Tuesday 19th September - McMulti

McMulti
Originally uploaded by coljen.

Well I have been on holiday this week. Havn't been away anywhere just out for days. Went to Brighton on Monday and had fish and chips on the pier. So, I should have plenty of time to get to the session, but no, got the time of the train wrong so was a bit late and forgot my glasses. Ready made excuse for what followed, that and the lousy dice rolls a la Settlers. It always seems I get really bad dice rolls in these games, nothing to do with bad play on my part you understand.
Richard's choice, so following a trend he has seemed to set he chose McMulti an oil based theme game from 1974. Richard's recent choices have included Railway Rivals and Nautilus, both older games. Each player has there own playing area on which they can purchase various bits of equipment, drilling rigs, refinerys, petrol stations or nodding donkeys. You have crude oil and petrol. You can refine the crude oil and turn it into petrol and sell it on the market. You roll 2 dice and place them on your playing areas grid and if you have equipment on those lines you can activate it. It also affects the players to your left and right. The victory condition is the first player to make a billion dollars. Hitting the drilling rigs enables you to change them for a nodding donkey which pumps 2 barrels of crude if you hit them subsequently. First one is 10 million and each one after that costs an extra 10 million. Getting these early (and cheapest is a good thing). I had 14 rigs and never hit one until the price was about 80 million. Richard had clearly played this before and covered his grid so that eventually whatever was rolled he hit. I started off pretty well in last position and stayed that way for the whole game, still I was a pretty good banker.....yes I said BANKER. During the game there are rumours that are only triggered if certain doubles are rolled, and the one which taxed all the equipment you had on your board certainly stirred things up when I rolled the double 3 to activate it. Everyone took a pretty big hit, but Richard managed to keep most of his equipment. I think it was pretty obvious for a while that Richard would win and when he declared that he had the required billion we all had one more turn each. So everyone sold everything they could to maximise their money. In the end Garry wasn't that far behind with Steve in third and me a lonely fourth.

Final Scores
Richard 1179,000, Garry 1040,000 Steve 585,000 Colin 183,000

Next week is Steve's choice and I know he hates dice :)