24th April - John Silver/Ur

This session we were only 3, Richard having to work this week. We were going to play Power Grid, off of the BGG top games list, but decided as we were only 3 to have a free week. In the end Garry had John Silver a game he bought at Essen last year and hadn't got around to playing and we followed that up with Ur a game that I bought at Essen and we had played only once before.
John Silver is a card game for 2-4 players designed by Martin Schlegel, and published by Eggert-Spiele. The game consists of a deck of 44 cards, 3 type cards and 4 character cards. The character cards are placed in a row and the type marker cards (ship, treasure, pirate) are laid down the left edge. Play is simple, each player is dealt 6 cards, you play a card to the grid, score if appropriate, then draw a card. When the draw deck has run out, play until no legal plays are left. Each card has a type, ship, pirate or treasure, a number and either coins, black spots or apples. There are some jokers with all three types on them so they can be played anywhere.


John Silver Card Layout

When the row is complete, the next to highest number is put on the highest and the next to lowest is put on the lowest and the appropriate player gets those cards. Obviously you want coins and not black spots. Apple cards are a bit different, if you play an apple card you do not draw a card from the deck but pick up another card from the display, this gives you some interesting options. When no more plays are available you pass all the apple cards you have collected to the left. The player with the most black spots gets -8 and next highest gets -4.
A clever little game that takes one play just to figure out what you are actually trying to do, as the rules are not particularly well written.

Final Scores
Game 1
Steve 16(-8)=8, Garry 16(-4)=12, Colin 19

Game 2
Steve 19(-8)=11, Garry 20, Colin9(-4)=5

As you can see in the first game when I didn't know what I was really doing I did really well ;)

UR
Ur is a tile placement game by Paolo Mori, published by What's Your Game? We have played this game before so I won't go into the rules too much. Suffice to say, the tiles are laid in a 6 x 6 grid, and each tile has 2 out of 5 available actions printed on it. Each player starts the game with one in hand, then he can either to 1, both or none of the actions on the tile. This involves putting cubes on the tile grid, moving them around or having wars. Certain combinations of actions are definitely compatible and the initial tile grid layout can determine what your plans are. I like this game, it can be a bit of a brain burner, but plays in an hour or so and doesn't outstay it's welcome. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the layout so I have cheated a bit and used one from the last session we played.


Ur tile layout

I did take a picture after we had collected our tiles and formed our sets to score though.


Scoring Tile Sets in Ur

Final Scores
Colin 37, Steve 29, Garry 24