Oxford Plus Gaming

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Tom Fowler
Simon Canter
Joe Platt
Steve Sykes

Nicht die Bohne
Simon was going to be late, so while we waited, the five of us had a quick round of Night die Bohne. Steve, Ralph and I had played before, while the game was new for Joe and Tom. We observed a strict "no table talk" rule for the game, since I find it more fun to play that way. Steve won the game with a huge score. I was second. Beyond that, I can't remember, except that Joe had somehow managed a negative score!

After one round Simon arrived. We had six, so we split into two groups of three.

In the Shadow of the Emperor
I played this with Tom and Simon. I have to confess that the game started off as a bit of a shambles. I had only played this once before, and that was some time ago. The other two had never played. Thus, we started the game with no real idea of what to do. It was only in rounds 2 and 3 that we really started to pick it up, so it's probably fair to call this a learning game. Normally, I reckon I'm pretty good at describing how to play for new players. In this case, I'm afraid I made a right pig's ear of it!

I won the game, though I'm not at all sure what I did to win. Probably, since I'd played the game before, I remembered the quirky scoring, where you mainly score points for winning a new elector, rather than holding on to an existing elector. By the time the other two cottoned on, I already had a big lead. I don't think there's a huge advantage of actually being the Emperor, since it effectively takes one of your pieces out of play, and none of us were playing strategically enough to take real advantage.

In retrospect, I think this is one of those games which is much better with 4 than 3. I'll try to being it out again before we've all completely forgotten how to play, but only when there are exactly 4 players.

Ticket to Ride
Joe had brought along Ticket to Ride, so he played that with Ralph and Steve. I don't know what happened in that game, but I think Joe won. The three of them finished well before Shadow of the Emperor had finished, so had time for a game of Fluxx as well.

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Adrian Barnard
Simon Canter
Joe Platt

Halloween, and a surprise on walking into the pub - it was all decked out appropriately for the occasion: subdued lighting, skeletons and spiders on the wall, pumpkins, etc. This did make me fear that the pub was going to be busier and noisier than usual, but such fears were unfounded. The only slight problem was the darkness making it hard to distinguish the blue and green pieces.

El Grande
Simon and Joe had never played this before. Even though it's one of my favourites, I still had to scan the rules beforehand, it's been so long since we played it.

You know how there are some games you just never "get"? No matter how much you play, you never win the game? For some reason, El Grande is the opposite for me. I always seem to do pretty well at it. And so was the case tonight.

Right from the off, it was a straight battle between myself and Ralph. Adrian was stuck back with the debutants. Adrian actually had fewer pieces on the board, but was able to score more "efficiently" than either Simon or Joe.

By the end of the second scoring round (round 6) I had a big lead, and I feared that all the others would work together to deny me points. This didn't turn out to be a problem as Joe, Adrian and Simon were so far back that they knew they were battling for 3rd place, and left myself and Ralph alone to battle for the win. Ralph did manage to bring the lead down, but it wasn't enough and I held on for the win.

Final results: 1st Huw, 2nd Ralph, 3rd Simon and Joe, 5th Adrian.

Adrian adds:
There's evidently tactics better than I employ in this game given the lead Huw and Ralph took and increased upon during the game. Adrian managed to stay just ahead of the trailing pack throughout the mid game, gaining praise indeed for doing so well so economically! Read, hadn't managed to push many Caballeros onto the board, yet still somehow managed what was a good score with what I had.

From mid game onwards it was evident that there were two games, 1st / 2nd place and the following pack half way back round the track. The final scoring round saw my now just fourth place fall to last as Simon joined Joe 3 points ahead of me. Ralph made gains on Huw but ultimately Huw was too far ahead to reign in.

My one little victory in the game was to pull Joe back four points on the scoring round to joint third given his pieces were highly concentrated to win in three areas and three areas only, all Caballeros from one region must return to the provinces hit him hard as the last card of the game.

Given the Pub that night was celebrating Halloween we got to play the counters using a positional method for the blue and green ones at least. Or maybe they were saving electricity, the inflatable skeletons would however suggest it was Halloween. Torches next week?

In attendance:

Huw Morris
Rick Appleton
Simon Canter
Joe Platt
Ralph Grimble
Tom Fowler

Six players again, which doesn't naturally fit with all that many games. Once again we split into two groups of three.

Primordial Soup
Rick, Simon and I played Primordial Soup. Rick and Simon had never played before. I'd been bringing it for weeks hoping to get a game. To be honest, it's a better game with 4, one of my favourites in fact, but it's still perfectly playable with 3.

