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...

Start of the Christmas play list!

Christmas holidays....so....

Snow...check
School holidays...check
Work holidays...check
Time for some games...check!

It's getting a bit hard to convince everyone to play a game these days, especially Kavita as a) shes a teenager b) she has loads of homework to do and c) it's probably no longer hip and cool to play games with the folks and the younger siblings but we don't care; I much prefer playing these games as a family than in 2's and 3's. Besides it's good to get a distraction from work once in a while that doesn't involve the television or my own personal vice, the Xbox.

Today we got out a selection of games and picked two to play - the new family favourite Niagara and Citadels which we haven't played in a while. Anita won Niagara with some tactical uses of the river flow to collect that all important pink gem right at the edge of the falls and again with Citadels, although Kavita got 8 locations as well in the same round, Anita had all 5 coloured districts and more gold value cards. In all a great little play and I hope we get to play tomorrow. I am hoping we'll get a game of Aquaretto in as we've had it ages but never played it!

Quick lunch time play of Niagara

Whilst working at home today and the girls being off for Dwali, we thought we'd snatch a quick game of something at lunch time. Seeing as Kavita hadn't played Niagara yet, we thought we'd settle for that, although Anita was tired and opted for a snooze instead. Kavita quickly picked up the rules and we were all dashing about picking up gems. But before I knew it, Roshni had formulated a strategy and had grabbed 5 purple gems and won in a double canoe dash for the finish line! We were just about to start a new turn when I thought Hang on - has she won?! and it turned out she had! lol

Gaming day jolly!!

Yay! Monday was a day of getting together with my best mate Matt at his place whilst he had the place to himself for a few days to play games, eat pizza and drink beer! It was also an opportunity to introduce him and his game-aspiring daughter to Euro gaming :) I had brought most of the games with me to try and squeeze in as much as possible.

Firstly we played Diamant as a good introduction. This went down a storm - very popular as it is very easy to learn but difficult to master - Hannah, Matts daughter, got the idea straight away and loved it - eventually winning the game.

Next out of the bag was Zooloretto - obviously it took a bit to explain the rules, but the game proceeded quite well, with only a few references to the rules - this game has a great system where although it is a fairly complex game, say compared to Diamant, there is no text in the game to get confused with; no cards to read or text to ponder over. Again highly enjoyed by all - and again won by Hannah. :)

It was time then to drop off Hannah to her grandparents; after which Matt and I explored the contents of 7th Fleet and Gunslinger, just to get an idea of what ye olde '80s punch counter games were like - actually Gunslinger looked quite attractive to play and if I'd known the rules we'd have given it a go.

So we had a go at Back to the Future the card game - I've played this a few times solo play, so this was a good chance to test out the rules with two of us. The concept of how to play took a bit to understand (even for me and I'd played a few times!) but after getting into the swing of it, it was a great game - won by Matt in the end.

Next was Niagara - Matt loved the idea of the plastic discs acting as the flowing river and there was much merriment in pseudo-Mexican voices. The ending was full of tension as we both had our fill of gems, me 5 different coloured gems, Matt his mixed collection of 7. We just needed to get one more gem each to the finishing line. With our last paddle cards and the end in sight, we raced for him - Matt pipping me to the post!! Another game lost! :)

Next was Memoir '44 - actually two games of Memoir as it was so popular with Matt. The only unfortunate thing I found was that set up took too long and was actually a bit confusing with two people on opposite sides of the table whilst looking at the map in the book. Something to consider in the future. But the games went off really well - the first an American attack against heavily entrenched German positions - including several elite German tank platoons; leading to a win by Germany that followed the course of History. Then it was another try at an Omaha beach landing, this time with Matt as the Americans. This turned into an unmitigated disaster for the Yanks as one after another unit and platoon were destroyed or mown down on the beaches of France.  Notch one up for me! this would turn out to be my only win of the day...

Finally we had a game of Last Night on Earth - and as I'd not played this before, game play proceeded a little slowly at first as Matt read the rules, counters were punched and cards were shuffled. The scenario we took was Get Petrol and Keys for the Truck! or something like that. This involved my humans searching for petrol and keys whilst fending off the undead! Unfortunately one character after another died and then the Sun set and it was game over man game over! A good game, if not 100% my cup of tea in its mechanics. Perhaps another couple of games will win me over.

