Trades!

As mentioned in earlier posts, I've been doing a big clean-up of the game collection. You guys are noticeably NOT volunteering to trade my dross away from me. However, anything half decent is being snapped up, and I've completed some trades this month.

Nexus Ops for Africa - Nexus Ops is a very sweet game- nice bits, very good mechanic for encouraging war without turtling or complete player destruction, and easy enough to play. However even that much player confrontation doesn't really work for me, and I couldn't see myself getting much play out of it. On the other hand, Africa is a decent mid-weight Euro that I quite like, and I've already played 3 times. I think I liked the 2 player games better than 4 players, as with 2 players I expect the screwage (e.g. the kid dumped an antelope where I was about to put a camp for 5 points), and with 4 players I feel picked on.

China for Java - I like Tikal and Torres a lot, and am very interested in trying out the rest of the Mask series. I bought China because I wanted Web of Power, and it turns out that I wanted the theme more than I wanted the game. I'd much rather control Frankreich than Wu. China will be missed by people other than me, but if I can get Web of Power I may be forgiven.

Thurn and Taxis for Ticket to Ride: Marklin - Thurn and Taxis is a beautiful beautiful game, but I could never make any sense of the strategy, and that bugged me. In fact I never came better than third in a game, until I played 2 player when I actually won. So I traded it to the guy I beat... so he can lose at it? On the other hand Ticket to Ride is a game of which my opinion varies from "brilliant" to "boring". It's sort of a good connection game, but it's sort of boring when people block your routes... I can't make up my mind. But the big issue is that Scrabblette likes it. Scrabblette particularly likes the U.S. map (which is why we own TransAmerica as well as TransEuropa), so I will also have to get the base game, and I'll probably get Switzerland as well while I'm at it. I got Marklin as a stop-gap, and because I like the model trains and the 4+ engines.

The Gathering of Friendless

I'm behind in my blogging but I should mention that I've started my new game event, the Gathering of Friendless. For the inaugural meeting Scrabblette was keen to play and the kid was with his mum so we invited people who liked to play word games and their husbands. The attendees ended up being me, Scrabblette, CyberKev, Jane and Hubertus, and we didn't play any word games at all.

We started with TransAmerica which ended up as a tie between Scrabblette and me. Then we moved on to Bamboleo which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me. Then we played China which ended up as a tie between CyberKev and me until CyberKev managed to find, scribbled in the margin of the appendix to the codicil of the coda of the amendment to the German edition of the rules that if there was a tie then he won because he'd played the fewest pieces. Pah!

Then it was time to go to sleep, and we all agreed we should do it again.

Fed to the Crocodiles

We had a good session at BookRealm last night - Shingo visited all the way from Israel, and we played 3 different games that I really like. We started with China which I have owned for about a week. After my disastrous attempt to win using advisors at ConVic, I decided to try to win using houses. Of course, I was soundly beaten by CyberKev who used the advisor strategy. One day I will figure that game out.

Then Walter arrived and RealmKeeper sat out while the rest of us played Cleopatra. We played this last week and had a good time, so this week we knew what we were doing a bit better. There wasn't a lot of corruption being taken - people seemed to be more cautious about the number of cards they took into their hands. I had a plan to spend up big and get enough talents to be contending for the win, then try to minimise my corruption intake towards the end of the game. However once I had 40-something talents the game ended very quickly anyway. I had 11 corruption and 54 talents (including unused merchants). Sadly I had the most corruption, being even nastier than Walter who had 10. I was fed to the crocodiles, and CyberKev won the game with 41 talents. If I hadn't had 2 tainted wood cards in my hand at the end of the game, I would have won by a long way. Bugger.

We closed up with Bazaar. I was tired and couldn't focus, I don't know what other people's excuses were. Somehow I managed to win despite being unable to formulate the devious plans I remember making last time I played.

Overall, an excellent night's gaming. I'd happily play all of those games again tonight.