Some more Games.....

Well, this was last week, so I am a bit tardy with my post again. Anyway, 3 player session with Pauline and Stephen, Tina couldn't make it. Accompanied by some tasty plum cake curtesy of Stephen! First up we finally got around to playing Carcassonne - Mayflower. Pauline and Stephen have had this for awhile and this is the first time it's hit the table. Normal Carcassonne rules except that you build from one edge of the scoreboard, representing the coast of the New World I suppose. Exploring Westwards....there are two Surveyor meeples that move West one row every time a feature is scored.....ummmm. Gives something else to think about, because if any of your meeples are left behind the Surveyors on an unfinished feature they get removed. So you could leave a potential scoring opporunity for another player.

Carcassonne - Mayflower layout
As you can see from the picture, we didn't think it through before starting to play because the tiles are going to stretch a long way in one direction. We had to remove the scoreboard and keep moving the tiles so we had enough room to play them all!
We found it difficult to score a farm as you needed to surround it with tiles (a la a cloister in normal Carc), and it was likely to get left behind the Surveyors. I think it adds a nice twist to the basic game and I enjoyed it. As you can see the scores were quite close.

Final Scores
Pauline 107, Colin 93, Stephen 92

We followed up with a game of Thurn & Taxis, Pauline had played this before but Stephen hadn't. I like this game a lot, planning your routes etc. It does get a bit frustrating when the card you really like gets cleared just before your turn though. I had a pretty awful time in this game and came a distant third place. Pauline got a few bonus chits including the Bayern one.

Me, looking reasonably calm considering my performance
Final Scores (Coach Card, Bonus Chits, minus coaches left)
Pauline 10+16-3 = 23
Stephen 10+5-6 = 9
Colin 7+6-8 = 5

Creepy, spacey sound effect whooshes us forward to Wednesday of this week (19th)

Stephen has gone back to the UK for a week, Pauline came round for a chilli and of course, a game. It's been really hot here for over a week now, too hot to sit on the balcony an the only time it's bearable is in the evenings. So what better way to cool down than a nice Chilli!!
I have had Morganland (Aladdin's Dragons) for a few years now and I think I have only played it once up until recently.....little story about buying this one. We went on the bus to Salzburg one year we were here on holiday and went to a shopping mall outside of the city, never been there before. Of course there was a kids's toy store in there, but toy stores over here have proper games in them too. Not just Trivial Pursuit and Monopoly. Anyway I didn't see anything I fancied until, on the way out by the checkout they had a bargain bin, and I saw....Morganland, shrink-wrapped....10 euro. Well, you can guess the rest!!!
So, Tina and I had played one game a few days ago and I thought we could try it tonight with 3 players. The board is quite large and very colourful and the game has nice bits as usual with German games. I explained the rules and off we went. I seemed to be the only one going for the magic spell cards which came in very handy during the game. I think we all underestimated the power of being the start player as there were quite a few ties which are broken in start player order.

Morganland, board layout
We all enjoyed the game, it played smoothly and didn't outlast it's welcome if you know what I mean. I think both Pauline and Tina would go for more magic spell cards next time, they got a bit cross when I decimated a space of their counters with one....he! he! The tiebreaker is the most scroll artifacts, but Pauline and I both had 7 artifacts and one scroll each so we shared the win.

Until next time.....Happy Gaming!!

Games Session - Catch Up 2

On the 25th Stephen and Pauline reciprocated and asked us to their apartment for a games evening. Of we always have nibbles and drinks but Stephen had baked a nice Victoria Sponge for our delectation.....yummy! This evening we were to play Cleopatra, the rather nicely produced game from Days of Wonder. All DoW games have really nice production values, I suppose that's why they are at the top end of the price spectrum. Anyway, nobody had played this apart from me, and that was awhile ago. I rang through the rules and after a couple of turns I think everyone had more or less got the idea. Collect resources, build bits of Cleopatra's palace, the more bits you build the more money you get. Of course some of the resources are tainted by corruption so you begin to collect corruption amulets which go under your own personal pyramid.

