Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Monday night I went round to Paul's again for games. Paul had asked me to bring Settlers of Catan plus the 5-6 player expansion, and Ticket To Ride to get Lisa to join in with us.

First up was Ticket To Ride by Alan R. Moon. Andy, Greg, Lisa, Paul and I set up a 5-player game, and just as we got started Spence arrived. Since Lisa hadn't played before Spence played with her. The game was a good one, Lisa was winning through most of the game, and also got her hands on the longest route in fairly short order. Spence suggested a few long routes too, which helped. I got a couple of fairly short tickets early on and then tried to keep up on points by claiming some long routes - but I was beaten to a few of them. In the end Lisa didn't complete all her routes, but she still won by a mile: Lisa 102, Andy 84, me 84, Paul 80 and Greg 69. I was also amazed at the number of rules that I had wrong in the numerous games I'd previously played - loads of them!

The second game of the night was Settlers of Catan and the 5/6 player expansion. I'd not played this in absolutely ages, and I thought that the 5/6 player slowed things down too much. I was right. Despite a very entertaining game in terms of Settlers humour ('I've got wood for sheep', 'I've wood and two stones'), the game did seem to drag. With everyone being given the chance build after everyone's turn the game lasts a lot longer. Spence seemed to be the man to beat throughout the game as he collected a staggering amount of sheep and wood, and built lots of cities - but at the last moment Paul stole the longest road and beat us all to 10 points. Paul 10, Spence 8, Greg 7, me 7, Andy 6 and Lisa 4.

It was another great evening of games - thanks Paul!

In other news I did the gluing for the tiles of the next batch of Border Reivers last night, and I made a bunch of rulebooks too. The next thing to do is to start labelling the boxes which I plan to start tomorrow morning - I've got the day off work for a second interview for the promotion at work which is down in London, and I don't need to leave home until lunchtime.