Last week the Medway Board Gamers had a week off which may have had an effect on the numbers for this week, none-the-less in memory of Enid Blyton “Five sat down to play games”. First up was Esel Rennen, a game that has graced the table before, however unlike previous games I have had of this there was no definite leader, all 4 donkeys remaining close and with an equal chance of winning. For a warm up game it became quite intense towards the end .

For a warm up game it became quite intense towards the end .

The second game was Die Dolmengotter an interesting area control game where you move one of 3 pieces and leave control tokens behind, simple control of an area allows you to place a scoring marker which can be valued from 1-4, the areas themselves also have different values.

Die Dolmengotter - The board before play.

An area is not scored until it is fully surrounded.

The Square scoring tiles surrounded by Dolmen and the odd meeple.

The game had quite a lot of depth and there were levels of strategy which I did not get to explore, I definitely want to revisit this one especially as it played very nicely multiplayer.

Third on the table was Cthulhu Gloom a card game which has the twist of transparent cards with symbols that overlay each other, although a very nice system I found some of the iconography difficult to see. During the game you play cards to any players display trying to make their characters happy and your own sad.

There is a lot of humour in the game with colour in the blurb on the all the cards creating an atmosphere of fun and horror. Our game had the added humour of a missing character card being replaced “in-game” by a phantom spirit, fortunately the real card was found at games’ end.

Next was a game I had not played for so long that I had to be reminded of the rules, Condottiere. Each round everyone gets a set number of cards which they then use in a series of battles, cards can be valued from 1 – 10 or a power card, for each battle players play cards or pass, after everyone has passed whoever has the biggest total wins that battle.

Simple except that using your best cards in one battle means you will have nothing for the rest of the battles that round, as the aim of the game is winning 3 adjacent areas, picking which battles you contest is important.

An odd yet interesting aspect of the game was the mix of cards you could end up with, most of the time a weak hand was not as detrimental as you may think however for the last round one player did have a horrendous hand with over half the cards being ineffective scarecrows.

To wrap-up game we played Unexpected Treasures a nice little game of collecting rubbish from a tip to purchase recycling cards (victory point cards). Players choose a card from their hand to either steal tokens from other players or taken items from the limited number available in the dump. A small card allows you to go earlier in the round but you take fewer items. Out-guessing what your opponents will play is where the secret to success lies, I did not have that secret.

Medway Area Boardgamers