by Sharon Khan
We started the evening waiting for a few people, so pulled out Augustus, and two people arrived while we were setting it up and explaining anyway, so it became a 6 player game. Scores were pretty close at the top, but my huge collection of tiles won it for me.After that we split into two tables, one playing Vinci, which Simon wanted to try, while the other table played a couple of shorter games. Firstly we introduced John to Splendor, which he obviously understood as he won! Comfortably too! Then we needed a quick filler before Barry arrived, and John suggested Ubongo. I got off to a terrible start, not getting my brain in gear for the first four boards, then my brain obviously clicked in, and I was first on all but one of the remainder!! Unfortunately my bad start put me in second, as Sami overtook me.
When Barry arrived, we started The Castles of Burgundy, which both Barry and John had suggested as a game they'd like to play. We explained it to John and started. Barry had the board with the 8 size brown region, and spent the early part of his game on that, and collecting chickens, and then found it easier than he expected and was unsure what to do for the last round! I had the board with two 6 brown regions, so focussed on them, as well as finishing my dark green and blue regions as quick as possible, given they were quite accessible on my board. Unfortunately John seemed to have the same idea, and without him realising we were competing he just beat me to one of the bonus tiles, although I got the other! I also did Sami's usual trick of picking up all the yellow bonus tiles that got me VPs (for brown building types and my sold goods), as well as the one that meant I could take tiles from adjacent numbers on the board, which did great work for me all game. These end-game VPs were enough to win me the game.
We finished just as the other table had finished their post-Vinci shorter game, so we merged and split. I caused problems by suggesting Terra Mystica for the other table. It was so popular that everyone wanted to play it. Simon suggested Alhambra for the other table, and then when I went downstairs with Terra Mystica and told two players to join me, he was one of the ones who joined me!?!? Marion also wanted to play, as she'd missed out on many of the Terra Mystica games in recent weeks. I drew Cultists, and started right next to Simon;s Fakirs so that I could use my powers on him. Marion meanwhile started off on her own with her Engineers, then realised the problem with that, as she had real problems building trading houses and hardly got any power all game. Simon was quite determined not to give me too many Cultist bonuses, and only gave me about four or five track promotions all game, but I still played heavily for the tracks to maximise the bonuses I got from them at the end of each round, and at end-game was top of all four!!! Meanwhile Marion's Engineers were trying to build bridges for VPs, but we blocked the other end of one of her potential bridge locations, and then she was struggling with enough income to build her Stronghold for the VPs anyway, as well as struggling to build cities. Simon's Fakirs were doing rather better and the two of us were level on points during the game, but my end-game VPs from the tracks were enough for me to pull ahead of him at end-game.