Board Games Club
Session Review - 22nd July 2010
2 tables in play this week. On table 1 the group of 4 played “DEMARRAGE!” a game about managing a team of 4 cyclists in the Tour de France. We played 2 stages, a flat stage to introduce the Piesse brothers to the system and then a longer stage with a steep mountain climb in the middle. Mike won the first stage but Geoff’s better grouping of his team, plus the sprint bonuses, gave him the overall points lead. Mike tried to lead from the start of the second stage but several falls meant his team dropped back. Robert kept his team together so they were able to slipstream to good effect and he won the stage but once again Geoff’s grouping enabled him to score more points and he won the overall game.
Table 2 opted for “TICKET TO RIDE EUROPE”, a game about building various routes to cities in Europe to match the destinations on the tickets drawn at the start. There are points values on each ticket, the harder the route the more points they are worth. Players extend the routes throughout the game by drawing cards of various colours from a draw deck and then cashing them in to connect further cities and score interim points for doing so. An interactive game as other players will be constructing routes which pass through ‘your’ cities so sometimes it’s not easy to build the shortest route. Sometime you will need even more cards than usual to build tunnels to extend your route. As one of your options you can obtain further tickets to give you more opportunity to score but you must be careful as the game winning conditions are that you score points for each completed route but you lose the same number of points if you fail to connect it. Lucy picked up the game mechanics quickly and stormed to an easy victory by a wide margin. - Table 1 then played “CITADELS”, a club favourite about employing different characters each turn to build districts of a city, the object being to build the best city. Luke suffered badly from the start, his characters being assassinated 3 times so he was unable to build any districts. Players can employ a thief and rob other players of gold so even if you have build up resources you don’t always get a chance to use them. A game of varying fortunes but on a good night for him Geoff scored his second win.
- Table 1 then played “DIE MAUER”, a clever secret bidding game which was played on 10th June, so see report about the game there. Richard came out on top, just like last time.
Table 2 were engrossed in a game of “EL GRANDE”, a classic area domination game with many twists as it unfolds. Mike took an early lead but that meant he was a target for the other players so he quickly lost his advantage. Lucy and Tony placed their pieces well to score steadily and broke away from the others. Tim put in a strong finish as Mike continued to struggle so he gained third place and Roger made some late headway to almost catch Mike. Once again Lucy showed how well she has taken to the gaming hobby by romping away from Tony in the final round for yet another easy victory. Well done Lucy!! - Table 1 waited for the others to finish by playing aquick game of “HECKMECK”, the game about collecting domino-styles pieces with worms on them. A dice-rolling fest, with much hilarity as players can steal pieces from other players. Luke almost made a remarkable comeback from a hopeless position as he battled against the Piesse brothers but eventually his luck ran out and in the end Robert won.
Games played and Winners were:
- Demarrage - Geoff Williams
- Ticket To Ride Europe - Lucy Newbury
- Citadels - Geoff Williams
- El Grande - Lucy Newbury
- Die Mauer - Richard Piesse
- Heckmeck - Robert Piesse
New members always welcome, please come along.
Contact Mike Oakes on 01249 656457 or e-mail mfoakes@globalnet.co.uk
