A few acres of tiles

With Ashton (recovering from a chest infection) and Ava (Normal bedtime) happily tucked up in bed and dinner out the way by 18.50, an inviting 4 hours of gaming was available. Paul suggested that this week we might try to play as many quick games as possible after last sessions time eating monster A Few Acres Of Snow. Seizing my opportunity I quickly plopped Citadels, a new game to us, on the table. Although there would be a rule learning session and the obligatory "Open Hand" I thought we would probably get a game in under the hour benchmark stated on the box.

The rules didn't seem overly complex but the powers that the characters held required constant referral. For two Citadels newbies the interaction between the characters and what was a "Good" move remained elusive until near the end. Realising that I had built a whole bunch city cards and was near to closing out the game I began to choose my characters a lot more carefully. It would seem that some cards like the Bishop, Warlord and Assassin become a lot more sought after as the game progresses. It's then that you see how neatly balanced this game really is. I managed to negotiate my way through to an eighth city card and that was that. I really liked it but I could see Paul was left a little cold by it and so we hurriedly moved on to our next game....

Chris 30
Paul 16

Which was Stone Age! Oh no everybody groans..... Well I won so there, and I did so without my new tactic of throwing Paul's workers under the washing machine panning out as I had planned.

Chris 243
Paul 200

The time was 21:45, the night was still young! So we unboxed Carcassonne the Discovery. Paul hadn't played it in at least 10 years but hadn't lost any of his skill as a tile laying magician. In fact if anybody needs their bathroom doing then Paul's your man. Although you will have to be happy with a perfectly tessellated satellite picture of a fictional medieval country as thats all he does apparently. We were neck and neck all the way through but this was all balanced by whether one of Paul's early mountain dwelling meeples would be lucky enough to find the piece of land which had two corners mountain opposite two corners grassland. Twice I picked the ideal tile and quickly placed far far away. Fortunately for Paul his meeple got the map turned the right way and found the perfect tile, scoring 18 points (A lot in this game) and taking any chance of a comeback away.

Paul 117
Chris 103

We had managed to get all three in by 22:45 and not have to break any traffic laws getting Paul to his train on time. Hoorah.

Name Played Won
Chris 18 12
James 7 3
Paul 11 3

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