The excellent layout of Cleopatra
There are various bits you can build, Obelisks, Spinxes, Walls, Doorways, Gardens and of course the Throne. There are also 6 different characters you can use to further your plans, they give you certain advantages like collect resources from other players or get a card from the discard pile etc. They are all tainted so you get corruption from them as well. Stephen was doing very well, and managed to build 3 Spinxes in one go which netted a healthy 17 talents. The game ends when 5 out of the 6 bits of the palace are built, you then count the corruption amulets under your pyramid and the one with the most ie the most corrupt, gets thrown to the crocodiles! The corruption count was very close, Tina had 13, Stephen had 12 and Pauline 11. I had 2! I don't know how I managed that. So poor Tina went to the crocs. On the talents count Stephen had 65, and if had got one more corruption amulet would have joined Tina in the croc pool. As it was he had a comfortable victory.

Final Scores
Stephen 65, Pauline 41, Colin 33, Tina...crocs

We still had a bit of time left so we finished off with a game of The Bottle Imp (Flaschenteufel). This is an interesting trick taking card game. The idea is not to get stuck with the Bottle Imp because you get negative points. The value of the bottle imp drops throughout the hand making it harder to get rid of. Stephen and Pauline both play bridge so are no strangers to trick taking games and this showed in the scores. We played one hand to get the hang of it, then played a game of four hands.

Final Scores
Stephen 614, Pauline 507, Colin 338, Tina 114

Stephen enjoying his win at The Bottle Imp

Games Session - Catch Up 1

So on the 20th July we had a convivial social games evening with Stephen and Pauline. We were going to play Seafarers with the 4 islands scenario. This was the first time Stephen and Pauline had played this version of Settlers. I did a quick recap of the rules with the extra bit about boats and extra points for reaching another island and away we went. The game went OK, with Stephen having his perpetual problem of no brick! The points started to mount and I managed to reach an adjacent island with my boats.

Pauline and Stephen enjoying Seafarers
The winning score was 12 points, I had a development card for 1VP tucked away and was getting close to winning. Stephen had grabbed the longest road at first, then Tina pinched it off of him, but Stephen managed to get it back and keep it for the rest of the game. I had built all my cities and only had to build one more settlement for the win.... I managed to do it and with my dev card claimed the victory.

Final Scores
Colin 13, Stephen 9, Pauline 6, Tina 5

Me...savouring victory for a change

Catch Up Post 2 - What a Coincidence!

So we were walking through St. Wolfgang after doing a bit of shopping......and, I couldn't believe my eyes, across the road we saw a couple of friends from Billingshurst where we used to live. I think they were as surprised as we were and we spent a couple of hours sitting outside the local coffee shop catching up with the news. They didn't know that we now lived in St. Wolfgang and we didn't know they were on a 6 month trip around Europe in their new motorhome. We arranged for them to come to our apartment the next day so they could update their blog, on which they are keeping a record of their journey, and to go out for a meal in the evening. We took them to the Franz Josef where we had a lovely meal and another chance to catch up. It sounds as though they have been having a great time careering around Europe just doing and going where they fancy. If you would like to follow their progress or see where they have already been you can here:

http://barbersweb.traveleor.com/

They are finishing off their journey with 2 months in Germany and going back to England in October....good luck to them!!

On the gaming front, we had a nice evening yesterday....more later!!

Lazy Me.....Catch Up Post 1

Well, I haven't posted for awhile so here is a potted version of what's been happening here in St. Wolfgang. Pauline came over on the 1st July, Stephen went to camp with the Army cadets for a week and would be flying out later. Fortunately they were showing Wimbledon on TV here this year so Pauline came round and we watched the men's final, a fantastic performance from both players. Roddick couldn't have come closer to winning but Federer ground out a historic 15th Grand Slam title.
Later in the week we had a games evening, playing Thurn und Taxis and Settlers: Germany version. I got trounced in both games with Paulne and Tina tying with 19pts in TuT and Pauline winning easily in Settlers with 12pts.

