Boardgame session; 11Aug2017

We visited Val and Chris for a rare mid-week evening gaming session (Snowy-dog was in the kennels).

The first game we tried was ‘Costa Rica’; a 20-30 minute, push-your-luck, tile revealing, set-collection, expedition game. The board comprises a large hexagon made up of mini-hex’s showing 3 different terrain types, with 6 different animals on the reverse side of the hex’s. Six expeditions enter from the corners of the large hexagon, revealing the animal faces as each progress. Players in turn decide whether to remain with an expedition, or whether to bottle-out and take the revealed tiles, but this does eliminate that player from future moves with that particular expedition. Players score points for set collection, with bonus points awarded if all animal types have been collected. Some tiles have a mosquito symbol, and the second mosquito revealed ends the expedition early. As tiles are removed other expeditions can become trapped or isolated, so there is an aggressive element to the game. Anyway, each game resulted in run-away victories for Chris and Elaine. I think this is a nice, quick, simple game which is ideal to either start or finish a games session, but would not be the core game of a session. It is more than just a filler game.

  

 

Next we played a couple of games of ‘Dominion’; firstly using just the base set, then a game using the ‘Dark Ages’ expansion (which was new to me). Chris won both games and realised I had come last in all the games played (I must have seriously upset the ‘Dice Gods’ somehow!). The Dark Ages game had a few additional/different cards (as you would expect) and it did drag a bit; all of us struggled to get enough money to buy the more expensive cards. Dominion remains one of our all-time most popular games but I do feel there are a couple of issues that need to be raised: There are too many expansions; the base game, plus possibly one expansion, provides more than enough variation to enable repeated playing. I enjoy trying each different expansion, but I do not feel the urge to buy each one, and I don’t think they add enough to justify purchasing the full set. Secondly, most games end when the last Province card is bought; rarely do 3 of the other card sets get exhausted. I think a good house rule is to reduce the number of each action card down from 10 to a number that is double the number of players (e.g. 8 when there are 4 players). I have trialled this rule and it does produce a faster game with a less predictable end-game.

The next morning we travelled to visit my sister for a few days and took a couple of games with us. We played a couple of games of ‘Sushi Go - Party’ which is easy to teach and fast to play. Elaine won the first game by dominating the puddings! Erin won the second game, demonstrating how easily the game can be taught. No wins for me, but I did improve on last place. The other game we played was ‘Parade’, a card game I have previously greatly enjoyed and which I received as a recent birthday prezzie! The artwork is beautiful, the rules very simple, the game-play devilish! We played 4 or 5 games, and the highlight was Elaine’s victory scoring only 4 points in total; a record low score that I’m sure will stand for a long time. Finally, I was given my birthday present from Gill; a co-op game called ‘Burgle Bros.’, which looks good and will get on the table soon.