28th May 2025
Just three long games at this session, apologies for the poor pun of a misquote of Julius Caeser’s famous line; I came, I saw, I won. We played games about Wine, Romans and a game about developing board games.
Reynaldo was keen to play Concordia Venus and started setting it up as soon as he arrived (it does have a lot of pieces). Initially three sat down to play but the table absorbed two latecomers and so had five playing on the Greek themed map. This was the first club play of the Venus variant, but parent game Concordia has been very popular with twelve previous sessions, notably with two different tables playing it in session 68.
After a rules refresh for less familiar players the colonists were soon spreading out from Athens across the map and trying to acquire enough money and resources to fuel their expansion and build cities. It turned out to be a card rush game with the end of game being triggered when the last extra role card was bought by Reynaldo. Then it was time to convert any remaining goods into cash and work through the different god based scoring types. Kathy had an early lead with a good number of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars cards benefiting from her rapid expansion and settling in multiple provinces but with varied resource types. However others had bought the Minerva cards, the last god to be scored and which scores 5 points per resource focused settlement rather than the 1 or 2 point scores for Jupiter and Saturn. So everyone leapfrogged Kathy in that final scoring and it was Reynaldo with a commanding lead due to his heavy focus on brick and grain cities. A nice friendly game, light teach and interesting scoring reveal as it was hard to tell in game who was doing well.
Three sat down to get a bit meta and try Tabletop Inc, it having been suggested ahead of time. This is a new game in which the players are competing game companies trying to create the best new games, with the added draw of some delightful tiny game boxes. Utilising worker placement the players are trying to craft the required elements of a box, a game mechanic and components, with four levels of each being available depending on the companies skill set. Freelancers and specialists can be hired by your company, with Freelancers granting increased skills, end game points and extra action spaces with some nice bonuses, whilst specialists add a new worker with benefits if used in their area of expertise. Resources used to create the games are time, money, inspiration, play-tests and research. Once a game has all 3 elements on your games table it can then be published for end game points, and potentially put up for awards for more points and those all-important bragging rights - plus possibly the ever-coveted shiny trophies. Recalling your workers back from the board moves the timer marker backwards along the score track one space for each returning worker, triggering the game end and netting the returnee 5 sweet victory points when it reaches zero.
The teach thankfully went considerably better than my last two attempts and we were soon under way. In this taut thrill-ride the trio trying for tabletop triumph were GMON Games (Steve), Cogito Games (Jack), and A-Girl Games( Darren). First to publish was Cogito, bringing the highly acclaimed Beak Size to market, which proved so popular it was soon gaining awards and earned a prestigious place on the tiny kallax (cube shaped storage unit). They also proved to have a good grasp of the employment market with some excellent hires, in particular a headphone wearing Specialist that allowed them to utilise an extra action space without costs, which proved extremely handy, along with his knack of interchanging research and play-tests to create components and manufacture mechanisms. It wasn’t long before the industry was celebrating the release of Zombies, touted as another great game from the makers of the classic Beak Size. Indeed, it too found success and was soon to be spotted on the kallax of fame. Meanwhile GMON were pushing their stand-out games, hoping the Lovecraftian horror of Tentacle Face would be the next big thing, following up with the ever popular I Like Trains. This was despite their short-staffed company struggling with the concept of time, often confusing it for some sort of game component. A-Girl staffers seemed to be content with planning and going after points, with nothing but an empty box on their table for quite some time, but eventually managed to publish Mediterranean Trading, which initially failed to capture the attention of critics, and Capitalism, which proved to be a great success.
Cogito Games sharp hiring practices meant they were soon pulling in the points and catching the early lead of A-Girl, and with both companies having Specialists on board the recall timer was veritably hurtling towards end-game in the latter stages, much to the dismay of GMON, who seemed to be holding some heated internal meetings on their resource policies, particularly on whether they should be allocated to gaining objectives (presumably some kind of ISO certification) or used to make actual games. With Cogito quickly snaffling the 5 points for bringing about the end of the game the other two publishers scratched around desperately for whichever move was likely to gain them a point or two. However, having 3 award winning games adding to their score meant that Cogito Games had managed to garner under the watchful eyes of Jack put them about a dozen points ahead of their nearest competitor A-Girl. The yellow workers of GMON also scored some points. It was an enjoyable game, seemingly with several strategies to explore, definitely elevated by the fun components, with the founder of GMON already hoping to lure some more competition in to the board game business in the hopes that their inexperience will be to his benefit.
Viticulture has been played twice before at the club (session 17 and a Tuscany variant in session 85). Steph brought the game, and 4 players tried their hand at making wine again. The initial rounds are preparation of your vineyards and facilities, and then victory points for your endeavours rapidly come in (if you’ve played it right): the first player to reach 25 points triggers the end game.
In this game, Graham had a card to overload one field of grapes, but the lack of a second field held him back. There was close competition for first place and then Steph triggered the end game. Steph just retained her lead in the final scoring to carry the win. The competition for 3rd / 4th was also close - but distant from 1st / 2nd!! Graham got the wooden spoon - he is determined to play again and do better than the previous 3 times!
Session 104 is the 11th June. Which will be the first try of a theme based night, the theme being classic games, which we have defined as being first published last century. So its time to reach out to the back of the cupboards and dust off those classics and see how they have stood the test of time.
- Total Session Attendance: 12
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Board Games: