Games in a Pub 4th March 2012

Absence of any posts recently was down to a bout of bronchitis. All is well again now so blogging reviews etc will resume.

Having done a lot of work on the Crokinole game (the story will appear at some point), I was keen to see how people reacted to it at the pub.

Played as a 2 player game each player has 12 wooden disks and takes turns flicking them onto the circular playing board. A board that has 4 scoring zones, the central well worth 20 (disks making it into this are immediately removed and placed to one side to be scored at the end of the game), the central circle worth 15 points the middle ring worth 10 and the outer ring worth 5. Players flick their disks onto the board but if an opponents disk or disks are on the board then you must touch one of them with your new disk or by ricocheting one of your disks already on the board onto one of your opponents disks.. Failure to do this will result in your disk and any of yours it touched being removed from play. When all the disks have been played the players count up their points and the winner scores the difference between the two – it is a game played over a number of rounds, the winner typically being the first to a 100. Although it seemed to be played fairly cautiously at the pub, Gwen and I have found this to be a fast and furious game which sees pieces spinning in all directions including off the board!

Crokinole was played at some point by all the attendees and everybody appeared to enjoy it with a couple commenting about its similarities to Carrom but that it was much faster. However I think it would be fair to say that it didn’t light anybody’s fire, all were happy to play it again but nobody raved about it.

Next up was TransEuropa whilst in another corner of the room Qwirkle was given a run out by Katie, Ben and Andy (I finally managed to remember –write down – their names!). Given the poor / soft lighting it was the first game we have had to play by candlelight, although unless the lighting improves it may not be the last. It had been particularly dark for the first half hour after we arrived. For anybody that is familiar with Qwirkle they will know that whilst it is an excellent game it can prove difficult for those that are colour blind as the red and the orange and the blue and the purple are almost indistinguishable in some lights.

Ben and Andy showed some interest in Existenz (another new game, this time from Holland) but ultimately plumped to join the rest of us for a game of 7 Wonders. This and Ticket To Ride Europe were recently purchased with the proceeds of the last few months at the pub. Ben managed to win, closely followed by Katie. For myself I focussed on my lesson from the previous time I played the game (I should have been collecting papyrus) but each game plays differently it seems (surprise, surprise!) and this time it was brick that I was missing – hey ho, I can loose at any game. Hopefully my whinging about the lack of brick didn’t distract the other players too much!

I mentioned via Twitter that the money collected during our meetings through the season of Lent would go towards CAFOD and we managed to collect £8 which with the governments matched funding will see this rise to £16. Monies collected at our next Sunday will also be donated to CAFOD’s Lent Appeal.

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More photo's from the evening can be seen here.

Our next event at the Blue Anchor, Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 18th March starting at 7pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page Social Gamers - Crowborough