Session Report: Dave At Mine

Last night Dave came round again for games. Due to being busy I'd not had time to learn the rules for any new games, so we stuck with some tried and tested favourites. Dave had recently bought Guillotine one of the favourites at Paul's Monday night games which he brought along with Carcassonne: The Castle which I had played a few times at Christmas. Dave also wanted to play Border Reivers again - yeay!

First up was Guillotine, a delightfully silly card game where you get to decapitate the French. I'd not played this 2-player before, and I wasn't even sure if it supported two players. Unfortunately Wizards of the Coast neglected to tell me on the box, so after much searching I had to check the rules. Two to five. Excellent. We played three games, I sneaked the first one, Dave creamed me in the second and then in the third I had a huge score (despite two -1 Martyrs and a -2 action card from Dave) and was convinced that I'd won, but Dave had equalled me to draw the game and the series. I'd collected the Piss Boy though, so I like to think I won the moral victory ;-) Final scores: Dave 23, me 25; then Dave 31, me 23; finally Dave 39, me 39.

Next up we played Border Reivers and due to a slack few days when it comes to construction I have no finished games and my copy is still missing loads of tiles as I've been raiding it for spares when I cock one up. So we played with my old prototype with nasty, lurid tiles, but lovely hand-scultped FIMO pieces. Dave won the toss and chose a central location for the mine, and feeling aggressive I went for the start location nearest to the mine and decided to contest it. I got to the mine first, but Dave built a couple of early towns and wrested the mine from me in fairly short order. I fought back, re-claiming the mine and building a Market to boost my income. Dave forced me out of the mine for a second time, so it was time to get medieval on his ass, and I went for cards and got my hands on an Insurrection (cue evil laugh: mwoa ha ha ha). After having just settled two towns and won the mine for a second time Dave was a little exposed, I knew he didn't have any hidden cards, so the Militia wasn't prepared to defend his city, so I went for it. My Insurrection came up trumps destroying his city in a blaze of glory and the tide had turned. Dave tried to save himself, pulling two armies back from the mine to upgrade one of his towns into a second city, but that left the mine with only one army defending it, and I managed to destroy that then his second (and only) city. It was a bit harsh to open up with the Insurrection, but I figured Dave had played recently and knew the risk of my hidden card. Hopefully I've not put him off the game :-) In hindsight, I think I would have left the mine in his position too, moving the one remaining army back to the tower or city where it would gain a numerical boost in combat at the expense of losing the mine. Dave had a reasonable amount of money at that stage, and would likely have rebuilt fairly quickly. Final result: I won my military victory.

We decided to round out the evening with a couple of quick games of Carcassonne : The Castle. Dave had played this before being introduced to vanilla Carcassonne, while I had only been introduced to it at Christmas. I really like this one, but it takes a completely different mindset from vanilla Carcassonne as the unfinished houses, towers and roads don't score at the end of the game. I won both games in the end, having done slightly better on the markets. Final scores: Dave 52, me 63; second game Dave 67, me 87.

Another great night of gameage. I'm really enjoying approximately one night a week of gaming either with Paul and chums or Dave. Next week hopefully it will be at Paul's as I'm off to Paris for work later in the week.