One big Mayan game and the return of the the pirates
Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar (the beautiful worker placement game)finally made it to the table. This was one of my favourite games from Essen but being a more medium weight game it needs the right opportunity. With 5 players this wasn’t ideal, as it is a 4 player game, but as this was my best opportunity to date I took it with both hands - offering to teach the game to the others and watch / check out rule clarifications as the game progressed. This is a reasonably complex game and whilst I had played it twice Simon ‘s interjections as I walked through the rules (based on having watched a 40 min video about the game on BoardGameGeek) where very helpful.
Given the depth in the game it is one that benefits from being played more than once. The first outing inevitably feels like you are stumbling around trying to discern how to optimise the various elements into a winning strategy. Martin and Stephene both looked very thoughtful, even at time perplexed, but in spite of their more vocal protestations of ‘hmmm this is complex’ or ‘I don’t understand this game’ both made a lie to these early comments on the game by being the two who had most obviously identified competitive strategies. Sadly Robin had to leave us half way through the game and so I took over, the result of this in my mind was never in much doubt! Stephene won the 2 horse race for first place closely followed by Simon, unsurprisingly I lost.
The comments on the game were balanced between cautiously negative due to the time it took between a players go and cautiously enthused at the possibilities given its innovative mechanism and potential re-playability plus the hope that it will play significantly quicker once players are familiar with it. At three hours for the first game this is not a game for your average social gamer!
Whilst we were wrestling with Tzolk’in another group led by Chris had a lot of fun with
Riff Raff. Chris had played
Bausack with us and rated it highly but from the noise they had every bit as much fun with Riff Raff and even dragged a couple of other regulars over to have a go. As we left Chris was so exhausted he was seen fast asleep in a corner of the pub!
More photo's of the evening can be seen
here.
Our next event at the
Crow and Gate (please note note NOT the Blue Anchor), Crowborough is in two weeks time on Sunday 9th December starting at
7.00pm - £1 per head. More details can be seen on our Facebook Page
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