Joe began well and soon had a pile of tiles in front of him. I found my luck was a bit erratic and often had to put my tiles back with each unsuccessful round. Adam did okay for most of the time. But near the end, we found ourselves locked into a pattern of picking up a tile and then putting back a tile. The game looked to be never-ending and with Anja and Steve at the door, we called an end to it.
Joe 8
Adam 1
Andrew 0
The five of us discussed the options and went for Santiago, the game of field planting and then irrigation (rather than the other way round, which is what most sensible farmers would do). Steve wasn't convinced by it's incredibly dull board and the cheap tourist cocktail-style palm trees. However, we persevered, and after some rule explaining and trying to guess why Cybil the dog was whining, we began.
 |
| Don't be fooled by the shallow focus - this looks cheap |
Bidding, negotiation, bribing. All in a day's work as a farmer in Santiago. I'm not very good at any of those things, so I soon felt I was lagging. But not doing so badly that I gave up hope. After all, I had most of the leeks/sweetcorn/whatever they were. Joe went into chillis, Adam invested in potatoes and Anja had gone bananas (a ha ha). But no one noticed the quiet farmer in the corner. The sensible one who never won bidding wars and who quietly ploughed his own field. Which just so happened to be next to other people's fields of the same kind.
Yes, I mean Steve. He won with a wide range of second places across the board, causing surprise to sweep across the table. A cunning victory and one that very much went under the radar.
Steve 113
Anja 109
Adam 96
Joe 82
Andrew 75
And we ended, tired but happy, and wondering how we managed to make a one-hour game last so long. Our thoughts returned to the design of the game as we were packing away, and we commended it for at least having a donkey on the front of the box.
Our resident expert Joe said that, talking about donkeys on the lids of board games, had we seen Roads & Boats? He'd first seen this game being played at Stabcon, and the artwork was of a style that he thought they were playing a home-made version.
I was especially tickled by the text design, where they'd obviously noticed that the two words in the title shared three of their five letters, and decided to really go for it. But we noted that meant it could equally be called Rods and Bats. Or Broads? Or Brad's Oats? Boas and Stoats?
We left Chez Joe, chuckling away at board game design but still not entirely sure why Cybil the dog had been whining. She calmed down after a while, so it can't have been important.
In terms of the form table, Steve takes his place at the top of the form table for the first time, I believe. And, despite being ill, Sam climbs to second. Anja also rises to a career-best fourth.
| Points | ||||||
| Steve | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 |
| Sam | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 12 |
| Adam | 3 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 12 |
| Anja | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 13 |
| Hannah | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 13 |
| Andrew | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 13 |
| Joe | 4 | 1 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 16 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Jonny | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Sally | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
Photos taken with unashamed abandon from Board Game Geek.
Disappointed to miss Santiago. I was hoping you'd play I'm the Boss... I had a brief moment of thinking What the hell, I'll go, but then I fell asleep. Again. Clearly though a good strategy in terms of the table.
ReplyDeleteWe nearly did play I'm the Boss! I wish we had, I love that game.
ReplyDeleteSantiago was good fun - I can't see how it could ever take an hour, though; any game that involves bidding and bribes needs to have those moments of pensive lip-chewing, that's where the tension and fun lies. If everyone was just banging down their bids and tiles it might be possible to do it in 60 minutes, but it would be much less intriguing.
It is, as Adam pointed out last night, a game where it's possible to calculate everyone's standing at any given point. But it's probably best that we couldn't generally be bothered, because there's not a huge amount you can do to slow the leader down once you've worked out who's winning.
Once someone gets a big plantation underway, do you jump in and try to get a piece? If you do, you're only increasing their profit from it. So do you try and build your own to compete with theirs? Well you're probably a step or to behind them already, so that's unlikely to close the gap.
Perhaps it's one of those games where you mustn't let any single player develop a lead — everyone has to jump in on the plantations to ensure no-one gets a free ride.
In fact, judging by the final scores, and Steve's stealth win, I may be over-thinking it. Pretty much the only tactical thing I was aware of doing in the game was passing to become Overseer in the last round, which netted me 8 points in bribes. Without that I would have come last!
A good evening; sorry you missed it Sam. We'll have to play Santiago again.
I think you should always jump in on someone elses big plantation - Anja had seven workers on an 8-tile plot so if you add a tile it gives her seven extra dubloons, but you get 18 extra (if you put on two workers). Steve definitely did this best...
ReplyDeleteAm I remembering right - did Steve and Anja take harbourmaster more often than the rest of us? I wonder if that just conserved money or if the way they irrigated got them more cash?
Get well soon Sam!
Well that's a good point. I should have jumped in more. I had NO bananas. Yes!
ReplyDeleteAs for 'harbourmaster' (just so we don't get too confused, harbourmaster is the term used in Manila, as opposed to Canal Overseer, the correct term in Santiago), my recollection is that they didn't take it much.
I like the way harbourmaster is decided - if you want it you have to be first to pass (or pay least) but doing so is going to give you last choice of tile. If the tiles on offer are pretty evenly matched, then practically the first person to pass is going to do it. On other rounds, you may really want to be harbourmaster, but the crappy tile you're going to get makes it a difficult decision.
Gosh, don't play puerto rico anytime soon or you will be getting your roles mixed up.
ReplyDeleteCanal overseer is really catchy.
ReplyDelete