I went for an aggressive strategy combining Struggle For Survival with Spores, allowing me to plonk down my new amoebas next to my opponents. Since I had Division Rate as well, I could plonk them down cheaply, so I was always able to keep 5 or more on the board. Simon went for a mobile strategy, with Movement 1 and Speed, zooming around the board for the food. Rick tried to manipulate the cube supply with Tentacles and Holding. After I went aggressive, Simon bought Escape, while Rick bought the other Struggle for Survival - trying to beat me at my own game!

I was always able to keep ahead, thanks to Parasitism. When I upgraded to Aggression, it was game over. Rick came second and Simon was third.

Goa

Tom, Ralph and Joe played Goa. Goa can work with 3 players, although I'm aware there's an issue of one player getting shut out of the flag with experienced players. Anyway, since this was the first game for Tom and Joe, this was never likely to be a problem. Somewhat surprisingly, this game only just finished in time, just before we got chucked out. Tom did very well to win the game, with a score of 40.

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.

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Simon Canter
Steve Sykes
Janet Rintoul
Adrian Barnard
Rick Appleton
Simon Waldman
Tom Fowler

Tom was joining us for the first time. Ralph had bought a copy of Goa, and kept quiet about it. We've been waiting for this reprint for so long, it's aquired an almost mythical status. To say I was pleased is a bit of an understatement! Goa only takes four players, so Ralph, me, Simon C and Steve played that, while the rest played a 5-player Settlers Cities and Knights.

Goa
Ralph and I had played before, but Simon and Steve had not. I think we must have done a pretty good job of explaining, since they both picked the game up quickly and played very well.

I started with the flag. My strategy was to advance the card track as quickly as possible, and despite failing with my first attempt to found a colony, by the end of the second round, I had advanced all the way to the bottom of the card track. Steve was focussing on the money track, and had the most money all game. Simon was trying to advance all tracks equally for the bonus action, and Ralph was advancing the card/colonist/replenish tracks.

Mid game, I think I was a bit stingy in my bids. In particular I needed to have bid more aggressively to secure a pepper plantation, to allow me to advance the replenish track more easily. That's always the way with auction games for me - I'd rather lose the item than overpay (especially when that money goes to another player rather than the bank!) and I'm a weaker player for it. I was also having great difficulty winning any auction that involved extra actions, and that can be fatal. There was one turn when Ralph, Simon and Steve all held three action cards, when I had none. That was the point when I realised I probably couldn't win the game.

By the end of the game, everybody had managed to establish all four colonies except me. A first turn failure followed by generally sub-par colonists on the cards proved hard to recover from. One notable settlement came when Simon took a gamble and attempted to colonize Calicutt, needing 5 colonists from the cards - and got them, the lucky swine! I had two 4-point bonuses, and Steve had a 3 point bonus. I can't remember who had 1 point plantation bonuses, but I think it was just Steve and Simon. Steve also had the bonus for most money, unsurprisingly.

Final scores: Steve 45, Huw 39, Simon 38, Ralph 37. (I announced 37 at the time, but looking back I didn't add on the 2 points from my cards, which propels me from joint last to second..)

Cities and Knights
(report by Adrian)

Variation: we seemed to be missing around 3 tiles! So the island was a
little smaller than usual - for 5 players this was not as constricting
as it might have been for 6.

There were okay spots for all dotted around the island, ore was likely
to be the least prevalent resource given it's 12, 12, 3, 4 and 11
numbers and placement, clay was likely the next most rare due to it's
mere 3 tiles, the numbers here being poor too.

Rick gained an early lead - 5/13 lent itself to a lot of early flak from
the other players. Janet seemed to be doing the majority of the robbing
and swindling of people, especially as her trade abilities rose on the
'calendar'.

Tom made a conscious effort to stay behind to use the cards he had, an
error in my view, I feel that moving to the front in mid game with such
cards in reserve for catch up if required is a better manoeuvre.
Allowing the barbarians to burn your city down when you could have taken
two more with you was an 'interesting tactic!' He only got to use one
action card to gain two resource cards from one other player, once it
became obvious we weren't going to complete the game. Not revealing his
'printers' card lost him a point to a spy as well.

Rick suffered from the early lead he gained and therefore the early take
down, he'd managed to seriously advance his 'calendar' and expand his
road network to some good locations.

Janet suffered as did others from the early arrival of the ship borne
barbarians, more so having only one city, most of the rest of the game
Janet had to make do with settlements, and creating strife for other
players.

Simon had a steady game but ended up a bit boxed in, not disastrously so
but restricting none the less. He also seemed to be Janet's main
thievery target.

