Pete and I were having lunch. "Eclectic Games have a games night" says he. "I know!" says I. "Let's go" says he. "WooYay" says I. So thus we trundled off to Ecelectic Games in the middle of Reading for an evening of board games and shit.
We met outside the monolithic Thames Tower building and headed on into EG where there were some people milling about. The shop owner (a nice fellow I've spoken to a couple of times before) indicated that games were round 'round the back'. If you go out the side of the shop and down a small corridor (past a vending machine packed with gamer friendly bits and bobs), you enter a whitewashed room filled with pine tables from wall to wall. Clusters of early arrival gamers perched on chairs and tables around the room. A delightfully typical mix of old and young, normal and odd.
We were invited to join Ratty, Vince (GenConites might remember Vince from our drunken Stack-O-Bricks game - Vince thought we were all Dutch) and another fellow who's name I didn't catch. Ratty is the same Ratty that some might know from GenCons past, a colourful character who wears outrageous headgear and a smile. He was at GenCon 08 but I didn't see him because he was helping run the show.
Inca Gold
We played Inca Gold to start with. Inca Gold is a simple card game where you go deeper and deeper into Inca temples in search of precious stones and gold idols. Each step is a gamble, you can either leave and take whatever you've found so far or go further in. Each step might yield gems or some sort of monster. Get two monsters of the same type on your journey in and you run out screaming like a little girl, dropping your treasure. Ratty won convincingly and although Pete played the 'charging in with gay abandon' manouvre, he didn't manage to come last, leaving the temple with a single solitary nugget of obsidian (coal). Twas a good getting started game but I'd imagine replay would wane.
All the while, more gamers came in and there was a fair mix of about 30/40 people. Some were playing D&D in the corner (I think). I wouldn't be able to tell you which version. Others were playing tomb with a beardy fellow I recognise from Cybernetics.
Ticket to ride
Next up was something a bit more involved (for which we lost the nameless player), a board game called Ticket to ride. Ticket to ride sees you creating rail routes across the USA. A route goes between two cities and you get 'ticket' cards that specify from one city to another. You get four routes at random and can pick any number of those. You then pick cards off the deck, each with coloured trains on and use these to join cities together, hopefully to join two of the cities on one of your 'ticket' cards for more points.
I liked this a lot and think that there is plenty of replay value. Ratty and Vince were joint winners with very different strategies, which was good to see. Ratty was very helpful in describing how the game worked and things to watch out for. That definitely helped. Pete's train routes were like a black plague across the East coast, which didn't score much but looked good. I got my cards mixed up at one point and came last. Doh.
Settlers of Catan + Cities and Knights
Jim and Emma joined us four for a bit of SoC. I'd not played Cities and Knights before so was interested to see how the game ran. The extra complexity is welcomed, it adds a refreshing dimension without changing the core game too much. I pretty much played it stock. Big road. Lots of villages. Expand expand. Pete got stuffed well and truly by numbers and placement. The addition of the pirate ship, which drops a city to a village of the person with the fewest knights) is quite fun but if you assume you don't want any cities, then it passes without a care. I managed to win on time as Pete, Ratty and I were the only ones playing at a reasonable speed. Some players regularly took 4 or 5 minutes to play a turn.
I liked SoC and it definitely highlighted one problem with games clubs, sometimes you play with people of very different skill levels and other gamer characteristics (such as repeatedly asking rule minutae in an attempt to gain advantage). I can't really complain about this, though. If, at the age of 13, I had not had the help and assistance from people much my senior, then I doubt I would have got into or stayed in gaming. without the Finchley Games Club, I imagine my life and circle of friends would be very different. However, it's definitely an argument for running games around your own place with your mates (such as Pete and you peeps do).
Summing up
The EG Monday (and Friday) night games night is well worth attending. First night is fre, £2 thereafter. The room is ideal, very comfortable, the staff of the shop are on hand to help with rules and so on and I think that over time you'll end up playing mostly with those people you get on with most. I can't possibly do every Monday (although I think Kate might enjoy it on occasion) but as a neutral, central gaming location, it's tip top.
Comments
Its interesting reading this, as Rob and myself didn't get much of a chance to debrief last night. He's raised some points that I will certainly be re-raising...onto the games!
