Friday, October 20, 2006
Tuesday 17th October
In attendance:
Huw Morris
Adrian Barnard
Simon Canter
Ralph Grimble
Rick Appleton
Joe Platt
Joe runs another gaming club in Oxford, the Galadriel Games club, which meets on a Monday night at the Fox & Hounds. He also plays a lot of Magic: the Gathering, which is how some of us met him. He was joining us for the first time.
Simon and Rick arrived first, and were in the middle of a game of Magic when I arrived. Simon's nasty artifact deck crushed a slightly mana-screwed Rick, who was playing one of the old World Champion decks. Joe arrived, and I taught him how to play Lost Cities. I won by a mile thanks to two huge expeditions, funded by Joe's inexperience with the game. Adrian and Ralph arrived, and we split into two groups of three.
Caylus
Adrian, Simon and I went for the heavyweight option. All of us had played before. I went for the building track, Adrian went for the points track and Simon ended up on the (weaker) cubes track, since he really needed a cube for next turn's building.
The best resource is often cloth, which means that the 2C/1F building is very useful. Adrian built that, and the 2S quarry early on, which over the course of the game gave him many points. By the time I got to build a stone building thanks to a King's Favour, my only other cube was a cloth, so I couldn't build one of the strong production buildings, and I had to build the one that allows you to build residences (the Architect?) I didn't really want that building, but it had a huge effect on the game. Midgame, I was allowed to go first far too often, which meant grabbing the two cloth and giving a point to Adrian. Then the architect was invariably free and I ended up placing in there - often to make sure I dropped out last. The upshot was that I built four residences in all. One of those residences went over the small market, which meant that for the remainder of the game, I was cash rich while both Adrian and Simon were cash poor. Throughout this stage of the game, Adrian and I were about level, with Simon a little way behind.
My opponents were also lax in allowing me to grab both the quarry and the gold mine, so that I was able to build both the Cathedral, and the Statue. The combined points from these two were about the difference I had over Adrian at the time. Simon would have built a blue building, but the game ended the turn before. Probably it would not have been enough to quite catch Adrian. Scores: Huw 106, Adrian 78, Simon ??
Adrian adds: I figured this time I'd try and get lots of money and advance the
points track. Early game I had lots of money, falling a little behind in
points. Fairly early on I built the 2 cloth / 1 food, and stone quarry
tiles. These earned me around a dozen points in the game, later I also
built a peddler who gained me another few. This was mainly since Huw was
no stranger to using these features, as ever to better advantage. Simon
lost a little ground to me here by my performing what he wanted to do
the move ahead of him.
The later mid game saw me fairly short on money on a fairly permanent
basis, Huw however had employed the 'Money grabbing landlord' TM tactic
of building residences over pretty much everything - mostly 'cos he
could! We realised prolonging the game longer at this stage was only
going to boost Huw into an ever more embarrassingly massive victory so
spending a little cash to hurry the bailiff along the track became the
wisest spending tactic. Huw capped the 'MGL'(TM) tactic by adding a
'gnomes of Zurich' flavouring by always mining the gold then simply
showing off with the cathedral and all sorts of other bonuses on the
last turn to cap the century score line (with 'help' from his unwitting
fellows).
Simon's planned come back was torpedoed by the speed up in games pace,
the collection of resource to build a statue while gathered was not
going to build one! Even with this Adrian would have still been 2nd,
it's just that his score wouldn't have been quite such a disaster.
The points track did me okay, but allowing Huw to get away with what he
did given the second time round similar set up isn't going to happen.
(he'll just have to walk all over us using some other tactics!) I put it
down to being on early shift.
Ticket to Ride
Joe had brought along Ticket to Ride, which he played with Ralph and Rick. I believe this was the first game for both of them. I don't know how it went, except Joe won (of course!). TtR is a shorter game than Caylus so there was still time for..
Carcassonne
Joe, Rick and Ralph had a game of the basic Carcassonne. I don't know how that ended - one of you guys want to write a report?
And with that we were done by 10:30. Time for a good chat about possibly more integration between Oxford Plus Gaming and Galadriel and an unusually early night.
