The Green Goblin Blog

Here are the 6 mighty players (and 2 GMs) that fought for the title of Best Open Gamer:

Back row: Sue Breakwell (6th), John Breakwell (4th), Andrew (2nd), GM, Dave (5th).

Front row: Winner, GM, Andy (3rd).

Games played:

Day 1

• Roborally (6 player)
• Pirates of the Spanish Main (6 player)
  The following three were played in parallel and everybody played each game once
  • Balloon Cup (2 player)
  • Lost Cities (2 player)
  • Odin's Ravens (2 player)

Day 2

• Medici (6 player)
• Ticket to Ride (2 tables of 4 players - GM as 4th player)
• Carcassonne (6 player)
• Saving Doctor Lucky (non-competition game)

 

Roborally is hard work although the mechanics are simple. You program a robot with 5 move instructions (forwards, backwards, rotate left/right) based on cards in your hand. There are conveyor belts and rotating areas on the board to add some complexity. Also, the other players' robots will bump into you too. And there are lasers. Mustn't forget the lasers. Oh, I'm dead (1st life gone). I seem to have also forgotten that I am on a rotating area and so program my robot off the map. (2nd life gone). Did I say not to forget to the lasers? (3rd and last life gone).

Pirates of the Spanish Main is a collectable game where you punch out pieces from plastic cards and build your ships. Being a US manufacturer with a large US market, there are American ships in the game even though the British still ruled that colony at the time the game is set. Who cares about history when there's money to be made? Anyway, in our game the object was to search out as much buried gold as possible in the time allowed and get it back to your home island. I decided that an alternative approach was to ensure you were last-man-afloat. Tragically this tactic, although heroic and daring, resulted in a fleet of derelict ships...

 

Labels: Sheffield, Student Nationals

Obviously the original architects had no idea this place would become a pawn brokers and an amusements arcade. The large red banner is scandalous.

So what was the building for originally, and what's the mysterious belfry about?

Labels: Sheffield

Trams are still a novelty - they make the place feel a little bit continental (only because they had all been removed from the UK by the time I was born). I really wish there hadn't been such stupidity in the 1960s over what the future of transport should be. A few years before the railways were torn up in 1963 after Dr Beecham's report, Sheffield had already abolished its tramway system to make way for the car (poor, misguided fools). By the mid 70s, Sheffield decided that it needed a transport system to attract people away from the car but it wasn't until October 1995 that the final phase of the Supertram was completed. Thirtyfive years to replace what had been there all along.

Labels: Sheffield

For the 2nd year running, the Reading University Games/RPG/LARP Society sends a representative team to the Student Nationals. Yet again that means me and Sue as no-one else seems interested enough. That's a pity as we had a good time last year at Bradford (the winner of each National becomes the host for the following year so we are now on our way to Sheffield, the wiiners of the 2005 event).

Labels: Sheffield, Student Nationals