On holiday in Sölden ... shame about the jacket!

2011 Five and Dimes

10 or more plays
Game	Qty
7 Wonders	30
Pinguïn Party	27
Dixit	16
23	11
5 or more plays
Game	Qty
Loopin' Louie	7
Power Grid: The First Sparks	7
Drum Roll	6
Ticket To Ride – all versions	6
The Bottle Imp	5
Braggart	5
Hoppladi Hopplada!	5
Power Grid – all versions	5
Qwirkle	5

Most years I record exactly zero ‘Dimes’ – in 2011 I managed to record no fewer than 4. A quick summary of each game:

I don’t need to go into any detail on 7 Wonders: this hit from Essen 2010, the top-ranked game of that year on BGG, continued to hit the table regularly in 2011. Its streamlined playing time and variety of play will continue to see it hit the table for some time to come. The ‘Leaders’ expansion refreshed the game in 2011 and is a natural addition for experienced players.

Pingüin Party also continues to hit the table regularly, whether at family gatherings or on game nights. This light filler continues to entertain and where would be be without the classic ‘Miserable Penguin’ opening? The good Doctor’s finest hour?

Dixit is the party game for family occasions, yet still not totally out of place on game nights. The second expansion ‘Dixit Odyssey’ added a lot of new cards to the mix, along with 6 new rabbits, allowing up to 12 players. Always guaranteed to produce laughter.

23 is perhaps the surprise hit from Essen 2011. A light card game from Amigo, covering much the same ground as ‘No Thanks’ or ‘6 Nimmt’. Its simplicity and simple gameplay has made this an instant hit.

Loopin’ Louie is the classic game of dexterity and skill – always entertaining, especially when alcohol is in the mix! My copy cost me £5 from Tescos five or six years ago. Money well spent – every little helps!

Power Grid: The First Sparks, or Power Grid Lite as it has been dubbed, is a wonderful re-implementation of Power Grid mechanics that plays out in about half the time of PG. This fun version of PG, with an iron age theme, was the 2F-Spiele game from Essen 2011.

Drum Roll was perhaps my favourite game of Essen 2011. A great theme with superb artwork.

This is a smooth and elegant implementation of the ‘worker placement’ mechanic, although perhaps plays 30 minutes too long.

Ticket To Ride continues to be consistently played. This year I played Nordic twice (the 2/3 player map of choice), classic USA once, Europe once, Switzerland once and the new India map once. The India map brought an enjoyable fresh variant to the game family and is currently my favourite. I also bought the Alvin & Dexter expansion which livens up the USA map. 2011 was also the year I sold Märklin – I just never got it to the table. I’ve also played some TTR using the excellent IPad implementation but only include ftf games on my play stats.

I purchased the Bottle Imp a few years ago, after a game with Steve Kearon at a con, but really only played it last year. This is a roller-coaster of a trick-taking game which seems to play excellently as a 3-player.

I picked up Braggart at the UK Games Expo back in June. This is a humorous light-hearted game which is great in the right setting. This is an ‘experience game’ – a bit like Dixit – nobody cares who wins, the fun is in the experience.

Hoppladi! Hopplada! is a rabbit-themed push-your-luck dice game. All of the plays relate to the holiday period in January.

Power Grid remains a firm favourite. This year I played classic PG twice, the Brazil/Spain & Portugal expansion twice and the China map once. Of these, the China map seemed to offer the most challenging game experience.

I first played Qwirkle at Essen, then some friends in Germany bought it and we played with them, and then we bought a copy for my Mother-In-Law and so we played with her. Frankly I detest the game, it is far too dependent on the luck of the tile draw, but usually do well when playing it.

Bubbling under: Totemo was a surprise hit (from Surprised Stare!) which I picked up at the UK Games Expo. Released in 2010, the bits are great and it is a great introduction for non-gamers.

All in all, I played no less than 96 different games in 2011 – and people wonder why I can’t remember the rules of games! The total number of games played was 251. Surprise hits of 2011: I’d pick out 3 – Small World, Stone Age and Hanabi.

I normally run a mile at the threat of dwarves, elves and the like. Fantasy games leave me absolutely cold – my fantasies certainly don’t involve pixies or ogres! However Small World was a great little area majority game and I look forward to playing it again.

Somehow Stone Age completely passed me by over the last few years. I finally got to play it at Midcon and had a blast. I now own the game and look forward to more plays in 2012.

I played Hanabi for the first time at Midcon as well, and I think it is the first time I’ve ever enjoyed a co-op game. The theme is that you are trying to stage a firework display by working together – the twist is that you can’t look at your cards, but everyone else can see them (you hold them the wrong way round). It is ostensibly a team puzzle game, but is a hoot.