Huw Morris
Adrian Barnard
Simon Canter
Ralph Grimble
Rick Appleton
Joe Platt
Joe runs another gaming club in Oxford, the Galadriel Games club, which meets on a Monday night at the Fox & Hounds. He also plays a lot of Magic: the Gathering, which is how some of us met him. He was joining us for the first time.
Simon and Rick arrived first, and were in the middle of a game of Magic when I arrived. Simon's nasty artifact deck crushed a slightly mana-screwed Rick, who was playing one of the old World Champion decks. Joe arrived, and I taught him how to play Lost Cities. I won by a mile thanks to two huge expeditions, funded by Joe's inexperience with the game. Adrian and Ralph arrived, and we split into two groups of three.
Caylus
Adrian, Simon and I went for the heavyweight option. All of us had played before. I went for the building track, Adrian went for the points track and Simon ended up on the (weaker) cubes track, since he really needed a cube for next turn's building.
The best resource is often cloth, which means that the 2C/1F building is very useful. Adrian built that, and the 2S quarry early on, which over the course of the game gave him many points. By the time I got to build a stone building thanks to a King's Favour, my only other cube was a cloth, so I couldn't build one of the strong production buildings, and I had to build the one that allows you to build residences (the Architect?) I didn't really want that building, but it had a huge effect on the game. Midgame, I was allowed to go first far too often, which meant grabbing the two cloth and giving a point to Adrian. Then the architect was invariably free and I ended up placing in there - often to make sure I dropped out last. The upshot was that I built four residences in all. One of those residences went over the small market, which meant that for the remainder of the game, I was cash rich while both Adrian and Simon were cash poor. Throughout this stage of the game, Adrian and I were about level, with Simon a little way behind.
My opponents were also lax in allowing me to grab both the quarry and the gold mine, so that I was able to build both the Cathedral, and the Statue. The combined points from these two were about the difference I had over Adrian at the time. Simon would have built a blue building, but the game ended the turn before. Probably it would not have been enough to quite catch Adrian. Scores: Huw 106, Adrian 78, Simon ??
Adrian adds: I figured this time I'd try and get lots of money and advance the
points track. Early game I had lots of money, falling a little behind in
points. Fairly early on I built the 2 cloth / 1 food, and stone quarry
tiles. These earned me around a dozen points in the game, later I also
built a peddler who gained me another few. This was mainly since Huw was
no stranger to using these features, as ever to better advantage. Simon
lost a little ground to me here by my performing what he wanted to do
the move ahead of him.
The later mid game saw me fairly short on money on a fairly permanent
basis, Huw however had employed the 'Money grabbing landlord' TM tactic
of building residences over pretty much everything - mostly 'cos he
could! We realised prolonging the game longer at this stage was only
going to boost Huw into an ever more embarrassingly massive victory so
spending a little cash to hurry the bailiff along the track became the
wisest spending tactic. Huw capped the 'MGL'(TM) tactic by adding a
'gnomes of Zurich' flavouring by always mining the gold then simply
showing off with the cathedral and all sorts of other bonuses on the
last turn to cap the century score line (with 'help' from his unwitting
fellows).
Simon's planned come back was torpedoed by the speed up in games pace,
the collection of resource to build a statue while gathered was not
going to build one! Even with this Adrian would have still been 2nd,
it's just that his score wouldn't have been quite such a disaster.
The points track did me okay, but allowing Huw to get away with what he
did given the second time round similar set up isn't going to happen.
(he'll just have to walk all over us using some other tactics!) I put it
down to being on early shift.
Ticket to Ride
Joe had brought along Ticket to Ride, which he played with Ralph and Rick. I believe this was the first game for both of them. I don't know how it went, except Joe won (of course!). TtR is a shorter game than Caylus so there was still time for..
Carcassonne
Joe, Rick and Ralph had a game of the basic Carcassonne. I don't know how that ended - one of you guys want to write a report?
And with that we were done by 10:30. Time for a good chat about possibly more integration between Oxford Plus Gaming and Galadriel and an unusually early night.
# posted by Huw @ 3:15 pm 
