The Sunday session of OxCon left very little time for anything except the competition itself. Catan is one of the most popular serious boardgames, so more people entered and we had five rounds to play through.

Much of the rest of this post will make little sense if you don’t know the game. If you are unfortunate enough to be in that situation, make it a point to learn to play. It is an excellent game, and you can play online.

I started out the day with two wins. The first was a very tight game which I only managed to scrape a win thanks to my development card draws turning up two Monopoly cards, a Year of Plenty, three victory points, and just two Soldiers.

My second game saw me going last, on a really nasty board. In desperation I put my starting settlements on a triple grain space and a triple ore space, with only one 6/8 between them. Somehow, this managed to pay off, quickly netting me two cities before I built to a 3:1 port.

We then broke for lunch, with me floating on something of a shocked high.

The first game of the afternoon saw me in a game including the infamous Markus Welbourne (who usually wins this tournament). I was quite happy to come away from that game in second place.

The last two games, were not ones that really qualify as “bad”, but they weren’t great either.

Despite that, my earlier results managed to pull my score up, so I finished a very respectable 7th out of 32. My one regret is that in the last game I held a Soldier card back as I was getting close to winning and feared being attacked by the Robber. If I had played it, I’d have won Largest Army and scored enough tournament points to bump me up to position 6. Unfortunately, another player managed to grab Longest Road (which I’d already convinced myself that another player was going to get) and build enough to jump him from behind to 10 points, and I ended the game with 6 rather than 8.

The winner? Markus Welbourne.

I like Puerto Rico, as games go it doesn’t have a lot of randomness, and the game play varies depending on which tactics other players use. This means that no two games are the same. Unfortunately, it seems that I don’t play it enough, my performance this year was rather worse then last. I think more practice will be in order before I attend next year.

The 15 to 1 quiz, on the other hand, was a lot of fun, and I certainly did better then last year.

Between the two organised events, I managed to squeeze in a game of Traffic Lights. It was enough to convince me to never play it again, and certainly not buy it. It is a glorified game of noughts and crosses, with the objective being to be the last person to get too bored to concentrate on the play area (and thus fail to spot a move that needs blocking).

As usual, there were a number of games for sale, so I’ve taken note of a number which I shall be checking out on Board Game Geek before deciding which to splash out on.

I’m posting this at some horrible hour on Saturday morning as I prepare to leave for OxCon. Hopefully the traffic isn’t going to be too bad, and I can improve my scores over last years efforts. Wish me luck.

Friday night and I set off for Nottingham. I started by going south from the office to Oprington to avoid the most expensive railway line in the country. Things would have worked out better if Jim hadn’t got lost trying to find the station.

Still, we got there in the end and Adam was pleased to receive the Xbox 360 that Simon had collected for him. We were saved from suffering through people playing on it all night by virtue of the absence of any games for it.

Saturday dawned.

Several hours later we got up and found some breakfast before recapping York by Night. The trouble with late starts is that lunchtime arrives before you know it, and the pub is far too close to places which sell video games.

Andy prompted fled to retrieve his jumper from the pub, while the game was played.

WoD began in earnest when he returned. I won’t provide any details, since I know Andy is working on a proper write-up, but suffice it to say that it was a lot of fun, and we players were driven sufficiently insane.

Sadly, it was the last session of York by Night, but we’ll be kicking off York Unveiled sometime next year so we spent a fair chunk of the weekend tossing around character ideas (and playing Halo 3).

Sunday was a relaxed wind down with a number of games of Infernal Contraption and a little bit of fighting over Mage: The Awakening books. We finished off the day with Ingenius! but came to the conclusion that we were playing it with too much focus on scoring points and not enough on blocking other players. According to the rulebook scoring 18 on every track should happen “very rarely” but it is how I won the game on my first attempt, with at least two other players coming very close to matching the score.

Sadly the trip home was less than fun. The weather turned so the drive back to Kent took so long that I was stranded in Tonbridge for the night. Happily the commute to the office from there is only marginally longer then from my current address so the major consequences were a slightly more expensive train ticket, and turning up at the office with a large rucksack full of my gear for the weekend. I think this is scuppering my plan to collect some times to take home tonight - I’ve too much to carry already.

Photo credit: Jumping the ‘phant by Neil Crosby, Ingenious! by Jon Bristow

Having seen a picture of Gigantic Settlers played at Burning Man 2007, I now have an urge to build my own set.

The flat I’m buying has a fair amount of open space nearby, so this might just be a possibility.