Billabong Boardgamers - 2nd January, 2001
Present: Alan, Andrew, David, Donna, Doug
Alan Stewart writes:
6 BILLION
Players: Alan, David
Matrioshka Brains variant - wherein the neutral player cannot be stoped free doubling in the asteroid belt.
As neither of us had the Asteroid Belt as our Hidden Agenda, the Asteroid Belt was slow to develop and the variant never really influenced the game.
The game ended after about 35 minutes, when David placed his last token (of 10) onto the leaf scoring track. I still had 3 tokens off the board, plus a non-scoring orbiting Mercury.
David 62 (bonuses for Discoveries - $ track, Venus)
Alan 52 (bonuses for Hidden Agenda - Earth; Discoveries - smiley track,
leaf
track)
LORD OF THE RINGS
Players: Donna (Frodo), David (Sam), Alan (Pippin)
Sauron started on 12.
The first land was going fine, but hardly any travel cards were played. Then a run of events saw us just get through with only a few cards left each, and quite a few spells used up already.
We continued on, gaining a few more cards. Not many hits on the Hobbits, but Sauron rapidly moved down to 7.
We managed to get most of the special cards, and they kept us in the game. Plus calling on Gandalf 3 times before we had even entered Mordor!
In this last land we had to reshuffle the Hobbit card draw pile. Sam had the ring, and Sauron was close on 5, the Hobbits on 1, 2 and 4. Frodo died. Then Pippin died, just after calling on Gandalf to give Sam two wild points. Then it came down to the last turn. Sauron was on 3, Sam was on 1, and had to roll twice and survive, with only 3 cards. First roll - 1 hit. Second roll - blank. The ring was destroyed, just.
Andrew Harding writes:
TRAUMFABRIK (Dream Factory)
Making movies in Hollywood, by Reiner Knizia and published by Hasbro. Why there isn't an English Language version of this one is beyond me - it's oozing with mass market appeal and is a fine game too.
Players (studios) are dealt a number of movies (scripts?) at the start of the game and compete to make the best movies and to win oscars over the course of a year (four quarters/turns). To make a movie you need a director and a few other things, such as actors, camerawork, special effects and music (the exact requirements vary from movie to movie). All items have a Star rating, which will affect the quality of the finished movie. These items are generally auctioned off in groups, with the studio offering the most contracts winning the entire group and all other studios picking up a share of the bid; there are also two Hollywood Parties each quarter which give each studio one item for free. When a movie is finished, it's Star rating is totalled and the player takes a scoring marker of that value. There are Oscars (bonuses) along the way for making the first movie of a given type, having the best movie at the end of a quarter, making the worst movie and so forth. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
I took an early lead thanks to rushing 'Gone with the wind' out the door in the first quarter, thanks largely to the efforts of my 'never make two takes' camera team. This was the only movie finished in the first quarter, bagging me a couple of oscars. Somehow this was still the best movie out there at the end of the second quarter, so I scored another Oscar for it and a few points for a no-budget production of The Three Musketeers. Quarter three saw some spirited bidding and some good movies finished by other studios. Quarter four David and Doug conspired to prevent me from making the Worst Movie of All Time (starring Reiner Knizia), although I finished another forgetable film to secure the lead.
David 51, Alan 46, Doug 45, Donna 51, Andrew 62
TORRES
Castle building, with points scored each round for having Knights on high levels of large castles, which players can cooperate to build. Very abstract and not intuitive, but one I would like to play again.
I helped build up David's castle at the start of the game, moving a Knight in to share in the points for it. Donna picked up the King's bonus while Alan trailed a little. Round two saw most of us sneak Knights into other people's castles in order to claim credit for them, while Alan worked on expanding his own castle and fell a little further behind. Round three everyone had a knight on the top of the largest castle and several smaller holdings; Alan scored an enourmous number of points for being at level four of his own castle (no one else was at more than level two there), but didn't quite close the gap.
Alan 209, David 207, Andrew 213, Donna 201