Air Challenge 2009
Of course the big event in July in St. Wolfgang is the Red Bull Air Challenge. On the 10th and 11th the lake is dotted with seaplanes of all sizes, from small 2 seaters to the big 3 engined Dornier seaplane. Also lots of helicoptors landed in the field, a big army helicoptor landed in the field just over the road from our house and the downdraft from the rotors filled our balcony with leaves and rubbish.....Tina was not pleased!!

The army helicoptor in the field
As usual they had all stalls there selling beer, bosna, kasespatzle and so on. They also had a Dirndl jumping competition where, girls (and guys) dress in the traditional Dirndl and jump into the lake from the top of a platform!! At 4.00pm there was an air display, with a Red Bull helicoptor performing acrobatics, a bi-plane flew round the lake with a young lady wing walking (that decidely looked hair raising, although Tina said she would like to give it a try!). Some free-falling parachutists dropped in as well. Pauline had invited us to her apartment to view from the balcony and we had a splendid view of the whole show.

One of the big seaplanes flying over the lake

More to follow!

The Weather is Unsettled......

Well, June has been really funny, a few really hot days but mostly we've all sorts of weather, from thunderstorms, hail, gales but thankfully no snow!! That comes in spades in the winter. I can't really understand Twitter, I mean, I am following a few well known gaming people, but the things they write about......do you really want to share them with cyberspace? It seems to me that there must a million things to fill your day, especially if you are working, where do they find the time to write all that very personal (in some cases) trivia. Well, that's just me.
On the gaming front, still been playing Settlers on AsoBrain and not doing very well I have to say. But I did have a couple of games of Hunters and Gatherers with Tina yesterday, it's one of the games that she really likes. Our gaming friends are due back out here beginning of July so I'm looking forward to getting some more games in then. They are here for 8-9 weeks during the school holidays so we should be able to find time for some gaming. There has been a lot of chatter about Steam on BGG lately. I really hate AoS but love Railroad Tycoon, perhaps the basic game of Steam will be a bit more forgiving and I might actually enjoy it. Do I want to pay about 40 euros to find out though!!

Happy Gaming!!

Games again!!

A couple of days ago we had a nice evening round our friend's apartment, a few drinks, some scrummy cakes and of course a couple of games. This time I introduced them to the Carcassonne spin-off....Hunters and Gatherers. It didn't take long to run through the rules, Pauline and Stephen had played vanilla Carcassonne before and Lynne picked it up really quickly.

Tina placing her tile in H & G
The tiles and meeples are really colourful and look very nice on the table. The golden nuggets in the forests give the game an added twist and the play goes smoothly, especially if you pick your next tile at the end of your turn so you have time to consider your options rather than wait until the start of your turn.
We soon had the table covered with river networks, forests and plains filled with animals and tigers. The scores were quite spread out, but everybody enjoyed the game.

Final Scores
Stephen 94, Lynne 78, Colin 65, Tina 57, Pauline 46

As Alhambra went down really well last time we decided to have another game. No rules to explain this time and we started straight off. The tiles seemed to come out really badly....for me anyway :) I couldn't seem to get going, I managed to get the majority in purple tiles but not a lot else. I think you have to have at least some second and third places to boost your score up to be able to be in with a chance of winning the game. Well, that didn't happen for me this time. Everyone else seemed to be doing fine though.

Lynne studying the tiles for sale and Stephen looking quite happy with the way things are going

Final Scores
Pauline 106, Stephen 97, Lynne 67, Colin 59, Tina 53

Pauline and Stephen have gone back to the UK now, but will be back in July so I'm sure we have a few more sessions then.

Happy Gaming!!