Game 4: Village
Those of you who have been paying attention (if that's you then well done! Have a biscuit! :) ) will know that I consider Village to be the Game of the Year. It is, quite frankly, an awesome game. Similar in some ways to Agricola in that you have limited resources that you are managing, but in this game you are not trying to ensure all of your meeples survive - indeed, death is inevitable in this game! It is how useful your meeples have been before they snuff it that counts, as if they have had a craft, been traveling, joined the church or been elected to the Council then their lives are recorded in the Village Chronicle. Everything your meeples do wins you points, and at the end of the game whoever has the most points is declared the winner.
The Village - now with added beer!
We were playing with the new expansion for the game, which I hadn't used before. This adds a new area to the Village, the Inn, and also allows you to play with 5 players. I'll get to my thoughts on the expansion later, but as is my normal strategy with Village I concentrated on getting my meeples into the Council room. this gives bonuses throughout the game, and is a very useful place to be. I also managed to send someone traveling and had a wagon-wright trained, but they both died very early on ensuring I had at least two places in the Chronicle (you need at least 3 meeples in the Chronicle to score any points for it, but there are limited numbers for each area of the board.)
As the game progressed, I saw what the expansion added. The Inn allows access to new Character cards, and these can change a great many things about the game. Generally, they either give bonuses to something you can already do - the Miller card for example means you get more coins when you use the windmill - but can only be used once before they are discarded. The other sort of card though is saved to the end of the game and has new ways of scoring points. The one that I got was the Healer, and he meant that I scored a point for every meeple still alive at the end of the game. I had already killed 3 meeples at this point, securing me some points from the Chronicle, so I was determined to keep all 8 remaining meeples alive. Another card really helped with this, as the Herbwoman let me reset the Time clock on my board, giving me more things I could do before someone else died.
These 8 points for my surviving meeples proved the difference in the end, and I won by about 3 points. This was the first time I had won at Village, so I was rather excited! Overall I feel that the expansion is well worth getting. It adds a new dimension to the game, but doesn't insist upon itself - the game still stands as a great game without this addition. I feel that I will be picking this expansion up at some point, merely for the ability to play with 5 people. I don't think that we will use the Inn every time, but having it available will be a plus.
Game 5: Oregon
The final game that we played at Raiders was a quick little game called Oregon. This is set in the American West (rather obviously!) and revolves around creating settlements for your people. The rather clever way this is done is through grid referencing. Each square on the board is referenced by two pictures, one from the horizontal axis and one from the vertical. These pictures are repeated on the cards that you draw, so to place a person you have to play two cards. If, for example, I played an Eagle card and a Wagon card, I could place my meeple in any square where the Eagle and Wagon grid references join.
The board, with the grid references along the sides.
Points are scored by placing your meeples next to building tiles, or by placing building tiles next to your meeples. A very simple concept, I thought that this game would be easy. However, it obviously takes some skill to score points as I was quickly lagging behind. I could very easily blame the cards I was drawing, but I think that I wasn't thinking far enough ahead with my strategy. This is certainly a game I would like another go at now I have got the hang of what is needed to do.
Once this game was finished, it was time to pack up and go home. However, there was still another chance to play a game!
Game 6: Spectral Rails
Once we were back at Adam's house, he suggested one final game before I went home for the night and brought out a game that he and Phil hadn't tried before. Spectral Rails is, as it may sound, a railway game but with a twist. You are playing the driver of a Ghost Train and you have to ferry souls to their resting place. There are a lot of interesting mechanics involved in this game, but the one that it took the longest for us to understand was the cards that you use. Once you play a card, for whatever reason in the game, you lay it down in front of you in a line from left to right and turn it face down at the end of that pahse. At the end of your turn, you pick up half of the cards that are in front of you, again counting from left to right. This ensures that you don't have your full hand to call on all the time, and that you can't be sure what cards are coming back to you each turn.
I don't have a picture of this game, but I do like it. I have to say that the rules are poorly written though, as it took the three of us a fair while to understand the rather simple mechanics of the game. I feel that an example turn in the manual would help a lot in this regard. Don't let this put you off though, as I think that it is a game that seems quite quick once you get the hang of it and should be different each time.
Overview
As always, I really enjoyed my day at Raiders. The next one is in March, and if you are in the area and fancy coming along I can really recommend it. The people are accommodating and are welcoming to new people, so even if you don't have any games to bring they will always try and find you something to play. As for me, I am already looking forward to New Year, where I will get to play some more board games!
