“Life, don’t talk to me about life.” Marvin the paranoid robot, HHGTTG

It seems this last week has seen life outside of board gaming come crashing in on the little bubble of alternate reality we call gaming.

For one reason or another game sessions have been cancelled (and rescheduled at a future point in the space time continuum) or gone ahead with different games hitting the table.

Last night was one of the latter.

Gavin and I met up at The White Lion to play some two player games instead of our intended game, because life indeed had thrown a curve ball or two at two of our gaming companions.

Our first game of the evening The Manhattan Project Chain Reaction. Gavin hadn’t played this before and had wanted to try it. Looking at my stats apparently I’ve played twelve games of Chain Reaction. With a 50% win rate, and an average score of 9.83 points. For a two player game of this I have the current high score of 13 points, and also the highest losing score of 10.5. And after last night I also have the honour of the highest losing score as well!

I did trigger the end of the game by scoring 10 points last night, with Gavin sitting on 9 points and two uranium. So it would have been a draw (uranium in the end scoring are worth half a point each), unless he was able to score another bomb or as I pointed out more importantly score a load bomb card for 2 points. Which Gavin was able to do with his last five cards of the game. Nabbing him the win with 12 points, to my new highest losing total of 10 points.

Gavin liked the Chain Reaction, he was already a fan of the big brother board game. I did advise Gavin to try and find a copy of the deluxe game before committing to buying the regular version. But that may be a mission impossible. I watch two very active UK based trading and selling pages for board games on Facebook. I’ve got some bargains off them. However since Chain Reaction was sent out to Kickstarter backers, and also the regular version hitting the shops, I don’t think I have once seen a copy up for trade or sale. Thats pretty unusual, and I think a testament to how good the game is. Unless hardly anyone in the UK backed the project that is.

For our next game we played a new game for me, Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. A lighter two player version of the bigger Agricola. Well Gavin hadn’t actually played the physical version before, but had been playing the app version a lot. After playing this I may have to get the app, the physical version is I gather from Gavin “between printings”, and rather elusive to get hold of.

I did enjoy playing this version a lot. Despite once more losing. I think that this is something I could play with Nath. It would most definitely fit on the very small table he has in his room at halls.

This for me was a much better game than the full game. But that could just be down to poor experience I had when being taught it. But that previous knowledge did give me something to work with here.

Ok I think I have just talked myself into trying to get the physical version of this.

Our final game of the evening was 7 Wonders Duel with the new Pantheon expansion.

Wow! I like what this expansion brings to the game. The new decisions it adds, the new tactics, wow. I’ll look a bit more in depth at this expansion in another post (if I remember).

I thought due to my inability to count won the game on the very last card of the third age with a science victory. But I had miscount my science cards, I was short by one symbol to get the win. Doh!

What we did have was an incredibly close game in the end. I thought Gavin had run away with the victory. He thought I had!

But once the dust had settled after all the points had been collected and totalled up, Gavin had won by a single point. 71 points to 70.

Yep I hadn’t won a single game the whole evening, but still I had had a blast.

For my gaming buddies who are dealing with the harshness of the sticks and stones that life throws at you, I’m sure I speak for everyone you play games with, our thoughts and prayers are with you and hope you can make it back to the table soon.

We’ll keep your seat warm for you, although we can’t guarantee we won’t look at your cards or take your go for you.