We didn't have as many people at this meeting as the previous few, but there were still enough of us to play a range of games. In fact, there were more games than I remembered to take photos of!

This meeting's instance of "the all-day" game was Arcs, which seemed to keep those players entertained for most of the day. I settled into a game of Root (as the Eyrie dynasty) and we had a third table of Scout followed by Poison.

Root was characterised by us all learning how things worked as it was the first game of it for all of us, apart from me (and I played just the one game a good while ago). Because we all had our hands full with our own factions, we weren't as aggressive towards the other players as I expect more experienced players were. It still ended up in a tight game!

In the final turn, the Woodland Alliance made a bid for controlling two opposite corners of the board. I had the final turn before them. Luckily, I'd managed to keep enough freedom of action throughout the game that I'd not gone into Turmoil once and was quite happy in my own corner of the board. I started my turn on 24 VP, with the card that gave me 1 VP for each clearing I controlled. I had five clearings, lost 3 VP for turmoil, then gained another 5 VP for having lots of roosts out. Victory was mine!

Just before lunch, we managed to get in a quick game of Bohnanza while Arcs was still going strong and the other table had a game of Ticket to Ride.

That's all the photos I managed to take of the day!

After lunch, I was engrossed in a game of Tigris and Euphrates, while another group got stuck into Cosmoctopus (and the Arcs players were still going!). Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in the game I forgot to take pictures of anything. You'll have to make do with random pictures from online. (Tigris & Euphrates picture from Dicebreaker; Cosmoctopus picture from Jakub Niedźwiedź on BoardgameGeek.)

Tigris & Euphrates is a classic, and for a good reason. The game was tense throughout, with the ebb and flow of advantage shifting around the board all the time. I spent most of the game with only two or three leaders on the board, limiting the scope of points I could score; luckily, most of the time I had the leaders I wanted to get the points I needed. But that luck ran out at the end of the game, when I couldn't draw the tiles I needed to get those leaders back where I could get the last few points for victory. In the end, I came second, just one point off the leader.

Next meeting

Note that the next meeting is on 2 November 2024, not our usual "second Saturday of the month". There's another event in the hall on 9 November, so we're meeting a week early.

The full club calendar is online, and you can sign up to events on Meetup.

Dates for 2025 will be confirmed then published closer to the end of the year, but we're not expecting changes from what's happened the past few years.