by Tony Boydell
We (well, I) tried something different at the Ross-on-Wye boardgamers meeting last night as, for the Nth session in recent memory we had the
not so magic number of 'five'. As much as I love the many excellent and proven games in our collective collections that support this number, I have a shed and library full of past and Spiel-recent goodies that stop at four and refuse to go any further; and let's not forget those that purport to work at such heights but really only functional properly with fewer. It's becoming a gear-grinding, arse-chafing chore.
Somewhat optimistically, I packed
Lorenzo il Magnifico anyway along with - and this is the experimental bit -
Le Havre. Becky had been introduced to it earlier in the year and hadn't been put off; I believe this is thanks to her
Inland Port/
Glass Road/
Ora Et Labora (and even
Harbour) exposure - these refined and re-jiggered descendants paying homage to their venerable ancestor.
While the dance of Concordia, Puerto Rico, El Grande et al played out in the snug Prince-of-Wales corner, I suggested that we split TWO and THREE: me and Smudge taking
Le Havre and the others (Byll, Boffo and Jobbers) whatever else they fancied. There was a little resistance to this idea to begin with - though not from Becky particularly - as if some unwritten, but wholly signed-up-to, Club Regulation had been violated; nothing controversial but, maybe, a tinge of surprise as to have been put forward in the first place. We're a funny bunch, aren't we? I do believe we actually LIKE being together!
Smudge agreed and we set ourselves up
to one side, leaving the boys to delve in to
Cuba + expansion*:
I endeavoured to keep the flow of the game steady and offered advice where necessary; this was not to be a competitive session - selfishly, I would like more chances to play this with people 'for real', so wanted to give Becky a full and rich experience: I am a sensitive and considerate Le Havre-r, after all. A couple of interesting
Le Havre: Le Grand Hameau special buildings came out too (including the Trading Post which allowed Becky to convert cows in to Iron quickly) and, by the end of our 90 minutes, I think she got to see all of essentials. She asked to play it again soon, so: "achievement unlocked".
The
Cuba game was temporarily paused by Jobbers' extravagant, though accidental, sweeping of his player board (with tiles, resources and dobbers) off the table. This, along with his Tourettic "I hate whistling!" outburst, are the only things I can recall of what the others were doing, so focused were we in our happy chit-fiddlin'.
My original plans for the evening - free from Gloucester pick-ups - were scuppered as we packed away both Cuba and Le Havre (simultaneous game-ends FTW!) and I now only had half-an-hour available. Boffo displayed his box of filler goodness and we plumped for
Unexpected Treasures which, with five, was pleasingly bruising!
In summary: set collection where who gets to pick what - and subsequently cash in for VP cards - is determined by the simultaneous (blind) playing of an action card: low numbers go before high numbers, but collect fewer chits, and ties mean only one at that number will collect leaving the other(s) empty-handed for the round.Becky ran rings around us once again - as she so often does with fillers like this - by letting the boys all pick on each other! While I was hobbling in the wooden spoon slot with 80 pts, she was waaaaaaaay ahead on 140-ish.
*
this is also a bit of a milestone on account of Jobbers having poo-pooed this excellent game for years only for this to be the second time in as many months that HE has requested the playing of it!
