Gareth had organised an afternoon of gaming in the Kings Head for people to get together and play something new or something longer than normally possible on our regular Tuesday evening sessions. I had packed and hoped for a first run out of Time of Crisis but it was not to be...
Still, Billy and I did get to play a leisurely (3hr!) game of Le Havre with Terry, who we hadn't seen for ages.
Billy and Terry built some early ships whilst I used my resources on building as many properties as I could. This did lead to me acquiring an uncomfortably large number of loans however! Billy struck on a nice little special building combination, The Ranch and something that allowed him to get extra cows during each harvest - meaning that his food needs were sorted and he could score 2 points for every cow on his Ranch at game end, so no need to ship them off! I finally managed to start a little fleet and had some excellent buildings but Terry managed a killer move of building the Bank and the Town Hall in a single turn, guaranteeing a healthy number of bonus points at game end and scuppering both Billy and I, as we were both about to build one of them each as well. This almost certainly sealed the game for him and I don't think he shipped once, but did build some luxury liners to supplement his little civic empire.
The game did feel a bit odd, with certain important buildings (Iron Works, Steel Works and, for a good while, Shipping Line) being buried quite deep, with a fair amount of dross piled above them so it did become a late game rush, for me at least, to do the usual shipping of goods to clear the loans I'd taken and then I didn't have enough actions to get together enough goods for a reasonable the last move shipping opportunity. Never mind, I still really enjoyed the game, even though it took all afternoon.
Terry had around 215 points, I was on 190 and Bill about 160, having slaughtered a few too many cows to score that big on his ranch and had piles of left over good that he didn't get rid of - he probably should have used the Bridge over the Seine as his last turn actually, which might've garnered a lot more points than what he did do. Hmmmm.
Elsewhere a great many other games were being played, including Keyper and Concordia which all concerned were very happy about. There followed some playing of dexterity favourites like Junk Art and Meeple Circus for John to try out so as to decide on what to buy himself as a Christmas gift. As Billy and I left they were starting on a whole new pile of games as well.
Although we could have stayed on we decided to head home for an early evening in the warm on the sofa, watching more TV...
