A visit from Brian and Family plus a game of 7 Wonders

We had a great Saturday today - Brian came around with his family and the kids had a great time in the garden with the trampoline and swings whilst we all chatted. Then we had a game of 7 Wonders as Brians children were interested in the idea. Good day all around.

First game with new 7 Wonders Catan wonder

Today we played 7 Wonders using the new Catan Wonder I'd got from Andy at BQG. Maya wanted to play it so she used side A as side B has to be used in conjunction with the Leaders addon. She found it ok to use - a little tricky understand how two materials can be swapped for another, but once she got the hang of it she liked it a lot and used the swapping just the right time a few times to get the buildings she wanted.

Settlers of Catan wonder for 7 Wonders arrives!!!

I'd heard about the Settlers of Catan promotional Wonder for 7 Wonders after last years Essen. It was a charity promotion - you had to pay 4 Euro or something - and it had on the A side 3 points - 7 coins and steal 2 from one other player - 7 points. The 'product' produced is two materials of the same type can be swapped for one other. Another nice Wonder to add to the growing number of "7 Wonders"!

A nice game of 7 Wonders and Ticket to Ride USA

Anita made a suggestion that we all play a family game and so we dug out the family favourite 7 Wonders and played 5 player in which Anita won with 57 points. Later in the day we played Ticket to Ride USA and Anita beat we hands down. As always!

Christmas pressies and Christmas Gaming!

Merry Christmas!! And happy boxing day! Great family Christmas all round with everyone getting something nice that they always wanted - as it is every year; we get one big present each and then lots of little ones. And my big present was Railways of the World! A massive re-imagining of Railroad Tycoon that uses a huge Eastern Seaboard map of the United States and one smaller one of Mexico. The game also contains huge "empty city" markers, lots of plastic trains, millions of hexagonal track markers, oodles of money, game cards and other play pieces. You just get loads of stuff in your huge box.

The basic aim of the game is that dotted around the map are coloured cities marked with a number and the game comes with a large number of little coloured wooden cubes representing different goods, oil, wood, steel etc. Each city has a number of random cubes placed on it as indicated by the number on the city and then the idea of the game is to simply raise money to place track linking cities and delivering a coloured cube from one city to another city of that colour. The game is based on Railroad Tycoon which in turn is based on the computer game of the same name and this is exactly what happens in the computer game.

Players can also upgrade engines to take goods further, score more points and get more money for delivering those goods. We haven't played it yet, but I have been through the very short looking rules (there is a short set for the game and then a short set for each map - there are also other maps you can get, Europe, Western USA, England and Wales etc.) and it does look great and easy to play yet very in-depth.

Looking forward to my first play against Anita!!

Also on Boxing Day we all had a family game of 7 Wonders - our family favourite.

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! 

Thursday night at Battlequest - nice bit of 7 Wonders

Thursday night was another quick visit to Battlequestgames - I got home fairly late, so I didn't want to spend too long there. I intended for a quick visit but I ended up having a good natter to Andy then saw Julian, Simon and Brian were going to play 7 Wonders; Andy said he'd play too, so I couldn't resist! Although Brian had only played once before, he won with a crushing military strength AND the Military Loss Guild, which meant he gained 1 Victory Point for every -1 military point on either side of him - which was -6 from me and -6 from Julian = an extra 12 to add to his 18 military points!! He won in the end with 60!

Some family gaming at last yay!

Finally we managed to get down to some family gaming today - everybody has been very busy with homework and everything, so it was good to sit down on the rug in front of the fire and and get some good games done - but which to play in our limited time together! We opted for 7 Wonders - fantastic as ever with Roshni winning by far with her Statue of Zeus Wonder. I tried to hedge my bets with a military win right at the end of the 3rd Age but to now avail! 

Maya gives 7 Wonders a "Thumbs up" endorsement!

After we packed 7 Wonders away, we went on to play Battlestar Galactica - yay! It was our first 5 player game and Kavitas first play as Roshni had had a quick go before. Maya was very excited about choosing her character Starbuck and wanted to dive in but I needed to overview the rules and game actions before we started - also Galactica has a reasonably long set up time that has to be done in a particular order, so as I did this with Mayas help I ran over the rules quickly mainly for Kavitas benefit. 

Play got under way, although we knew we really only had time for one jump, so we made the most of it. Within a two rounds, Galactica had taken a heavy pounding from the basestar near by and several Vipers were battling it out with Cylon raiders. Crisis after crisis was being dealt with and a Cylon Heavy Raider appeared so we knew we had to hustle to get out of there. Luckily we managed to Auto Jump before any more serious damage was done (we'd taken hits to the main guns and the body work). And that was it, we were 1 jump closer to Kobol! The family like the game once they get into it - Anita says it is very tense once it gets going but the set up did take a little time - perhaps the best course would be to set up the game before calling people to play - as Brian has done in the past! 

