Last night on earth - with Maya and Roshni

Maya asked for another game of Last Night on Earth whilst Roshni wanted to join in too having not played before but had heard lots of good things about the game from her sister. They took the role of the Heroes, two each, whilst I played the Zombies again. This time I thought no holds barred - if I get good anti human cards, I'm going to use them! The scenario was the basic one, the humans had to kill off 15 zombies to win. We all rubbed out hands and set out to win!

First things started going badly for the zombies, the Heroes whacked a couple but then they started charging other zombies and were wondering why they were not winning, only just pushing them off. Quite rightly I've not exposed my kids to the sort of films this game is based upon, but anyone who has seen a zombie film will understand that zombies are pretty hard to kill - head shot and nothing else will do. But if you didn't have this knowledge you'd be wondering why your dice vs the single zombie die results in not many kills. Zombie knowledge is a pre-requisite for playing this game! I tried not to use this to my advantage, but the fact you're charging my zombies I'm not going to give you an easy time!

Things going well (for the Zombies!), Billy bites the dust!

After Billy bit the dust (or the Zombie bit Billy), the Heroes floundered a bit but the new character they got helped out a bit more. Then the girls got the idea to attack en mass and started clobbering more zombies. I fought back but as you can see in the image below, my dice rolling left a lot to be desired!! Three 1's is great in Vegas, but not in the Last Night on Earth!

Gimme a break!

Finally the game started to turn into a slog match of human v zombie, with me getting the upper hand with a lot of draw dice rolls equalling wounds against the humans. 

End game, zombies win!!

The end of the game was triggered with the loss of the humans second Hero, Jake going down under a storm of groans and outstretched zombie arms (why do they walk like that??). Great game!

Pre-Christmas Gaming

 So Christmas is coming and it's time to get some games done and the festivities to begin! Firstly we had a game of 7 Wonders to get back into the swing of gaming. That was won by Kavita with her Hanging Gardens of Babylon wonder. We then had a good game of Apples to Apples - always a great laugh; the current player puts down a card with noun on it and the other players look at their cards with items on and try to match the most appropriate (or funny) card to the noun. Very funny game. Then later in the day we played Agricola - we had a few rounds as Roshni, Kavita and Anita had not played before just so that they can get used to the rules. 

End game - Anita won!

Ticket to Ride: India - I win!! 7 Wonders.... I win again!!

Today we had our first go at Ticket to Ride India - again another map only boxset with tickets, so so all the plastic trains and cards have to come from TtR USA or Europe. We opted for USA today and found the mini versions of the cards slightly easier to hold. Down to the game, we found that the links between cities were as convoluted as the rail system in India itself according to Anita! Lots of 2-score tracks were being made and the score between us stayed very the same, with neither getting the edge over the other. There was also a new score system in that if a ticketed set of cities could be connected in two directions, then there was a bonus score.

Suddenly Anita was asking for three new tickets - from which she can take all three, but must take at least one!! I still had to complete all of my starting three! Luckily she only took one - phew still time to complete that cross India route to the eastern border! Just as I completed my final ticket, Anita asked for another three! Again I was lucky in that she only took one.

Finally, I triggered the End Game - if one player ends up with 3 or less plastic trains, there is one more round and then game over. Nice and simple. Then we counted through my tickets and mine were mostly high numbers or 10's or 13. Poor Anita got only 8's, 5's, 6's etc. So even though she had completed a lot of tickets, she wasn't making a lot of ground - my final count was just over 100 and her ticket count started in the 60's. Unfortunately Anita couldn't make the last ticket and lost points - even though she won the longest continuous route.

Game start

Game end! I win!

The ticket too far - loosing Anita 9 points! 

Then we all had a go at 7 Wonders - the staple family favourite! Anita had the Statue of Zeus, Roshni the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, Maya the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, Kavita the Pyramids and I had the Colossus of Rhodes. It was a good, quick game tonight - with quick decisions and card placing. Eventually the scores were Maya - 21, Anita - 36, Roshni - 38, Kavita - 54 and me - 57! Yay double win!

7 Wonders in progress, on my way to my win - helped by the strong military presence!