In this game, your choices are made according to a rondel – a circle divided into eight sections, around which you can only move three sections at a time. Therefore, you have to be careful you don't go past an option if that's what you need in the next turn.
My tactic for this game was simple: To go around the rondel as slowly as possible. I suspected that there was a logic behind the arrangement of the sections, so I only went one or two spaces at a time until the very end. Joe played an intriguing game, barely having any ships on the sea at all, he capitalized on churches, workers and factories (obviously a Portuguese Protestant). Adam seemed to do what I was doing a lot of the time. Sam complained about having no money, while Steve tried to spread his influence across many categories.
The game ended when I discovered Nagasaki (in my black ships! Hurrah! History is vindicated!), and we found that Joe's strategy paid off, giving him a clear first place. I came in second, just ahead of Adam. Steve snuck past Sam on shipyards, but neither seemed terribly happy with their strategy. Sam especially rued his lack of money early on in the game.
Joe 112
Andrew 88
Adam 83
Steve 75
Sam 61
After this, a game of High Society was suggested. Given that two people present – Adam and Steve – have never been totally au fait with Reiner Knizia's counter-intuitive bidding game, but we decided it should be a leader board anyway. Early on, Steve picked up a –5 while the rest of us paid big to avoid it. For my first card, I chose to go for a "lose card", hoping for a bit of luck in future cards. That luck didn't arrive, and Sam and Adam were able to get 8 and 9 cards respectively. In the end, Steve scored in the minus points and Joe and I scored no points at all, but despite that, we didn't come last thanks to Adam's lack of fiscal prudence.
Sam 8
Joe 0 ($28m)
Andrew 0 ($26m)
Steve –10
Adam $least
On the form table, Sam and Joe battle for first place and, despite a middling performance, Steve edges ahead of Adam.
| Points | ||||||
| Sam | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 11 |
| Joe | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 11 |
| Steve | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 12 |
| Adam | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 13 |
| Andrew | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 15 |
| Anja | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 17 |
| Jonny | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 18 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Hannah | 2 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 20 |
I thank the Gods of High Society for allowing me to remedy my appalling showing at Navegador. Has Joe found the much-quoted 'break' in the game? His two non-productive moves - buildings and workers - were more than accounted for by the trips to market with multiple factories at his disposal.
ReplyDeleteWhereas with the seafarer's method there are three non-productive moves: building ships, moving them (and losing one if you explore!) and colonising. Though as Joe said this morning, now we know about this route to victory it's up to other players to stop somebody taking it...
(admittedly exploring DOES have benefits; small amounts of cash and blue tokens. But do they match up to the Knowledge's method?)
ReplyDeleteDepends on how you define productive; the main way you get points at the end is by collecting colonies/buildings/explorers in combination with multipliers; so in that sense, the only spaces on the rondel that aren't productive are workers, ships and market.
ReplyDeleteOf those, workers and ships are equivalent; workers allow you to purchase more buildings, ships allows you to purchase more colonies and explore.
Then market gets you money, which is necessary for most of the productive spaces.
If you pursue a building strategy, you're buying points in potentially three of the five score tracks; factories, churches and shipyards (though you can ignore the last — I didn't buy any shipyards).
A sailing strategy will buy you points in three as well; shipyards, colonies and explorers.
So I think that the problem is that with the sailing strategy, you still have to build (shipyards), whereas with a building strategy you don't have to sail.
Great game, and one of the prettiest I think. I like Cuba too, but the more abstracted style of Navegador is even better.
Yep, your penultimate line nails it I think. So it's up to other players to force a player out of the 'just building' strategy by gobbling up buildings themselves. We've (well, I've) been playing it in mostly-isolation from other players, perhaps there's a case to be more reactive to what people are doing.
ReplyDeleteIt is one of the prettiest games, I agree.
And this has happened before:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/749119/how-to-defend-against-the-worker-privilege-buil
Was Cuz right???
Interesting — though that thread doesn't seem to point to it being 'broken', which is good (particularly since it appears to get played at tournament level). I happened upon that strong strategy, which would doubtless be stymied pretty quickly if we played again.
ReplyDeleteSo.... Lords of Vegas anybody? :-)