Oh, and at the end we revealed our Loyalty cards to find out everyone was human! 

Just about to start play - prior to character selection

First play of 7 Wonders with Leaders

Today we had our first play of 7 Wonders with the Leaders expansion. It has added an extra dimension to the game with the addition of a new Wonder - Rome; new cardboard "6" value coins, new guilds and a large selection of Ancient World leaders, thinkers, scientists etc.

At the start of the game, everyone is now dealt out 4 random leader cards, from which they select one and pass the rest to their right. Then everyone selects another leader from the 3 remaining cards and so on until everyone has 4 cards. Then at the start of each Age, everyone selects a leader card to use.

Each leader gives different attributes, gold, military power, victory points, extra victory points if you collect at least one of each coloured card etc. It gives the game a nice little edge and a bit more of a mix to the already great game play. The artwork is fantastic as usual, on the cards and the the new Rome board. The only exception is the back of the new guild 3rd Age cards, which are a lighter colour purple than our 1st edition 3rd Age cards, something picked up by quite a few other owners. Luckily, the publisher Asmodee are quite open to people writing in and asking for a new set of cards - ours are apparently in the post!

Birthday game vouchers ahoy!!

Had a nice birthday which involved £50 of battlequestgames vouchers plus £10 from my loyalty card which was full. Mmmm now what do I get with these???
In the evening we also had a game of Scandinavian Ticket to Ride - Anita won - and a 5 player 7 Wonders which Kavita won.

Oops...not gamed or blogged in a while!!

Sorry folks, been a long while since I posted - basically it's because we've been busy and away on holiday in Cyprus! A nice week away in glorious sun...so lovely we didn't want to come back! But we did and back to reality. And playing games! A few things have happened recently, which I'll catch up on.

Firstly there was the regular meet up at Andys at the beginning of the month, played some games; Forbidden Island (A simpler version of the game mechanics of Pandemic), the worlds longest game of Fluxx, Mow, Metro and some odd wooden game with round stacked pieces; it was odd but fun - the game, not Andys get together which was great as usual.

Afterwards we also got Forbidden Island because the girls were really interested in it after seeing it laid out at Andys place. I took them through the rules and bought a copy - only £16! We've played a couple of games so far, both 3 player - one win and one loss. That will become a nice filler fav! We also played a game of 7 Wonders last week for the first time in ages whilst Kavita was out for a birthday treat. Another great 4 player game - I won with a massive 66 points - a record win so far!!

It's Fathers Dad this weekend, so I hope we'll get a chance for a few more games - including a first test of Smallworld.

Bring out an old favourite - oh, and go on then, 7 Wonders

With the weekend nearly over, having spent most of it at the in-laws celebrating a joint birthday for Maya and her cousin Anusha, we decided to use up the rest of the Sunday afternoon/early evening playing some games. Firstly I grabbed an old favourite that hasn't been played in a while, Zooleretto. It has been some time since we last played this and I, and probably all of us, had forgot how much we enjoyed it. 

The premise of the game is to build and run the most successful Zoo - each player starts with a zoo board with three locations for animals, a 6 animal spot, a 5 animal spot and a 4 animal spot. There is also a Barn on the board for spare animals that cannot be located. 15 tiles are also separated from the bag and placed aside for the End Game. 

Each player receives a "lorry" - a wooden container with three slots. These are placed in the middle of the table and a black bag is passed around from which the player draws a tile and places it on one of the free slots on a wooden lorry. The tiles could be an animal (elephant, tiger, panda etc), a coin for financial deals (the player starts with 2) or a Refreshment Stand. 

The lorries gradually fill up, with players trying to place animals and other tiles in a combination that they want but hope no one else wants. Play continues, with drawing of tiles, until a player decides they want a particular lorry - at this point, they pass on the bag without drawing and simply take the lorry of their choice - this can be a lorry with one, two or all three spaces filled. 

Once the player has taken a lorry, they take the tiles and either place them in empty animal spots (the same animal can only go into the same enclosure - no flamingoes into the tiger pen, as much as we want to!), into their own money supply or as a refreshment stand for an enclosure. If the player has no room for an animal tile (or more), then that spare animal has to go into the Barn. Animals in the Barn cause negative points at the end of the game. 

Each enclosure has two point values (well three actually) - a Full value, a Only One To Go value and Only a Few Animals + A Refreshment. This sounds complex, but in reality it isn't. 

