The April meeting was another regular session, but the first signs of the approaching BuzzardCon 2 on 13 July appeared at the group, with a few announcements and expressions of interest. It was nice to see that a few people who came along to the last BuzzardCon were still around for the regular meetings.

Unusually for the meetings, we didn't start with any little icebreaker games, but everyone dived straight into the larger games we can play in the all-day event we have. We started with A Feast for Odin, Bruxelles 1983, Through the Ages, and Scythe (which I was in, and was a first-time play for me).

Scythe had a nice mix of territorial expansion, resource engine building, and a little bit of wargaming. I liked how the various resources in the game changed effective value as the game went on: at first you needed all the resources you could scrounge just to build your engine, then the resources were flowing nicely into building up your forces, and by the end game, you had loads of resource but little left to use them on. The range of point-granting achievements also did a lot to encourage us to balance how we developed our little piece of dieselpunk central Europe.

I think it's a game that is better with four or five players, rather than the three we had. The map was large enough that we could keep out of each others' way until the last turn or so of the map. (We could have interfered with each others' territories before then, but the cost of conflict was enough to encourage us to explore new territory first.) That was a bit of a shame, as I think the inter-player conflict at the end of the game would have added an additional and fun dimension to the game.

One to play again, especially if we can include another player or two!

Those games took most of the morning (apart from Through the Ages, which took all day). While I was finishing off Scythe, the other people played a few smaller games such as 6 Nimmt and The Climbers, and new and nifty-sounding dexterity game.

I lost track a bit of what everyone was playing in the afternoon, as I was ensconsed in a game of Terraforming Mars. Surprisingly, given how much it's been played at the club, most of the players were new to the game! That meant I had to keep thing to the base game, just using Corporate Era variant and the game-accelerating Prelude expansion. The game itself was as fun as it always was, but it took at little bit longer than it should have. By the time we were packing up, the next group in the hall had already moved in and were setting up!

On a more personal note, my son was back from university over Easter and we got a few games of Terraforming Mars in at home, with my son, my daughter, and me. As we've all played the game a lot, we were able to use all the expansions and still rattle through a game in under two hours. Much as I like introducing new people to the the game, it was a very pleasant experience to just sit down and play without having to explain objectives, strategy, and card choices.

Our next meeting is on 11 May. You can get details from our calendar, or find the event on Meetup or Facebook. What will you be bringing?