Finally my ‘Top 10’ 2011 releases, at least thus far:

1. Power Grid: The First Sparks

2. Drum Roll

3. Pantheon

4. 7 Wonders Leaders

5. Airlines Europe

6. The Dwarf King

7. 23

8. The City

9. Nefarious

10. Coney Island

A Dance with Dragons

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read AGOT and then the rest of the series back-to-back. I rested a couple of months and then launched into this latest episode. This book is becoming increasingly like the literary equivalent of a soap opera - you feel the need to keep up because of the time invested in the series, which is considerable, and the need to find out how your favourite characters fare (in my case, Tyrion and Jon Snow).

However at the same time you increasingly start to lose interest in some of the lesser storylines and realise that you don't care one way or another what happens to them. Some of the strands need to come together, but I can't see that happening any time soon. A "must read", but no longer 5-star.

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International caching - 5 countries in a day

We haven’t had a lot of time for caching recently, but an occasion presented itself recently when we could not just grab a few caches, but could cache in no fewer than 5 countries in a single day! [I did look at adding in Luxembourg, but never realised before how inconveniently situated it is]. The occasion was a road trip to stay with friends who live between Dusseldorf and Essen – the draw being Spiel at Essen the following day.

Well it is said that planning and preparation are key to performance and, true to form, I commenced my planning at around 7.30pm the night before. That was exactly 7 hours before we were due to leave with just a little question of some sleep to squeeze in as well. The plan was to find two ‘cache and dash’ locations in each country close to the chosen route. How difficult could that be? Well quite difficult really – the cache density is considerably lower in Europe and the language issues meant that the cache descriptions were double dutch to us – quite literally in Holland. Anyway sufficient possibilities were found and uploaded to the GPSr and I sloped off to bed for a couple of hours kip.

Leaving home at 2.30am. our first port of call was ‘Ghosts & Goblins - 7 – Ghoul’ in Chiseldon, part of a series that had only just been placed and less than 5 minutes from the M4. Even in the dark the cache container was clearly visible from the car and it proved our easiest find of the day. One down at only 2.40am.

The next port of call was Membury Service Station 10 miles eastwards down the M4 to pick up ‘The Teddies Motorway Mayhem Membury M4 East bound’. This is on my regular commute to work and, for once, my usual policy of “I just can’t be arsed” had paid dividends and an easy find was available, exactly as promised by the hint.

Thereafter followed a nice straight-forward run down to Dover. We had a stop for a coffee and bacon roll on the way and were still parked up waiting for the ferry at 5.30am.

We were first car onto the ferry as well (for the first time) and, unsurprisingly, the first off. Our luxurious Sea France vessel awaited. Well it wasn’t that luxurious really, but I don’t think you can quibble for £48 return. The continental breakfast was a snip at only £6 and before we knew it we were launching off the ship ramp into Calais and hitting France just like in Saving Private Ryan. Except there were no bullets, or dying or Germans (except the one in my car), but you know what I mean!

The plan unfolded – the next cache was in a quiet part of Calais. This was ‘La Plage (Géocalais 4)’ and was quickly found . It was in a cassette case (ever heard of them children? They were a bit like iPods …) which makes for a nice slice of nostalgia, but a pretty poor cache container. Anyway who am I to criticise our snail-eating neighbours, after all it was my first cache in La France.

We then set off for a nearby park to locate French cache #2. Ten minutes later and despite a text exchange with the UK for translations, we still couldn’t locate the damned thing. To cap it all I managed to step in a helping of Chien poop and was far from pleased. The words “Bloody French” and worse were heard ringing around the locality. It took me 15 minutes to remove this particular piece of France from my shoe. If only I had a longbow to hand, I could have re-enacted my own version of Agincourt with the local canine population of Calais.

However not to be outdone, we relocated to a park near Calais town hall to bag no. 2 in France. 15 minutes later we still hadn’t found it and our quest for 2 caches in each country suddenly became a quest for 1 cache in each country. Persistent light rain later reinforced this decision. Anyway a note to all readers – don’t organise a caching trip to Calais, you’ll be very disappointed and you’ll end up hating the BLOODY FRENCH. Having said that, there is nothing amiss about Catherine Deneuve ….

Anyway it was off to the Autoroute and the quick road to Belgium, home of Poirot, Tin Tin and, um, that’s just about it actually. Next stop was a Service Station on the motorway between Gent and Antwerp. Needless to say, our run of continental DNF’s continued. This was turning into a disaster – all that planning time had been a waste!

