This week saw us on cloud nine as 5 chumps learned and played March of the Ants while 4 champs blew the dust off Alien Frontiers.
Ranked an impressive 89th overall on boardgamegeek, Alien Frontiers combines 3 different mechanisms (area control, dice rolling, worker placement) and places them beautifully into a sci-fi theme where players are vying to colonise the biggest share of the planet. One of the joys of this game is the feeling that there is pretty much always something you can do, even if you threw the most horrendous collection of dice. Another is the rather fantastic “leader bashing” i.e. it is a game where, if you feel like one player is starting to build an unassailable lead then all their opponents can turn round and do something about it. So it is much less a procession, much more a desperate brawl to get in front just at the end when the scoring happens.
We should’ve seen it coming, but having bashed Chris out of the lead early on and pretty much discounted Aaron as a threat, he cunningly worked away quietly at collecting some powerful alien technology and when the final colony was placed on the planet by Colin, Aaron was our joint winner with 8 points. Outright victory came courtesy of the tie-breaker: having the most alien tech cards. You could say that I am a fan of this game; within 4 days of this experience I had played it another 3 times and bought a copy for myself + the factions expansion so watch this space.
Meanwhile, Jon “Princess” Gameson also threw off the ‘curse of the teacher’ and Neil’s stout thorax to win March of the Ants by a single point from David “Bean counter” Ovenden and of course improve his already stellar win record at BBG.
Lastly, all 9 players came together to play The Resistance: Avalon, a game that seems to be gaining traction in our group thanks to the general feeling that we all need a little more suspicion in our lives. Of course I ended up on the evil team (as per usual) and Team Mordred played a blinder to defeat the forces of good.
Alien Frontiers
Aaron 8*
Colin 8
Peter H 7
Chris 6
March of the ants
Jon 16*
David 15
Neil 11
Sam 7
Peter M 3
The Resistance: Avalon
Evil won! Colin, Peter H and Peter M victorious
Aaron, Chris, David, Neil, Jon and Sam came second (this bit is just for Aaron)
My gamer of the week goes to Colin who narrowly missed out in Alien Frontiers but showed his experience to help the Minions of Mordred to victory in Avalon.
Ranked an impressive 89th overall on boardgamegeek, Alien Frontiers combines 3 different mechanisms (area control, dice rolling, worker placement) and places them beautifully into a sci-fi theme where players are vying to colonise the biggest share of the planet. One of the joys of this game is the feeling that there is pretty much always something you can do, even if you threw the most horrendous collection of dice. Another is the rather fantastic “leader bashing” i.e. it is a game where, if you feel like one player is starting to build an unassailable lead then all their opponents can turn round and do something about it. So it is much less a procession, much more a desperate brawl to get in front just at the end when the scoring happens.
We should’ve seen it coming, but having bashed Chris out of the lead early on and pretty much discounted Aaron as a threat, he cunningly worked away quietly at collecting some powerful alien technology and when the final colony was placed on the planet by Colin, Aaron was our joint winner with 8 points. Outright victory came courtesy of the tie-breaker: having the most alien tech cards. You could say that I am a fan of this game; within 4 days of this experience I had played it another 3 times and bought a copy for myself + the factions expansion so watch this space.
Meanwhile, Jon “Princess” Gameson also threw off the ‘curse of the teacher’ and Neil’s stout thorax to win March of the Ants by a single point from David “Bean counter” Ovenden and of course improve his already stellar win record at BBG.
Lastly, all 9 players came together to play The Resistance: Avalon, a game that seems to be gaining traction in our group thanks to the general feeling that we all need a little more suspicion in our lives. Of course I ended up on the evil team (as per usual) and Team Mordred played a blinder to defeat the forces of good.
Alien Frontiers
Aaron 8*
Colin 8
Peter H 7
Chris 6
March of the ants
Jon 16*
David 15
Neil 11
Sam 7
Peter M 3
The Resistance: Avalon
Evil won! Colin, Peter H and Peter M victorious
Aaron, Chris, David, Neil, Jon and Sam came second (this bit is just for Aaron)
My gamer of the week goes to Colin who narrowly missed out in Alien Frontiers but showed his experience to help the Minions of Mordred to victory in Avalon.