For example, the 1st Enclosure with 6 animal spaces scores 10/6 - this means if you fill it with 6 pandas for example, you get 10 points at the end of the game - only 5 pandas, you get 6 points at the end of the game. If you say for example put in only 3, but you have a Refreshment Stall in the bottom right of the enclosure, the player is allowed 1 point per animal e.g. 3 points in this case. No Refreshment Stall = 0 points! 

So the aim is to fill those enclosures - some enclosures also give coins for filling them up; coins can be used to open up a new 5 space enclosure, buy animals from other players Barns (1 coin to them, 1 to the bank), remove an animal from your own barn etc etc. It's all down to management of the Zoo as well as picking the animals, but it's done on a very simple level that even Maya can appreciate. That's not to say its too simple for adults. 

Animals can also have offspring, for example some animal tiles come with a Male and Female symbol, which when placed in the same enclosure, produces a small round baby animal tile which can be used to bolster an enclosure number. Animals can only be paired once, so a new male or female would need a new male or female tile to produce a 2nd child tile. 

Finally, when all of the tiles are used up, the tiles from the 15 separate ones are used for 1 round then the game ends. 

Scoring is based on the following: 

Successful filling of enclosures;

Number of similar refreshment types = 2 points per type (eg three apple carts = 1 type = 2 points)

Number of similar animal types in the barn = -2 points per type (eg 1 camel, 2 tigers, 2 pandas = 3 different types = -6 points). 

This is a highly enjoyable game to play and the final winner is hard to determine until right until the end. It's loved by every one in the family and they are always up for a game. It's full of strategy and management that's not too hard to handle, so fun for everyone! 

Afterwards we also had a game of 7 Wonders just because we love it so much! It's hard to think we'll ever find a game to replace it! 

All weekend DIY needs a bit of gaming to temper it

Most of the weekend was spent redecorating the bathroom, cleaning, painting the walls, bath side, ceiling and cabinet doors - looks a whole lot better. Half way through Sunday, we decided to sit down for a game of our favourite boardgame at the moment, 7 Wonders. Another cracking game and again no one knew who would win right until the end.

The final score was Roshni: 24, Maya: 44, Kavita: 48, Anita: 56 and me: 58! Just two points in it! Anita would have won it if but for a few minor military losses or for a few more coins.

100th Post - Battlequest gaming night!

On the event of the 100th Post for the Bradshaw Tribe Gaming blog, we're marking a visit to Battlequests gaming night. Andy started up his own gaming club last night - initial feelers out by email to see how many regulars were interested and the date was set for 7:30 on the first Thursday of the month. I went along around 8:30 to find a game of 7 Wonders already in play - Andy and two others were just totalling up the score from their last game. In the other other side of the shop, a few others were playing a game of San Juan I think. Anyhow, Andy, myself and the two others settled down for another round of 7 Wonders - again a fab game. In the end I came last and I wasn't even trying to loose lol! The two newbie went for a financial and a scientific drive each. Oddly the science guy had hardly any resources nor any other buildings but managed to come 2nd I think. Any how it was a good game.
We also had a game of Incan Gold - a sort of cousin to Diamant. It was ok, if a little over complicated compared to Diamant, but the essence of the original game was in there.

All in all a great night, meeting new people, playing great games. Hopefully get into some new games next time!

Down to some Saturday gaming!

Today was a day of some good gaming; firstly of Cargo Noir, our new Days of Wonder game we got from Andy at Battlequest - a game based on criminal families and cargo smuggling. Now depending on your sensibilities will depend on if you will like the theme of this game; remember, it's criminal families smuggling items of ill repute, such as guns, cigars, gems, ivory, cars etc. The idea of the game, which seems fairly fast paced, but does take about an hour and a half to play, is that each family has three cargo ships to start with and 7 coins. The 'board' is based around several ports throughout the World each with differing numbers of spaces to hold illegal goods, such as New York with three spaces, Rotterdam with 4 and Cape Town with 1 for example. There is also Macao, a general trading port with 8 spaces for items and the Casino.

There are also a series of cards with purchase amounts on them with victory points as well. A typical turn revolves around resolving the cargo ship events of the previous turn, selling your items in your family cargo area (a card display in front of the player) and finally re-establishing where your ships will go this turn.

The game actually starts on the 3rd phase of a pre-first turn; all players get a chance to send their ships out to locations around the world, to the casino and/or to Macao. After this the game begins with phase 1 - resolve the previous ship placements - a ship placed at the casino wins 2 coins from the casino; a ship placed at Macao allows the owner to gain one random coin from the bag or to swap an item from the eight listed for one in your warehouse and any ships at a port wins the cargo there for the coins they agreed to pay for it (see phase 3) unless they are in competition with someone else (see phase 3), otherwise they have to decide if the cargo is worth upping the stakes again the competition (paying at least one more coin) or pulling out and using the money elsewhere.

