7th August 2024
It was another table filling night on a warm summer evening in St Ives with sixteen gamers building zoos, recruiting followers in medieval France, being merchants in the Renaissance and mining in the mountains.
Shorter games this session were some of the club favourites, as usual Ecosystem on its 26th club play, High Society on its sixth play and Kingdomino on its ninth play.
Meanwhile the first table was getting stuck into Ark Nova, on its fifth club play, this can be a long one to get to the end game condition and everyone was keen to be able to finish. Jack was a Ark Nova newcomer and Dave had only played solo mode so they played the beginners zoo maps giving them a starting advantage of a size three enclosure and a kiosk, while Kathy J. and Steph started with the base map and the Rescue Station map from the additional map pack.
After a rapid teach the zoo building commenced with Kathy taking an early interest in primates - that suited Steph who got an early card down giving a three coin bonus whenever a primate was played in any zoo. Jack grasped the mechanics rapidly and was soon maximising his association workers and getting into the conservation projects. Dave suffered from an early miscalculation trying to put a large animal in an unsuitable enclosure (it wasn’t touching any rocks) but made a good comeback and started racking up conservation points too. Kathy then managed to cover her entire zoo map for the seven point appeal bonus.
Dave thought he was about to trigger the end game condition of making the appeal and conservation score markers cross by supporting a conservation project but had forgotten it was a release an animal into the wild type and he would lose some appeal score from the now empty enclosure. However Jack was able to follow this up with his own conservation project and did trigger the end. The others now had one final turn to score as much as possible with Kathy also supporting a conservation project and Steph and Dave adding more animals to their zoos. Much to Kathy’s annoyance Dave played two primates which explained why she had been unable to collect the six primates which she had been trying display in her zoo in order to obtain an end game scoring bonus on the Baboon Rock sponsor card (she managed five).
All the players ended up with a very similar zoo appeal so it was the conservation score that decided the winner with both Jack and Dave managing the crossover with Dave just winning by one point when the difference between the two markers was calculated. A very close game with everyone enjoying their different zoo building strategies and with nine different conservation projects being nobly supported.
The next table chose Orleans on its fourth outing, first played back in session 49, this has a bag builder mechanic with a group of merchants and noble knights travelling the roads and rivers of France collecting goods and building guildhalls. Four merchants stepped up - Iain having played before, 2 new players - Tom and Tasha - and Jeremy teaching. It was not long before everyone was recruiting new craftsman, knights, boat men and others for their bag.
Half way through the game, after our second pestilence, it became apparent the strategies people were trying - Tom and Jeremy were travelling around setting up guildhalls, Iain was focussing on the development track and his laboratory (creating cogs), and Tasha was weaving fabrics and establishing Taverns (in places where there was already a guildhall).
When the game was nearing its end, Tom, Jeremy and Tasha just got up to level 5 of the development track, whilst Iain was already at the top level of 6. Then the final few guildhalls went up and a few goods were claimed off the map. With the final scores being a sum of goods, coins, and your number of guildhalls (and nobles) multiplied by your development track status. So even though Iain obtained level 6, Jeremy managed 9 guildhalls and so claimed the win (but obviously had failed at teaching).
The board game club session took an unexpectedly aquatic turn on another table, courtesy of Richard, who brought along the latest marvel of cardboard engineering — Whistle Mountain. Richard graciously offered to teach the ropes (or rather, the scaffolding), and everyone soon found themselves knee-deep in a battle of wits, resources, and rapidly rising water levels.
Whistle Mountain, for the uninitiated, is a delightful concoction of worker placement, resource gathering, and technological upgrades, all set against the backdrop of a precarious mountain slowly being swallowed by water. As the snow melted and the water levels rose, the stakes soared, and so did the risk of the poor workers taking an unplanned swim.
For two intense hours, Iker P, Rich W, Sophie FW and Darren C balanced the fine art of construction with the subtle sabotage of each other’s plans. The mountain’s scaffolding took on increasingly absurd shapes, as they all raced to gather resources and upgrade abilities before the impending deluge.
But, as usual, the mountain was no match for Iker P. With the precision of a master architect and the ruthlessness of a pirate, he strategically placed machinery and scaffolding in all the right spots, not just to boost his own progress but to gleefully plunge other workers into the rising waters below. The rest of the players could only watch as their poor meeples floundered while Iker sailed smoothly to victory.
In the end, it was a familiar tale — Iker triumphs, and the rest of the players learn a valuable lesson in humility and hydro-engineering. Here’s to the next game, where everyone vows (yet again) to finally dethrone the reigning champion!
The final table chose Splendor previously played in Session 70 for a description of the rules. Briefly it is a card game with the player merchants trying to accumulate gems of four different colours that let them acquire more cards to increase their wealth or gain prestige points. This eventually lets them recruit nobles for bigger prestige values which generally tips the end game condition of first to 15 prestige points.
The next session is the 21st of August, which of the many and varied games will be on the tables then? If you want to influence that, join us on the night or contact us beforehand on Discord to suggest some games or sign up for ones that others have suggested.
- Total Session Attendance: 16
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Board Games: