Boardgame session 26Dec2014

I spent Christmas at my sister’s house in Bedford. Good time had by all. I received from Santa 3 gaming related prezzies: Donnybrook skirmish rules (which may be the solution to my piratical rules dilemma), a deluxe cribbage board, and a copy of King of New York boardgame. Luckily my sister, Gill, and her daughter (my niece), Erin (aged 13), are both keen boardgamers, so we got to play a few games on Boxing day. We started with an old favourite, ‘Carcassonne’, which always gives a quick, simple and enjoyable game. We did not use any of the various extensions, simply playing the base game. My wife, Elaine won by a clear margin. I next tried to play ‘Awful Green Things from Outer Space’ with Erin. This was our first attempt at playing this game so everything took time. There is so much on the board at the start, making it difficult to keep track of things and some of the rooms and corridor spaces became very congested. I’m sure we made a few mistakes and did not make the best moves. Also Erin, the crew player, drew badly when assigning weapon effectiveness so she did not get off to a good start. We only managed to play half a dozen turns before we had to stop for dinner, so we did not complete the game. Overall I think the jury is still out on this game; it might be better once we get to know the rules and tactics in more depth. Finally we played our first game of ‘King of New York’. My sister’s family have never played King of Tokyo, so they were totally unfamiliar with the game concepts, but they soon got the hang of things. We played with 5 players/monsters, and after almost 2 hours Gill proved to be the winner as the last monster standing. Everyone enjoyed the game and all want to play further games (which is great). I really like the additions and changes from the original game, King of Tokyo. The buildings and military counters add to the choices for monsters outside the key Manhattan borough. Obtaining control of the Statue of Liberty seemed to be desirable (especially as the number of military units increased), whereas the Oscar card had less of an impact. The add-on powers all seemed OK, but obviously we only scratched the surface of the cards available. I plan to take this game to Val and Chris’s when we next get together (New Years Eve), so I will hopefully get a clearer opinion of the game after it has been played by more experienced gamers.