Adrian gained a very early city and managed to get a double knight ahead
of barbarian arrival so retained this edge. However whilst having all
resources the numbers were poor and the likely expansion numbers were
poor. Upon realisation that we'd come nowhere near completing the game,
due to very hard trading, Adrian stole Ricks trader to bring him up to
the same points as Tom's points grab longest road build.

The final points likely don't reflect the end, Rick was set to expand
well with good numbers at his attained build sites and the calendar
means to have a good advantage over all. Adrian's and Tom's scores were
merely boosted 'cos they could be. Simon also had good numbers at his
restricted sites.

Mid game close:
Adrian:8 3 cities, 1 points card, trader. (level 3 knights)
Tom:   8 1 city, 4 settlement, longest road. (aqueduct)
Simon: 7 3 cities, 1 settlement.
Janet: 6 1 city, 4 settlements.
Rick:  5 2 cities, 1 settlement. (3:1 port, 2:1 commodities, aqueduct)

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Simon Canter
Steve Sykes
Ian Jenkins

I'd thought that we were to be only four strong tonight, so I brought Primordial Soup. We were in the process of setting it up when Ralph arrived, fortunately bringing Age of Steam.

Age of Steam
Ian and Simon had not played before, so needed a (very) quick explanation of the rules. With 5 players, the basic map can get quite congested, so Ralph and I both built on the Eastern edge of the board for guaranteed early shipping. This proved to be a bad mistake, as we were both locked out of the Centre and the West. Compounding this, Steve chose to urbanize first, and put the sole purple city on the Western side of the board, denying Ralph and me access to purple cities altogether. There were quite a few purple cubes on the Eastern side of the production board, which proved practically impossible for either of us to ship all game. In fact, early in the game, twice I had to move back one space on the income track, as I didn't have enough shipping to cover my costs.

Ian made a run all along the Southern side of the map for the first 5-shipment, but Simon had reached the North-West and had the best route. Steve picked up some of Ian's cubes in the South West, then built North, and did the same to Simon.

In the end, Steve's routes proved to be just that little bit more flexible than Simon's, and was able to find more high value shipping towards the end of the game. Ian was level on income with me, but I'd only got there by issuing extra shares. Ralph had got shut out and was further back. Final scores: Steve 70, Simon 63, Ian 57, Huw 49, Ralph 38.

Looking back, I think Ralph and I made one crucial blunder. If we'd monopolised the Urbanize action between us, we would have had enough cities to ship to, and we wouldn't have had difficulty around turns 3-5 finding some medium sized shipping. I eventually realised this, and took 3 shares in order to guarantee being able to take Urbanization one time, but it was a couple of turns too late. I should have bitten the bullet and done it earlier. Ralph tried to escape his predicament by desperately building track to the West, but he was asking too much of himself to actually manage to join his track in time.

Perhaps the other mistake we made was offering too good advice to Simon and Ian.. ;-)

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Adrian Barnard
Ralph Grimble
Simon Canter
Rick Appleton
Steve Sykes

After a couple of weeks of not finishing our games, I was absolutely determined that we would actually finish a game this week, so I brought along some of the shorter games in my collection. I learned that Steve was on his way, but would be late, so we started off with a quick game of Bluff while we waited.

Bluff (aka Liar's Dice)
There's not a whole lot you can say about Bluff. The usual probability-stretching distributions, the usual terrible bids (which often as not paid off!) Simon was out first, quickly followed by Rick. I was third, leaving Adrian and Ralph left with one die each. That's a bit of a crapshoot really. Adrian went first, bid incorrectly and Ralph won.

Steve turned up, so we quickly taught him how to play (which takes, ooh about 30s) and had another game. Steve was a bit unlucky and was out first, so he was told to rummage through the game bag and set up whichever game he preferred. I was out second, so joined Steve in the next game, and Rick was third. I didn't see who won - perhaps one of the remaining players can enlighten me as to what
happened next?

(From Adrian:)
Bluff game 2: The second game again ended up with Adrian vs. Ralph, I
seem to remember having two dice to one on this one, with the
predictable result of a win. So that's a 2nd/5 and 1st/6 for me.