In all, a hugely successful gaming day/night! Cannot wait to do it again!

Gaming at last!

After 3 weeks of virtually no gaming at all, due to spending a lot of time in the loft clearing it out, making room for a work desk, storage etc, we finally managed to play a couple of games - Maya, Anita and I played a good game of Niagara, where Anita won by a deft little steal of a gem from me, then a quick pick up of another gem on the next turn. Then we played Zooloretto and Maya and I came joint 1st as I used the last of my coins to remove an animal from my barn, hence saving me from an extra -2 points at the end of the game!

It was nice to be back in the boxes and playing again after so long.

First two games of Niagara - excellent!!

Today we played our first game of Niagara and although the rules looked long, they summarised onto one one page and we had a fantastic time! This has become our favourite boardgame - firstly Maya, Anita and I played a game with Anita producing a sudden and shock win - you're concentrating so much on ensuring your boats don't go over the falls that you hardly notice who is claiming what gemstone! Maya was able to get into the game straight away with no trouble and with little reading, it is open to an early age. The first game was so successful, that we wanted to play again - this time Roshni joined us as she had finished her homework. With Kavita still working on hers, we dashed up and down the river again, this time I won. Brilliant simple fun but oh so full of strategy! And the mechanics of the flowing river is just brilliant. 

Niagara arrives!

Our latest family addition, Niagara, arrived today after our surprise win on Ebay! I doubted very much we would find a copy for sale, let alone one for auction, but one was going in Mint condition and we won with one bid! We also had our doubts it would be Mint condition, so we had taken a gamble because parts could be missing, but the owners said it was 100%. We got it today and had a good look through - not only was it 100% complete, but there was also 2 extra gems (instead of one) of each colour!

I've had a scoot through of the rules and it seems very good - although the rules do cover many pages, a fair amount is for Examples and diagrams. The dynamic of how the river flows is brilliant - the board is placed upon the upturned lid and base, so a waterfall hangs over the edge of one box edge. The board has a channel cut into it with plastic discs representing the river water. The canoes used for going up and down the river to get the gems to win the game, float on the discs. At the end of each turn, more discs are pushed into the start of the river, causing the other discs to move along the channel, penny-pusher style, eventually causing one or more to fall off the waterfall edge, taking any hapless canoes with it!! Players use Paddle cards with numbers on them to navigate the rapids, between 1 and 6 and a cloud card to manipulate the weather (for better or worse), thereby increasing or decreasing the speed of the river each turn. It does sound a little complex, but the rules compress into one side of paper in a Summary, so hopefully it'll be pretty cool to play.

We will try it out on Sunday.

Weekend play

Just played one game this weekend - Nordic Ticket to Ride; and I won by a staggering 148points to 114! Tried to introduce Roshni to Back to the Future but a lot of the aspects of the incidents from the films, not the game play, were lost on her as she'd not seen the film in ages! So we stopped and said we'd watch the films and give it a go again.

Also took a stroll to stretch the legs which just happened to pass Battlequestgames :) Popped in for a look around and got talking to Andy about Back to the Future. He mentioned it was based on Fluxx and loaned a shop copy to try out. Turns out it's a pretty cool game after a quick rules check and solo play. Try and squeeze a game in with the family before it has to go back. Also the Disaster at Dieppe add on for Memoir is due in next week, so I hope to collect on Thursday.

Managed to also secure a second hand copy of Niagara - Anita found a second hand copy on Ebay going cheap and because we were not 100% if it was for us, we got that instead of a brand new one. Hopefully with us in a few days.

Sold! Queens Necklace and Mystery of the Abbey!

Both of these games have gone - to a better home I hope - and we'll be ploughing the money back into a new game - either Niagara or Stone Age. We'll have to check both out on BoardGameGeek to see what they are like, but Niagara has got a lot of thumbs up. EDIT - Niagara it is (Not Viagara as my friend thought I said!) - ordered via Battlequestgames for a good price. Can't wait to get hold of it!