In phase 2 of a player turn, the player decides to cash in any cargo for victory cards. There is a two-tier scheme for cashing in, mixed and similar. A chart indicates how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc mixed cards are worth and how much 1, 2, 3, 4 etc similar cards are worth (more!). A player can cash in say 3 jems, 2 cars and a cigar box for x number of points which can be used to buy typically criminal items - villas, night clubs, dive bars, right up to a Principality!

Finally in the 3rd phase, the player then re-designates where their cargo ships will go for the next turn, placing bid amounts down for cargo or attempting to outbid other players for more precious cargo they want.

It's a great game of bid and outbid, forcing opponents out of the bidding process whilst trying to be a high roller in the criminal underworld with purchases of illegal goods and items. There were several queries we had about the game even in our third play - such as according to the rules when cashed in, items don't go back into the bag but we found we were running out of items 2/3rd of the way through; amongst others. I'll question this and others on boardgamegeek to find out how to play the game better. Check on the forums at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90305/cargo-noir

All in all a good game; we played it twice - with 3 then 5 players ranging from 8 to adult and was enjoyed by all.

We also had another game of "7 Wonders" 5 players which again was just thoroughly enjoyed - a real hit game. Anita won for the first time with a crushing 59 points, just hedging Roshni out (with 57) as she had -3 for Military Victories.

End game for Cargo Noir - my family (bottom) wins!!

Preparing for a gaming Saturday and teaching Joy and Andy - the Boss - about Niagra

Whilst preparing for Saturdays gaming, I was asked by Joy, the boss's wife, to teach them Niagara, a game they bought on recommendation from us. It was good to sit down and go over the rules again and help someone else to understand the game, because it also re-enforces your own understanding of the rules and irons out any game play problems of your own. Also I introduced her to 7 Wonders and instantly she was interested - she said she'd love Civilisation on the PC and this reminded her of it. I explained the basic concept and how the 7 card system worked and the rotation of the cards after each time a card is chosen. Looks like they may well be buying another game...

Back to back gaming - 7 Wonders proves to be very popular

7 Wonders proves to be enormously popular still - Anita asked for another family game of this and we sat and played two games back to back, I won the first, Anita the second. The shear combinations of win strategies is what makes the game great - do you go for a purely scientific route and don't build your Wonder, or build the Wonder (And get the rewards for doing so) but loose out militarily and suffer between each age from your stronger neighbours, or go down a Civilian route and build Baths, Gardens, Town Halls and Temples to bolster your final victory points? Each time we go for different strategies with differing buildings, materials, Guilds and military structures. Maya loves getting the Hanging Gardens of Babylon for some reason whilst the big Victory Point amount (15) for the Pyramids is a big favourite amongst everyone. A cracking game all round. Cannot wait for the add on later this year which adds Rulers and Leaders and apparently Rome/The Colosseum as a Wonder. 

A great Sunday of games!

Sunday was a great afternoon full of games - we didn't expect to play so many! Firstly it was a go of Fluxx: Pirates - Roshni, Maya and myself introduced Anita to the game, which she really enjoyed and even won!! Then it was two games of 7 Wonders back to back, with firstly Roshni and I coming joint first with 52 points and then Anita winning with 42 points. Then Anita and I played Ticket to Ride:Nordic, which surprisingly I won with 113 points! It was basically because Anita kept taking small destination tickets after completing her 3 main tickets, whilst I kept taking small and medium which were mostly complete because of my existing routes. Still a win on Ticket to Ride is a win!!

Now we have 91 and we're off on holiday to Devon, taking games with us!!

This week we all went off with my mum for a short break to Devon - we packed a whole load of stuff and of course a mass of games - driving over 300 miles to Ilfracombe and staying in a beautiful log cabin. Over the holiday, we played several games, including Apples to Apples; the ever popular party game which provided many laughs as usual as we tried to find funnier and sillier red cards for the green adjective card to impress the judge.

Then we played a game of 7 Wonders - ever popular at the moment - followed by one the next day.

Finally we played the new game Isla Dorada - an odd game where the players act as a team and vote with cards as to the direction the team will take around an island. The catch is other cards the players have give points if certain villages are visited and there is a Curse card which give negative points if a specific village marked on the curse card is visited. A good game that requires some thinking ahead for each step to ensure you swing the group direction to your way of thinking to get to the locations you desire; the only down point is the names of the villages which are a little hard to read, even for me, let alone for younger players; now this can slow down a game and if any thing can damage the fun factor of a game, it's slowing down of a game for checking and rechecking rules or if something on the board is not clear.

All in all a great holiday away added to by a great clutch of games. Also before going, we picked up Fluxx: Pirates but more on this later.