Through the Desert
Steve, Rick and I played this, as the first three players out of the previous game. Only I had played before, and that was some time ago, so I had to read the instructions again while teaching. Rick won the first game, as I quickly found my camels all hemmed in. We had a second game, which I won, with Rick and Steve equal second.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne using the 'free' river expansion, saw Adrian, Ralph and
Simon playing. Adrian gradually fell significantly behind, a super large
city complex being 'taken over' ahead of completion by Ralph saw a
counter move from Adrian that would cease completion while getting him
back into it and denying Simon the farming points. Up until the end
Simon looked like he would win it on farms, Ralph was desperate for a
curved road on grass to allow his overturning of Simons dominance of
much of the board in this respect. Adrian took great delight in
continually drawing these tiles out and placing them away from Ralphs
last gasp plan.

Ralphs last draw saw a curved road on grass and this removed Simons
points while boosting Ralphs over most of the board. Positions Ralph 1st
Simon 2nd Adrian 3rd (that's a way, way back 3rd which is likely why I
totally forgot to record the scores) Ralphs final tile had almost wiped
my farm results out in their entirety losing me around 20 - 24 points.

The one game of Carcassone took approximately the same length of time as the two games of Through the Desert. Adrian departed, but the rest of us stayed on for a game of Frank's Zoo. We agreed to play the basic rules, finishing at 11pm (rather than 20 points as in the rules.)

Frank's Zoo
Frank's Zoo is always a fun game to play, and this was no exception. It was most memorable for the frankly dominating performance of Ralph. We had time for 4 rounds in all, and Ralph was first in 2, and second in the other 2, giving a score of 14 out of the 16 possible. Miles back in second was Rick with 8, then Simon, Steve and myself with 6. Is it a game of skill or luck? Obviously with my score, I'd say luck...

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Rick Appleton
Simon Canter

No Adrian tonight unusually. Four players though, so perfect for Caylus, which we haven't managed to play in a while.

Caylus
Simon had played once before, as had (I think) Rick. We needed a quick refresher, but I think everybody quickly remembered how to play. I decided to eschew the building track for a change, and build an early Mason. Rick and Ralph did play on the building track, and it worked out quite nicely for them.

Early on, Simon lagged behind a bit. Midgame, he and Rick both built a few wooden buildings which got used a lot by other players, and Simon caught up. Rick started winning favours and used the building track to put up stone buildings and moved into the lead. I was accumulating gold, and was in a position to build a blue building before game's end. Chances are though, that it wouldn't have been enough, as Rick's lead was about 14 points by that time.

Annoyingly, we didn't manage to finish this week either. With only four players, and no lengthy instructions, there really is no excuse - we were just playing too slowly. As it was, at 11pm Rick announced he had to catch his bus home, and we were unable to complete the last two rounds. Everybody else had up to that point been couinting on finishing at 11:20 instead. Normally, Adrian would have been able to give Rick a lift home...

So that's two weeks in a row we've been unable to finish. I'll have to make sure it doesn't happen a third time..

In attendance:
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble
Adrian Barnard
Simon Canter
Simon Waldman
Rick Appleton

Oh dear. Two whole weeks between updates. Sorry about that.. :-) Anyway, six players is often a little awkward. There aren't that many games which work well with that number, so often you have to split into two groups of three - and there aren't so many games which are all that good with three either! Fortunately, by sheer chance I had brought one of those games which does work with six players: Martin Wallace's marvellous Princes of the Renaissance for the first time in a long long time.

Princes of the Renaissance
The Simons and Rick had not played this game before. We'd brought it out on aTuesday before and I thought it should be possible to finish, even with six. Alas, this was not the case, as for some reason the game went on far longer than I was expecting - and that wasn't with any of the players playing particularly slowly either.

I went with my normal strategy of going for the family which gives a bonus on bidding to be condottierre - even chossing fourth, I was surprised to find it still available. I paid 24 for one of the Milan tiles which also gives a condottierre bonus - a fair price, given our previous games, and was slightly miffed when all the other Milan tiles seemed to go for no more than 12! Adrian amassed a large army. Usually when he does so, he tries to get the Pope - annoying everybody else, but never putting him in contention to win. This time, he used his army to fight battles, and was collecting a worrying number of laurels.

I had explained before the game started that PotR is not a game to be played nicely - the more Machiavellian you can bem the better, and I was pleased to see that the threee new players all took that to heart. In particular, Rick quickly learned that "Steal Influence" tiles can be used to extort influence out of opponents, and in one memorable move, stole influence from Ralph even after Ralph had paid a bribe not to be the target!

The time just flew by though, and we had to call a halt to proceedings just before the end of the second decade. It was annoying to have to finish at that point, because I really wanted to see how the third decade was going to play out. Ralph had a very good set of tiles and a decent army. Adrian had a bigger army and plenty of laurels, and Simon C was accumulating merchants. I was probably out of the reckoning after having overpaid for an early tile, and Rick had made himself everybody's enemy! Oh well, we'll have to bring this one out again when we've got an afternoon to spare and less time pressure. I think the new players enjoyed it, and they certainly contributed to a very interesting three hours.

