Meetup with friends—23rd April—D20 Watford (aka GBRBGWEGB)

[Decar]

One of the biggest benefits of making friends on forums is having someone to play games with.  It's been pretty tricky over the past few years, and although playing online has it's advantages, for me it's certainly not nearly as fun.  Another advantage is having someone to share the burden of shipping costs; dividing up the expense can sometimes make those hard to acquire things a little easier to bear.  Over the past year or so a few of us on the forum had started to collect a... mass of things for each other.  So we scheduled some time to meetup... and play some games.

Last Saturday, Dan, RichTheFish, Willem, and I decided it was time to meet up in the D20 Cafe in Watford, and UncleWills (+ Jr) joined us too!  It's a place we visited a few years ago, and although they take a while to serve biscuits, they were pretty quick delivering us some burgers.

It's tradition to play Carcassonne at a Carcassonne meetup.  So we started with something that Dan brought along, thanks to WallacePrime!

That's right....Cubeassonne (I hope I spelled that correctly).
We played with the, play the side the thumb was on after you draw it out the bag.



I really enjoyed playing this, and it's a brilliant idea. Thanks a lot Chris!  I would say that by only using the base tile configurations there's a very big incentive to trap other players.  There's almost more chance.  But I enjoy the fair way that tile counting is removed from the game.

Farms still saw a major swing for Dan, and although I made a crude attempt to join the party, Dan edged a comfortable lead:



Next up was a short game while we waited for lunch.  I think it's called Robin.  This is probably the least interesting photograph I could take of the game... it's of the empty board:

This was an interesting set collection game, where players have to auction their cards to perform actions.  The cards are also the suites you want to complete your sets, so you're moving up and down the track to draw more cards, or pull cards from the discard.  I'd not played it before but I'd happily play it again in the hope of developing some tactics.  Dan won this one about 3 rounds before he noticed

Next up was Snowdonia:
I've played many times on Yucata with Rich The Fish, and a few times with Dan, but it was the first time Willem had played.

This is becoming one of my favourite games. I love how the sequence of actions influence other players, and how the game always seems to offer you good paths to take, but you're always just a few actions away.  I also really like how the Contract cards guide players to their end games while also providing important boosts.



I especially like this game because it's set in Wales; and at least this time I was able to stop Dan's winning streak and claim my first victory of the day, by one point!

Next we played Pathways.  The game created my our forum's very own Franks.  We were lucky enough to receive a prototype copy of this dexterity-strategy game:


We played as teams, and there's a lot of fun to be had—plenty of lucky shots, and plenty of tactical plays, surprisingly few table nudges, but in the end RichTheFish and I are UK national team champions:


Pathways offers some variations that are played on a mat too:


I'll be writing up a little more about this v.soon!

Next up was Quacks of Quedlinburg. I've played this once before, and Rich is somewhat of a pro, we played with his copy.



Willem took an early lead, and managed to keep it convincingly.  I went bust early on, and incapable of moving my start token round the soup bowl.  I had a incredible amount of unluck drawing white token after white token.....


It's a fun game, push-your-luck is always a neat mechanism, even if you don't have any to start with.  I also like the rat tail catchup mechanism; I think it can give a necessary boost to help players who were lagging behind.

Congrats Potion Master Willem:


With only a few minutes to go we played Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune. Which Rich hadn't played before:


My luck came back here as I earned a lot of early points for simply doing not very much.  An early farmer helped me maintain control of a central farm, and although Dan took the majority, I was able to sneak back on with my last move (also denying Willem 6 points) because I used a curved bridge to connect a road:


To be honest, I always find WoF far too random.  Giving points left right and centre to players for little to no good tactical play.  Similarly some players are struck with negative results too.  Also the wheel becomes totally useless after all the wheel tokens are used up which is something that few people can be bothered to count.  So you're left wondering if those last people on the wheel will have been worth it.  On the plus side the tile configurations and additional tiles are nice and make for a good game with 4 players.

So that was it!

