The Week That Was...

Two gaming sessions this week to report on:-

1 - I met with Julian & Ester on Monday evening as they were keen to get some more gaming in; possibly they are really liking the new hobby?! I first introduce them to Zooloretto & after explaining the rules & basic concepts/tips, we were away. I felt like I started well & didn't have any animals in my barn for a long time, while the other two quickly had a couple of types. They quickly caught on to check what everyone else was collecting so they could try to place a tile in a truck which wasn't benefictial (or as little as possible) to anyone else. I was the first to expand my zoo & thought I was on my way to a win, but after a bit of crafty swopping animal types around, Ester seemed like she was catching up. A bit of buying here & there, I started feeling less sure especially after I had to take a couple of trucks that put a total of 3 animal types in my barn - bad news!

Final score - joint 1st was Julian & Ester on 27pts, me in last with 22pts. Oh, the shame!

We then moved onto Stone Age. We all had a good game the previous week at the Legion with Michel (who doesn't share the same views) & the newbies wanted another go. Julian especially learnt the importance of the scoring cards. This was a game of more bad dice rolls than the previous game & there were quite a lot of cards bought... Julian went up to NINE workers & built a lot of builings (7?) to my 5.

Final scoring - 1st was Julian on 137pts, 2nd was me on 115pts & Ester was on @100pts.

Last game of the evening was Fearsome Floors which I thought would appeal to Julian's back-stabbing nature. I am beginning to think he & Damen were separated at birth! After an explanation of the movement rules & showing examples of how the monster moves through walls, as well as how this can be manipulated to screw around with your opponents, we were off. I was the first to get a person out, then Julian & quickly followed by Ester. By the 2nd phase, Julian had got his 2nd person out ahead of me (so was currently 1st on tie-break of getting out quicker) & we only needed one more to win the game. After a bit of Julian trying to shaft me, which I countered by sacrificing my penultimate person to shaft him back, he had no-one left to move & I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself as I still had one more fairly near the exit & only Ester to worry about. The only way I could lose was if the '1 Kill' or '2 Kills' tile came up (as the monster moves 20 spaces)... unfortunately, it did & the monster soon had me in its sight, gobbling me up & at the same time, giving Julian victory from the hands of defeat!

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2 - at the Legion last night, I had hoped to try out Chicago Express but we (me, Ben, Nasty Nick, Steve & Nick Bleech) decided to settle for Princes Of Florence. I was more than happy as I'd never player a multi-player game of PoF which is meant to be difficult & tense. I chose Works that seemed to rely on large buildings & quickly found myself bidding hard for Builders so that I could put the three large buildings (Lab, University & ?) close together. I also had Works that relied heavily on Religion, Lakes & Forests, so was feeling quite chuffed about that. My final Works Value was 24(!) & converted it all to points. But it wasn't enough to beat Steve (the winner) or Ben (2nd), who both had Prestige cards that gave them extra points. I did end up one point ahead of Nasty Nick, which was enough for me!

Nick B left, so the 4 of us played Yspahan quickly. We saw a huge amount of cards being taken & played, one of which I used to build the +2pts building. This may have been the crucial point that won me the game as I score a gigantic 29pts in the 2nd week for having 4 complete souks, which gave me a bonus 8pts. Towards the end of the final week I was miles ahead, but Steve caught up & ended 4pts behind.

The fact that I beat Nasty Nick TWICE (shock!) was the icing on the cake as he had been stirring things up all evening! But I still love him (oo-er, missus!)...