Adrian adds:

I think this Tuesdays game with six players has to be one of my
favourites. The more players it has the better it gets. Regrettably the
longer it gets too, I'd venture to suggest that it can't be run of an
evenings gaming with six Machiavellian characters all vying to win. We
got pretty much through the second decade, Huw had fallen over for
once!!! The tactic of getting bonuses towards being the leader of
defence or attack had fallen fowl of bidding very high for a required
tile - and gaining it, but then leaving him very short for pursuing any
other tiles conducive towards its optimal functioning. Which kind of
left that field open for me, to compete in on a reasonably even footing
for once. All the same, I never did quite have as much military as I
wanted and sorely missed out on being the Pope whom was snatched up by
Rick on both occasions offered. I was doing well on collecting laurels
for victories, never getting much money for them but defending the
little city while having interests (tiles) in it was still boosting my
ratings and I'd endeavoured to get the same city tiles as the 'good'
players this time such as to hold out hope of support here and there.

I think I was shining enough to get picked on a disproportionate number
of times for theft and treachery, but then being in the lead I'm told by
those who frequent that position tends to mean a disproportionate amount
of ammunition is fired your way. I always make a point of standing up to
extortion too, never did I offer any incentive not to Rob me, so often
the buck stopped there as the extortionist would look a little toothless
just saying "Oh! Okay then." To a flat "No" I was still amused that
others around me had breathed a sigh of relief that their payments of
sometimes up to half of the penalty had avoided the 'full' weight
landing on them. The extortionist meanwhile was rolling in cash or
influence extra to what he'd had before to use against all. I stick with
the "No" reply any day, but look forward to getting such tiles in future
given there are so many other generous players out there I can threaten
to gum to death! My favourite play of the evening was extortion,
followed by hitting that party anyway! Rick's getting himself a
reputation here.

Time gentlemen please! Why does everybody tell me I've got a strong
position whenever we don't finish a game!!!? I'd planned to build up the
cheap cities by purchase of influence tiles, get crossbowmen having
gained their boost tile and war myself upwards gaining laurels as I went
with an all out bid to finally be Pope too, but we'll never know. Still
an excellent event all the same, which is why I renewed with Oxford
group this time.

In attendance:
Adrian Barnard
Huw Morris
Ralph Grimble

Only the three of us again tonight. Fortunately there are a couple of maps on Age of Steam which work well with three players. Ireland is probably the best of them, but we've played that one quite a bit, so this time, we tried the Scandanavia map. We had played it once before, but many many moons ago.

Age of Steam (Scandanavia map)
The rules for this map are not much changed from the basic game. The ferries from the Ireland map are there, but the biggest change is the "Move by Sea" action. We quickly read the rules, set everything up... and stared blankly at the map. The distribution of cubes was such that there only appeared one viable starting location, and even then it wasn't clear where else you could go. I took an extra share in the first round and the other two didn't want to get into a pointless bidding war with me. Taking first build, I grabbed the Copenhagen-Helsingborg ferry. Adrian grabbed another ferry, and Ralph spent a while deliberating about which was the least worst starting position, before setttling on the bottom of the map.

Both Adrian and I were able to get some moderate shipping in early with Ralph slipping behind. However, by early midgame, he had built his locomtive up to a 4 link, and was able to ship all along the bottom of the board twice, for an income of 8 (twice) while I was shipping for no more than 6, and Adrian no more than 4. (One notable play involved Adrian shipping by sea a purple cube which I was relying on. When it came to pay my bills, I was one short, and had to move back on the income track from 8 to 7.) This gave Ralph a comfortable lead which he was never to lose.

With Ralph having finished building along the bottom of the board, I built out from Malmo to stop him expanding there. I still had some cubes I could ship for long routes at the end of the game, provided I could build the track in time. Ralph was now forced to compete in Denmark with Adrian.

Ralph did get his train up to a 6 link first, and started shipping big, which gave him a big lead. As I hoped by the last couple of turns his shipping was running out. I was on his tail and managed to complete my tour of north Sweden to give me some long routes at game end. In fact, I'd managed to close up to being only one income behind Ralph on the last turn.

Scoring: I'd taken one more share than Ralph, so I needed 6 more links built to tie. As it happened, Ralph had built the most links in the game as well. Final scores: Ralph 114, Huw 106, Adrian 80.