After a very long board meeting (2½ hours, but lots of good discussion, too) we started the games. We played Space Beans, Wildlife, Medina, Samurai, Ra and Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers.

Space Beans started the evening — it wasn’t quite on top of my list of games I had wanted to play, but well, we needed a quick game while we were waiting for other players. And besides, Space Beans can be quite fun, if played fast enough. We played, and it was fun. I won, too.

Wildlife was next. I had just bought it and I was eager to try it. We had four players and got the game running quite smoothly. We had a few mistakes with the rules, but nothing too disturbing. I got extra seven VP’s in the early game, oops, but I am quite sure I lost enough many turns because of that so it would even out. Anyway, my quite well-adapted snakes won the game in the end. It was fun, and a more detailed preview is on it’s way.

Medina was next. Ville had to go and Vanessa, our replacement player, didn’t like Samurai so we played Medina instead. I had only played it once before, so it was fine with me. Especially as I won the game! It was fun… but I still think Medina is sort of dry. The chicken race mechanic isn’t my favourite, either.

Samurai was also on my most-wanted games list. It’s been too long since I last played it. It’s an excellent game, very intense and I think in someway more satisfying than Tigris & Euphrates. I didn’t play that good, so it was no surprise in the end that I didn’t win.

Ra — another Knizia title — was next. I was very interested to try it, as I hadn’t played it before and I had heard lots of good things said about it. It was really good, definitely the best of the Knizia auction games. Very neat mechanisms, works like a Swiss clock.

Carcassonne: H&G was the last game we played, a nice closer for the evening. We played a three-player game. I was sharing a field and a river system with one other player in a three-player game, both scoring quite nicely, and then I was able to grab them both for myself in the end. Now that’s a satisfying way to end the evening (or night) of games! It was close to 3 am by then and time to go to sleep, dreaming happy dreams of victory (four out of seven, yippee!)