Here we all are:


Another grand day out in London.  It was great catching up with everyone!

Most importantly however, the crew was kind enough to venture across Watford to find a Fish and Chip Shop that sold Rock Fish.
Which is something that just isn't available in the South Wales region.
Thanks so much!


This closes off the report of the GBRBGWEGB -
The Great, British Rock and Board Game Week End Great Britain

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5916.0

[Meepledrone]

Great meet-up!

Congrats to all the winners. This amount of healthy activities should be repeated soon... 

+1 merit for sharing.

PS: Happy to see the cuved bridges in action

PS2: Believe or not Cubcassonne has dawn a lot of attention on the Carcassonne Spain group...

[Willem]

Great write-up Decar!

It was really good to see you all again, it had been over 6 months i think since our last one?


I really enjoyed all the games we played. Cubecassonne was a great surprise, especially as we discussed tactics and workings throughout the game. With tile-counting kinda being out of the picture, we discussed options and what would be the best play to go for.


Robin was a game i picked up in the Netherlands last year, and i had only played it before with 2 or 3 players. It was good to give it a try with 5, which worked really well. It seemed even more
this time that it was a slower game in terms of additional cards coming in, but Dan did well winning this one as well!


Snowdonia was a big one to set up, so when Decar was setting up, RichtheFish was explaining the rules. It was definitely good to have him there to explain, as you need to get the workings from the start basically. I did not do well, but i did like the game and the worker placement mechanics. The game started a bit slow, but all of a sudden it was over!


Pathways was a fun game, and i was glad that Dan managed to pick up the demo version on the morning of our meetup, so it was new for all of us! Rich was quick to get the expanded rules as well, which was fun when trying out the mat. Dan & I did out best, but it seemed we didn't have the right finesse to beat the now reigning UK Team Champions!


Now Quacks of Quidlenburg was a game i had heard of before, but only in passing. I thought it was gonna be a long, complicated game, but during one of our breaks, Rich told me it was actually not that bad once you get started.
During the set up, it again looked intimidating due to all the tokens that are put out, and game pieces the needed to be prepared. It seemed whoever played it before in D20 didn't put it away very well, so a lot of sorting was required.
But once we got going, it was indeed an easy one to learn, and a fun one to play! I did have good luck a few times, and noticed some good use of different ingredients.
I liked the game so much, that on Sunday i ordered the Big Box, which i received yesterday, and me and the mrs had 2 games yesterday evening (we both won one)


I brought the WoF on Rich' request, so when we looked for the last game to play, i suggested it
I had a few good starts, but also forgot to join the main farm early enough, so i was behind on that. And i didn't even notice that Decar used his last tile to not only join his 2nd farmer into the main farm, but it also connected my small 6 point farm at the other end of the field!
Based on the picture of the scoretrack after endscoring, i would argue i won actually, as my green meeple was laying down, and ahead of all other meeples.... (just saying )


As Decar said, we do tend to group together orders to share the shipping, or when short-notice opportunities come up.
Before our meetup, i had prepared goodybags for everyone:


It is always fun to exchange these things, as we talk about them often, but sometimes there's stories behind certain items that you place in the back of your mind, only to come out when you're seeing it again!
I also was very very very happy to take this big bunch back home:


Lots of interesting stories behind a lot of these items, but those are for another day.

I look forward to our next meetup!

[Meepledrone]

Awesome haul! Are you in talks with your neigbors to rent some space from them?

 

[unclewill]

Thanks for a great afternoon and post-event write up! It was a treat to finally meet up in real life and play some games! I am looking forward to more gaming in person, the social side cannot be beaten.

Cubecassonne was great fun and a really engrossing variant that I hope to play again.

I am confident that Jessica absorbed some lessons from the assembled Carcassonne Central members! I certainly did, and it was a master-class in goodie bag delivery and collective collecting!

[wallaceprime]

Looks like fun was had by all, and it was nice to see Cubassonne being played - with only 3 sets made so far, it doesn't get many opportunities. Great photos - thanks for sharing