GameCamp 9th October 2010 – The Games

Puerto Rico (Age 12+, 3-5 players, 90 min playing time)
When I saw a game of Puerto Rico being set up, described by Stuart Dagger (editor of 'The Counter') as “a work of pure genius”’ I felt called to ask if I could join the other players. As is my wont I wandered over and asked if there was space for one more player – thankfully they said yes.

Rowena, having played Puerto Rico once before, took on the mantle of guide and tutor to the rest of us and battled manfully against our constant questions and the rules. However, with the support of caffeine and perseverance on everybody’s part, the game

Match Report 16th June 2010

Following unprecedented demand (well Alex indicated that he was around, up for a game and would be away for the next couple of games evenings) we held an impromptu Tuesday event with Alex and myself being joined by Malcolm and Ian.

It looked at one point that Joe might joins us as well however the allure of Brazil vs North Korea I suspect kept this footy mad chap away.

Patrician
With an array of games before them to choose from Alex liked the sound of Patrician (one of the games picked up at the recent UK Games Expo).

Patrician comes with a slightly abstract board showing the major renaissance cities of Italy each with building sites for two towers. The towers can be of varying heights, the smaller cities allowing towers of no more than 5 levels in total, between the two sites, whilst other cities allow towers of up to 9 levels. With the simple rules and the opportunity to score points either from being the player with the most layers in a tower  or collecting sets of three portraits (found on some of the cards that allow you to build your towers  (see the attached photos) there are a number of ways of gaining the points necessary to win the game. These alternatives gave the Patrician sufficient interest that we would all want to play it again yet left it quick to play (about half an hour) and quick to learn - a useful addition to the growing collection.

Match Report 10th May 2010

Well as with last time I need to start with a correction - sorry. Ben mentioned that I hadn’t quite got the scale of his task to do with the ‘heads’ (toilets) right I suggested a mere 20 boats were having their pipe work re-done when in fact it was a 111 – double and triple urgh! However, his job does have some attractions as you can see from the attached photo.

A slightly smaller turnout than last time saw the welcome return of Alex together with Daniela and our stalwart Crispin. The list of possible attendees grows every larger with two new names being added to the list.

As ever we started with a catch up on what we have all been up to and Alex shed some light on the workings of one of the well known Irish travel companies, that on the one hand surprised nobody and on the other left people saying ‘unbelievable’. The most amusing being his flight team being told to head off to an airport 100 miles away but with no contact point, leaving them having to search the airport for their plane and a way of getting to it. The passengers unaware of this farce like activity at least knew where the plane was and had ground crew willing to take them to it!

Well to the games. Our first game of the evening was Landlord (described as” …. a card game for 2 to 6 players. Build apartments, rent them to tenants, and collect rent. In Landlord every card you play gives you two options; one side of the card is an apartment the other side has tenants, roofs, renovations and special actions. Move wealthy tenants into your apartments and put the deadbeats into your opponents'. You can even bomb buildings, but don't get caught; jail awaits those who are careless, although not necessarily guilty!”).

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.