Inca Gold
I could best sum this up as glorified Pontoon. Each turn you stick (take the treasure you have, and also a split of any rounded drops left behind) or twist (where a card is drawn, which either a hazard, which can end the run, or a treasure which is split between remaining players). There are some artifacts skewing the maths slightly, but thats pretty much it. Took about 10-15 minutes to play, and not bad as a filler game. We had 5 players, who all trudled along at a fair pace.
Ticket To Ride
This is a game I've seen alot of, but never played. Extremely good game, with the benefit that we had 4 players who all played at a decent pace. Each players turn only consisted of a single action, so there was little downtime, and interest is kept up. I misunderstood the scoring (my fault, wasn't listening), and so went for a conservative short-hop strategy down the West Coast of America. (I though the tickets were worth more than they were, and the actually laid track less). I'd defeinitely be interested in playing this again, would consider it a good addition to a games cupboard.
Settlers of Catan - Cities and Knights
Right...this bits going to be quite long, as I found the entire game quite frustrating for a number of reasons...
First off, lets cover off basic Settlers. If has some Pro's and Con's
Pro's
Simple mechanisms
Changing Map = different games
Very visual
Can be played through in about an hour
Con's
Can be stuffed early on
Initial Position is vital
Cities and Knights, and the variant we played had several major changes
Shedloads more rules
Pirate Ship
Knights
Sail routes
Buildings + Upgrades
Completely Random map (no land with sea round outside, but all mixed in)
New resource cards
New dice (that combines with buildings to determine cards)
We also had 2 new players, and while Rob was quite polite, I would say they may well have been the slowest players I have ever seen. the old chap in particular was taking forever.
I made a bad choice of starting places (I even said it was risky when I did it, as I was entirely reliant on 3 numbers coming up), and they didn't, which in turn meant the first pirate attack hit me (I didn't get all the resources I needed to protect my city, so lost it), and so spent the next 2 hours in a position where I was incapable of doing anything. As I've noted above, this can happen with basic Settlers, however its normally over fairly quickly, so its not too bad.
The other change that I don't think helped was the completely random map, with mixed in sea tiles. This has the impact of making most map nodes only pick up a maximum of 2 resources, as most have sea to 1 side (the land:sea ratio was 36:13 I think). This in turn means that you get much less of an acceleration as the game progresses, as a new settlement pulls in about 1/3rd less.
I think Vince summed it up quite well;
"Does making the game 3 times more complex make it 3 times more enjoyable?". Well, in this case no.
Generally
As Rob said, the danger of a Pick-Up group is that you may well get a game-killer in there. By about 10pm'ish I could see both Rob and myself flagging in Settlers. the target was 13 VP's, and Rob was eventually given the win with 8. It does make me realise how incredibly lucky we are to have a good group of players at a very similar level for our Descent/Doom/other sessions.
I suspect if we had played the games in a different sequence I would have come out with a very different opinion, and if TtR had been the last game I would have come out much more positive, however that Settlers game was really quite painful.
Would you go again? We might be able to better control the players at the table if we had another go. If we took some more players with us, then control would be much easier. Then we'd only be looking for one or two, rather than four.
I rather liked the location and the atmosphere. The library of games (you didn't see) is MASSIVE. Perhaps idea for an irregular sojourn to try out some new things?
I would give it another go, but I fully agree you need to drag another person or 2 along. I'd also suggest that you take a game as well (something quick'ish) that can be used to quickly get something going. As you say, its better to be in control of the session rather than be at the beck and call of others.
I'm fairly certain that if the games had beenin a different order my end feelings would have been different. TTR was a very good game, and I'm glad I finally got a chance to play it. If the Settlers game had finished an hour earlier I would have had no issues with the evening at all...
Defo, re-reading my post, I didn't quite make out how much fun TTR was. I utterly failed at it but I did enjoy it. The turns went round really fast. No sooner had you picked up your cards, had a look, had a think and bloody hell, it was your turn again. I think the ticket cards should have more of an impact. It's nice that long trains gives you points but I think the real skill is in connecting cities you've semi-randomly picked up. They play much less a part in the endgame compared to ratty's huge chains of trains.
I also need a better grip on the bus timetables so that I do not need to spend an arm and a leg getting home.