E-Zine

THE WORLD CUP GAME EXPANSIONS

Expansion set 1 and 2 are back in stock. However, the Boxed game is getting very low and Expansion 4 is sold out. There will not be a restock for quite some time so purchase now if you are thinking of ordering.
The 2010 Expansion will be available around the end of September.

THE WORLD CUP GAME RUGBY VERSION

Two playtests so far using the 2007 World Cup. Board needs refinement to make it easier to comprehend, the scoring needs to be higher e.g. The 2007 Group stage produced 2191 points; TWCG Rugby Version only produced 844 in one game and 849 in the other. Also issues with players ignoring their weaker teams so scoring in those games including weaker teams was very low. A few new ideas on the horizon.

THE WORLD CUP CARD GAME 2010

Winner of the UK Games Expo Card Game of the Year Award!!

MANORCON XXVII 17-20 JULY 2009

The largest UK games convention devoted to boardgames continues to be a great event. First game up was a pre-arranged game of Here I Stand, currently my favourite game (except The World Cup game of course!). The MidCon report from 2008 below will have some details of what the game is all about. The players were: Matthew Barratt (Ottomans); John Hatfield (Hapsburgs); Simon Gatherer (England); Shaun Derrick (France); Kelvin Allton (Papacy) and John Boocock (Protestants). This game was a dour affair played in a very peaceful manner. John H won with the Hapsburgs on turn 4 jumping from 16 to 25 victory points in this turn. Circumnavigating the globe was the final victorious action.

This image is a French player view of the map towards the end of turn 2. Those familar with the game will see that the Protestants are really struggling to reform the German areas, the French have pushed into Italy to take Florence. That's Charles V on a ship in the Barbary coast just about to take Algiers from the Ottomans. The eagle-eyed will notice how far ahead the Papacy is on the VP track - that purple counter!
The New World is a favourite VP gathering station so there are lots of explorations and conquests ready to roll in the top right of the picture.

Ahh! Here are the motley crew who played Here I Stand. Picture left sees how peaceful game 1 was!
We were all so dissatisfied (except John H, I guess) with this game that we played it again. The next game was a whirlwind win in turn 2 by Simon as the Papacy. We switched the powers round as follows: Ottomans (Kelvin); Hapsburgs (Shaun); England (John B); France (Matthew); Papacy (Simon) and Protestants (John H). All blood and thunder in this game which was more satisfying thus shocked and disappointed that Simon won so early. This is the quickest game of HIS that we have ever played!

To round of the first day we played 2 games of Agricola and The World Cup Game of course. We intended playing Spain 1982 but as more people joined we got a group of 8 so switched to Germany 2006. Favourites Italy and France had a hard time in the group stages with Italy being eliminated (it was my team too!!) and France scraping through in 2nd place by a single goal difference from Switzerland. Second favourites Germany and Portugal eased through. The only low ranked team to make it was Angola.
Germany played England in the Round of 16 which always raises some raucous comments, particularly as England succumbed 3-1 to the Germans. Some notable teams fell by the wayside in this round - Portugal, Brazil, Spain and Angola (shame!).
The Quarter-Finals saw France and Germany defeated leaving an unlikely Semi-Final showdown between Argentina, South Korea, Australia and Paraguay - what happened to the European teams!? Argentina beat Australia in the final 3-2, and the Paraguay beat South Korea 2-1 in the 3rd place play off.

The end of the game shown here with Argentina the victors over Australia in the final! (Picture left)

Day 2 was the trial day for Imperialism - the zenith of Empires. We played the three player game to see if that would be feasible in a game which revolves around diplomacy. The mechanics are fine, but the diplomacy aspect suffers badly with so few players and there needs to be some mechanism to resolve that. I am sure 4 players would also be limited, so 5-7 players would work best with 6 being the optimum number. Some rules to iron out but overall it worked reasonably well.

Two more games to round off the day - Acquire which I had not played for a few years. Kelvin and Simon had never played before but we were joined by Tony Wheatley who likes to strictly enforce the rules. I suffered for this as twice I forgot to buy shares after making a merger.

Final game was Stone Age, another man-placement - pick resources - trade for better, etc. Lovely graphics and the game works reasonably well but I prefer Agricola, Caylus and Pillars of the Earth which are all in a similar vein.

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