Games in a Pub - 2nd October 2011

Frustration and chaos in a very funny racing game

With apologies from a number of regulars and Gwen at home following her second foot operation the previous day I knew the turnout might be small. But thankfully Oliver and I were quickly joined by Karen and Martin (the green team from the last Sunday meeting). At the last Sunday meeting we played Ticket To Ride and Oliver had requested that we have a crack at one of the other two classic gateway games Carcassonne or Settlers of Catan so this week we started off with Carcassonne. This is a game in which I had lost interest until playing it recently with my nephew on a camping trip reawakened my enthusiasm; I was confident that both Karen and Oliver would really enjoy it (which they did) and Martin knew what he was letting himself in for.

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game where players build up a landscape reminiscent of that around the southern French city of Carcassonne famous for its Roman and Medieval fortifications. As the players develop the area around Carcassonne they deploy their followers (Knights, Thieves, Monks and Farmers) on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters and in the fields earning points as they complete various elements of the landscape. It is a gentle almost collaborative game but still has a competitive dimension as players seek to score as many point s as possible. With Martin and I having played this one many times before (although never together) there was always a good chance one of us would come out on top and so it proved in the end with Martin finishing significantly ahead of the rest of us.

Whilst we had been enjoying the delights of the French country side Nick, Andy Chris and Adam had arrived and played the ever popular Bausack.

With both games complete we rearranged the furniture (as there had been a request for a game that could accomodate all eight of the evenings attendees) and set up the chaotic but very funny

Match Report 30th August 2011

The challenge of picking the best game for the number of players

Another good turn out with 11 this time, Daniella, Malcolm, Liza, Leonie, Chris, Effie, Sinead, Crispin, Joe, Gwen and obviously yours truly. On this occasion we had apologies from a further three Ben, Claire and Brian. I am sure the imminent start of school for two and University for another two will cause number s to drop but it is tremendously encouraging that we continue to attract such a broad range of people.

Given the nature of the evening i.e. a social evening with games (where people arrive at different times and we can never be 100% sure of how many will turn up) we can at times stumble into a good game that when played with too many people doesn’t quiet deliver and so it was on this occasion.

Caracassonne (Age 8+, Players 2-6, 60 min playing time)

At one end of the table I led six people in a game of Carcassonne which included the two expansion sets, “River” and “Inns and Cathedrals”. The interplay between the players and the suggestions, normally

Family Camping Holiday In England

Friday saw us heading up to Rutland for the Bank Holiday weekend to meet our nephew and his family for a few days camping - in the pouring rain!

It was no surprise that both he and I took quite a few games with us and that given the weather we played many of them. More details on these a little later. However it struck us that there were some important points to note from the weekend that might be of interest to other families and parents with young children.

1. That the two 7 year old boys had each bought only one cuddly toy with them so improvised endlessly (when it stopped raining) with sticks, logs, trees, etc (found around the camp site) and their imaginations in re-creating Star Wars speeders, light sabres characters and situations. It is amazing to see how much fun children can have when

St Mary's Social Afternoon - Week 2

Yesterday saw the second of the St Mary’s Crowborough Social Afternoons with Games. I am pleased to report that the numbers held up and if you include one person who came along to see what was going on we advanced to 18 people.

Whilst chatting to Gervais it struck me once again what an amazing thing modern board games (and card games) are; we looked across at a game of Patrician (described in more detail here) and of the 5 participants, there were three over 60, one in her eighties and two teenagers (14 and 17). They weren’t members of the same family but they had all come together to sit round a table and play some games and, by all accounts talking to them afterwards, they ALL had a great time. At how many places or events in Crowborough, or the UK for that matter, could the same have occurred?! That is not to say this was an isolated case either,

Match Report 5th July

With the continued renovation work going on at our place the group was kindly invited to meet at Pauline’s with the added benefits that this is the home of possibly the best munchies in the UK and a unique and very cute beastie.

Apologies had been received from no less than 5 people on this occasion, Malcolm visiting his sister, Alex in Marseille, Julia working hard with American clients who seem to think it unreasonable to work in line with our time zone, Joe having finished exams is already hard at work on the coursework for next year’s exams and Josh travelling back south. Attendees were Ian (now the Black Knight), Helene, Crispin (Now Brother Crispin member of a new order of monks, the Crisponians - more on this and the Black Knight later).

Sushizock im Gockelwok (Age 8+, 2-5 players, 20 min playing time)

We managed three games on this particular outing. Starting with Sushizock im Gockelwok as Natalie and Daniella had not yet arrived. This simple game explained in previous posts saw the big plus numbers captured early and in my case a balancing pile of low negative numbers, things were set fair and then it all went wrong.

Ian - launched three (others may have been involved but in the session with my counsellor I could only remember his dubious activities) unprovoked chopstick raids, not only on my pile of plus tiles leaving me with none and then to add insult to injury he took one of my minus one tiles leaving me with no alternative but to take the remaining minus four tile. The net result of this

Match Report 26th April 2010

Well what an evening, but let me start with an addendum to the last report. I omitted to mention a whole new feature to the evenings; musical accompaniment. As we were Racing for the Galaxy we were listening to David Bowie "Space Oddity" and the techno music of Jean Michel Jarre's. This feature was omitted from this weeks game as we were just too engrossed in the game but it might be amusing to have some suggestions for other games?

Well we had big turn out, with the welcome return of Beryl after her winter hibernation Natalie (having baked some really lovely ginger buns, again in those strange multicoloured silicone cases – thank you), Pauline, Daniela and Crispin.

Well to the games, we started with one of the groups favourites Carcassonne, which as a 5 player game could have caused some difficulty, the mathematicians amongst you you will have noticed that we had reached the heady number of 6 players. However Natalie and Pauline kindly agreed to work together and so we started building our French landscape of castles, monasteries and roads. A simple enough game but one which whilst on the face of it is collaborative provided significant opportunity for nearly everybody (even the most angelic members of the group) to provide guidance on how other players tiles should be placed, invariably to their own profit and not that of the person who was having their go. Beryl rose above such Machiavellian behaviour, however I don’t think that could be said of any one else. This turned out to be one of the funniest games we have played with the self interest always being blatant and so drawing the heckling attention of all the other players.