DK has crept a little closer the retirement … a bit ahead of me at least. Snake-eyes kindly said that he would host a get together and play some games. DK had chosen John Company and Res Arcana - all new to us.
The day started as usual with a full English breakfast to ready us for a long days gaming in Kernow.
John Company
First up in the scheduled games was John Company - a game of the East Indian Company exploiting the subcontinent. Now there is a little controversy about this game due the subject matter, but actually I think the game does deal with the fact that the British Empire was not planned, but haphazardly created by individuals trying to make a fast buck, these people were ruthless and did not care who or what they exploited to achieve their objectives - definitely the bad guys.
Now having watched a play through of this game I did not have high expectations - it looked too complicated and fussy to play.
The basics of the game are to run the EIC to make money and skim-off money to get family members into luxurious retirements - the key way of getting victory points. To do this you have to get family members into roles across the company - chairman, director of trade, ships, president of Bombay or Madras and writers and army commanders and officers. The game is a mixture of cooperative and tactically trying to get one over your colleagues.
We cracked on - took on debt on the company and set about exploiting the population of India. We conquered two of the presidency’s … unfortunately we didn’t expect a major uprising … which closed off all the Indian markets and wrecked the company’s reputation!
So possibly in under an hour we had managed to lose the game in less than one turn … there was much shock and laughter at our incompetence - basically when in battle we used all the sepoys, so we were unable to defend against the uprising. But this was a good thing, as we were up for trying the game again, it had been fun and we had done some good learning. I think Snake-eyes win with zero points.
So the second attempt started and it was a jolly good effort. Steedo started scoring points by retiring family members. However, by the end of turn 4 out of 5 DK had taken a good lead - so we had moved into trying to hobbling him (getting him to agree to be president of Bombay, but not providing any money, ships or troops, making the presidency pointless), while at the same time pushing our own agendas. I had managed to get myself into a reasonable position - chairman of the company, president of Bengal and most of the company’s officers in the army. Into the final turn we were doing well the company had plenty of money, we had won some battles and exhausted our troops again … and in the final India Events phase we pulled the uprising card again and “tanked” the company’s reputation again and lost again! We really shouldn’t have, but we did.
We did the scoring and DK won with 16, Steedo 11, me 6 and Snake-eyes 4. If we hadn’t have wrecked the company I would have scored more, because I had a fair number of family members on the board (and some decent retirements lined up) - board members are negative points if the company fails.
I enjoyed the game much more than I thought and would play again.
Heat
We then moved on to play heat - a card driven racing car game. If you can count cards it would help a lot. It has some interesting mechanics about adding or taking “heat” out of the engine - cards to gum up your hand. There are “adrenaline” cards which gum up your hand but you can’t get them out of your hand.
This was a fun game which I have to say was a depth change from John Company - I was struggling to get the card counting right and was in last place most of the game. DK was first across the line and the winner. Snake-eyes, Steedo and I all passed the first line in the same turn (in that order) - to break ties it is the player who is furthest over the finish line. And although Snake-eyes was first over, Steedo went further and then in a shock I went further still - 2 place to me!
After a rather nice buffalo chicken roll and chocolate cake from Snake-eyes we tried a game of Res Arcana.
Res Arcana
This is a resource collecting and buying game with some deck management - so not usually my thing. You take on the role of a mage and have to get 10 points, from places, monuments and points on your cards - another solid win for DK. I finally managed to get my head around the game towards the end when I realised that I had bought the dragon, the dragon bridal and dragon lair in the wrong order … perhaps next time I should study the cards in more detail.
A good day’s gaming and hopefully DK enjoyed his birthday (and his 3 bottles of lambrini … I have no idea how he can stomach that stuff).
Morts