Luckily our trusty car-bound GPS has a ‘co-ordinates’ setting and so we put our back-up grid reference into it and zoomed to our next Autoroute exit point. Unfortunately our trusty

Garmin led us into a farmyard (quite literally) on the wrong side of the motorway. We beat a hasty retreat – you don’t want to provoke a Belgian famer – and re-located to the correct site. Unfortunately it meant parking on a busy(!) single-track road and a muddy scramble in the rain up the motorway embankment. The ammo can turned out to be ‘TB Hotel – HAASDONK’ and we logged our one and only cache in Belgium.

We then had a choice of either turning round and driving the 2 miles back to the motorway junction or not turning round and driving miles and miles through dull Belgian countryside. We chose the latter.

Time was pressing and we crossed the border into Holland, a place you pass through but where you very rarely stop – an international version of Milton Keynes really. Anyway we headed off to ‘Stop 'N Go - Carpool Geldrop’ and a very quick find under the pine trees. It was supposed to be a Car Pool, but I didn’t spot a single ‘No Petting’ or ‘No Bombing’ sign, so it was all a bit disappointing. Our Audi left in disgust, after the promise of a Dutch aquatic adventure for like-minded Automobiles vanished in the drizzle.

So four countries down and just one to go. We crossed the border at Venlo and just a couple of miles later we were at ‘TB-Hotel D-NL/NL-D an der A40’. Another quick find just off the Autobahn (bahn bahn bahn bb-er Autobahn I hear you all sing in a Kraftwerk accent). By now it was knocking on towards 5pm, or 17.00 as they say on the continent, and we had cached in 5 countries.

Not long after we passed the motorway exit for my favourite German town. A bit juvenile, but it cracks me up every time.

Did we feel elated? No not really … a drive-by cache is a drive-by whether it is in the UK or Germany. However there is now a bit more shading on my profile map and we’ve ticked another virtual task off the list. However next year we’ll do the journey via Luxembourg – why stop at five countries?

Very Short Book Review

All My Friends Are Dead by Avery Monsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Inspirational



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Short Review - A Game of Thrones

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Well I've played the board game, seen the TV series and now finally read the book. I was amazed how close the TV series was to the book. Sean Bean was perfect as Ned Stark, even if he does support Sheffield United. A great book - normally I wouldn't touch a 'fantasy' book, but this is one hell of a read. 800 pages for £4 on Amazon as well - bargain of the decade.

Part 2 now ordered - I can't wait.



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Birth of a new game group

I’ve been playing in a group in Swindon since September 2006. We play every Tuesday at the home of one of the group, although at one stage we played twice a week. The group works well: nobody is up their own a*se (important), we generally like the same sort of games, everyone is open to new games and we all win roughly the same percentage of games. How did I come to join the group? Via Boardgamegeek – I found a Swindon-based gamer and asked him if there was a group in Swindon.

Roll forward, and there are occasional enquiries on BGG about gaming in the area. I must admit that, as a natural miserable git, if I have spotted them, I usually just ignore them. However a forum post this year by James Mullard called ‘Swindon?’ seemed to generate some traction and it appeared a new group in Swindon was a distinct possibility. Several local-ish gamers chipped in and there seemed to be a genuine interest in getting something started. The two drivers of the forum post were Tony (fellonmyhead), long-standing Tuesday night gamer, and Jess (castaway). Somehow I volunteered (not like me!) to check out a couple of potential venues.

I ended up visiting a couple of local hostelries – the Sandgate (my pub of choice back in 1976, aged 16) and the Check Inn at Wroughton. To cut a long story short, the Sandgate is a sh*thole, and the Check Inn is the total opposite. As a Fullers pub, the Check Inn not only boasts a superb range of real ales (London Pride, Eldridge Pope etc), but also does excellent food as well. Tony the landlord lets us use the dining room for free each Monday and seems very happy with the arrangement. The extra food and drink sales on a quiet Monday means that it is a win-win all round.

We held our first meeting on Monday, March 21^st, advertised entirely through the Geek and word of mouth (as it still is today), and 11 people turned up. We have now met 13 times including on 3 bank holiday Mondays. The highest turnout thus far is 14, the lowest 5 (on a bank holiday). We average around 9 a session, most weeks being 8-10. Already a nucleus of attendees has formed who tend to come along each week.

The group tends to play Euros, usually light-medium weight, although we have also played Power Grid and some Wallace titles. Games played recently include Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Fresco, Dixit, Keltis, Forbidden Island, Kingsburg, Ingenious, London, Power Grid, Seven Wonders, Braggart and Alien Frontiers, to name just a small selection.

A good feature of the group is that we try to mix it up so we play with different people and everyone seems to enjoy the sessions. The group is very informal which I think works well. There is no ‘leader’ or ‘organiser’ – it’s just a case of turning up and playing. I’m sure the group will continue to thrive – if you’re reading this and fancy joining us, we meet at the Check Inn, Wroughton every Monday from 7pm-ish to around 10.45pm.