Tuesday 5th July - St. Petersburg/Quivive

st_pete4
Originally uploaded by coljen.

First of all let me mention that we have started rotating venues for Billygames, Natalie/Neil, Garry, Steve and myself host an evening a month now. Last night was Steve’s first time. And it was quite a momentous occasion as we were christening Steve’s NEW TABLE, complete with impressive green beize tablecloth. First up was:

St. Petersburg
When this game was released it got a massive burst of popularlity, this has lessened somewhat and is now just a ‘good’ not great game. That said I will always play when asked and indeed to own a copy. I won’t go into the gameplay in great detail as I expect most people are familiar with the concept. Basically you are building up buildings and aristocrats in St. Petersburg. The game components are very good and the graphics are pleasing and represent the theme well.
Steve and Richard had played a few times, I had played once and Garry hadn’t played at all. This game is all about getting income early on and gradually changing to collecting VP’s as the game progresses. This didn’t seem to worry Steve as it was apparent he was doing very well right from the start. I was lagging well behind on the VP front and Garry and Richard were up the front too. Richard said that he was trying a different strategy this time, he probably won’t be trying this again. Steve was in front all the game and just kept getting further ahead. He even had the pub and could buy VP’s as well! I plugged away and gradually began to catch up to Richard and Garry. Garry had been doing really well but seemed to fade at the end. Both he and Richard hadn’t got many Aristocrats and consequently didn’t get a very big bonus at the end. I had 6 and got an extra 21 points which made the difference finally overtaking Garry at the end to come second.

Final Scores
Steve 151, Colin 99, Garry 87, Richard 87

Steve then took us up to his spare bedroom (steady!!!), and showed us his impressive collection of games. Ranging from some really old ones right up to the latest releases. As we had a bit of time left he suggested with have a game of Quivive.

Quivive
Quivive is a game of avoiding running out of moves. The board is made of 49 disks -- some are stacked to double and triple height. On your turn, you must move your pawn to an adjacent, unoccupied disk in any direction -- horizontally, vertically or diagonally -- and remove any unoccupied disk of your choice. You
lose if you no longer have a legal place to move your pawn. The last player left wins.
Neither Garry or myself had played this french game and were surprised to end with Garry winning and myself coming second. Yeh!!

Final Placings
Garry 1st, Colin 2nd, Richard 3rd, Steve 4th