Another Gaming Night at TEC

Thursday night saw myself, Bouncy, Gavin and Gareth gather at The Entertainment Centre in Wisbech for the second games night there.

While Gareth nipped out to stock up on supplies from a nearby convience store the rest of us had a quick game of Cthulu Dice. Cthulu Dice is another dice game from Steve Jackson Games, home of Munchkin, Zombie Dice and Ogre. Unlike Zombie Dice this uses a single dice (I forget how many sides, more that 6) each with a symbol on representing some sort of forfeit, such as lose a token, gain a token etc. rolling the dice is treated like casting a spell, so you have to declare before rolling who you are casting against. You then roll the dice and act upon the symbol. Each player starts with three tokens which I think and I maybe wrong represent sanity. But basically it’s a last person standing game. I won both games that we squeezed in. It was a fun game, not as much fun as the push your luck Zombie Dice. As long as you don’t mind the theme of the two dice games these are great as quick family games play.

With Gareth back and stocked up on supplies it was time to play the first game of the evening Splendor. Gavin had wanted to play this to see if it was suitable for his kids. I’m glad he had asked to play it. I hadn’t played it before, but it had been getting good reviews, winning awards last year when it came out.

You will have to forgive me if I get this bit about the theme wrong, we skipped the theme to get straight to the game. In Splendor you are I believe a jewel dealer/merchant in The Renaissance. Collecting gems to buy resources, some of which have a point value that you use for scoring. Once a player has reached fifteen points that’s the end of the game. That’s a very basic description of the game. Which doesn’t do the game justice. The games mechanics reminded me a lot of Alhambra.

I didn’t win the game I came second from last, Gareth took the honours of winning. However I did enjoy the game a lot. Hence a copy is due to arrive today. This is another “gateway” game, easily accessible, great fun. I think next time I visit my friends Julie and Martin this game will be in the bag to play with them. I know they will enjoy playing this a lot.

The second game of the evening was one I’d played once before and own, Machi Koro (Julie And Martin enjoyed playing this) . I like Machi Koro a lot, it’s what some would consider a “gateway” game, or a light game. But more importantly it’s a fun game. While playing Machi Koro everytime someone rolled a dice and it came up with a number where others got money, a cheer went up from those receiving money. For a lot of the game I was leading the game having built three of my establishments. However all of a sudden I was losing money and not accruing it to buy the final establishment. Then all of a sudden Gavin had lots of money to buy the final two establishments to win. There was nothing any of us could do to stop him winning. How did this happen? None of us had been tracking his coins, and he managed to sneak under the radar to get the win. What a great game, I had so much fun playing.