Displacement

Due to the hall being booked for other things we were all forced to share the room upstairs. Pros: Comfy Chairs, Cons: Too crowded. Given the restricted space, boardgames was the order of the day. The roleplayers were happy to lounge and one group of 40Kers found some room on the landing.

Svea Rike, a game that Martin managed to buy while in Sweden years ago, has become a bit of a club favourite often being wheeled out when nothing else has been arranged.

A well balanced game of the often over looked Swedish Empire. It always seem to go down to the wire, and although a bit of luck is needed the malicious playing of event cards tend to even out. Once you get your head round the English translation of the rules it's a very simple game to pick up.

The game ended up as a low scoring three way tie between Martin, Colin and I, on 3 points each, probably a record low score. The other 2 lads finished with 2 and 1 points each. Martin failing to earn the bonus point off a resource card that could of snatched him the game.

Martin had concentrated on resources, gaining 2 points from his collection of 4. Colin was busy building a coin mountain via trade with Russia, safe in the knowledge that the taxation cards had been played earlier, but at risk from a war with Russia. I was trying to get back into the game via resources after seeing almost all my large collection of fiefs disappear due to war (and there was a lot of war in this game, more than normal, and we lost a number of them and so most of out fiefs. I did manage to get a point for helping defeat the Polish.)

One fun example of the use of event cards was when Someone acquired a 'Queen' resource card, which was promptly stolen using an event card and then immediately stolen back with another. I then intervened and played the Plague event, which killed poor Queeny despite of her heroic rescue.

To finish the night off we then played a couple of rounds of Car Wars, the Card Game. This plays quickly to start with but does bog down when you get down to two cars left. I was wiped out quickly in the first, but managed to hold out and win the second.