since I played this game and I was a bit rusty, there were a few things that I wanted to do that I left too close to the end, and of course the end came about too quickly. Watching Steve and Richard I kinda figured that Richard was out in front and Steve and I were fairly close to taking 2nd place. Well I was wrong, somehow Steve had carefully managed to stash away more VPs than we'd thought, and of course I ended up in last place again. Puerto Rico is an excellent game and is number 1 deservedly so, I really need to play it more often.

Steve 56, Richard 45, Garry 42

We had some time left over so had a few hands of Flaschentufel. This is a really neat trick taking game where you try to avoid the lowest card in the pack. If you end up with it in you hand you score minus points (eekk!).



Steve and Richard had both played it a week previously and I was a bit rusty (well this is my excuse). After 2 hands I had managed to avoid the 1 card so became and instant target for the last round.

Steve 56, Richard 54, Garry 40

29th April - Hamburgum

Of all the purchases from Essen 2007 Hamburgum is the one that I'm most pleased with so far (but I've still got a few unplayed games left, notably Cuba). The basic idea is to to build the 6 Cathedrals in 17th Century Hamburg (or London if you turn the board over). As you build you gain victory points and the winner when the last Cathedral is built is the player with the most victory points. You just can't steam in and start building things, first you need to produce goods, which you sell for money, which you use to buy building materials, which you use to build the cathedrals step by step, which gain you varing amounts of VPs and there are more that one way to gain VPs which keeps things interesting.


Another thing that I like is that a players' turn consists of only 1 action which shouldn't take too long, so the game can move at a reasonably brisk pace. There also seems plenty of time to interact with the other players, so rather than just concentrating on making the most of your position, you can spend a few turns blocking what other people want to do without mucking up your master plan.

Steve and I decided to try this and see how it worked as a 2 player game and we were very pleased with the outcome. It was pretty neck and neck for most of the game but towards the end I made a decision that there would probably be a bit of a struggle in the shipyard to flush the opponents ships down the Thames so I go myself stocked up with plenty of wood but it never came to be and Steve beat me buy a large margin.

All in all an excellent game, and it works well for 2 players.

Steve 130ish, Garry 110ish