Joe, Anja and Sam went for the hexagons and dice of Castles of Burgundy. Joe admitted as they set up that he'd played it a few times as a solo game "just to get the hang of the rules." Would his experience help?
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| Anja points an accusing finger at Joe's cluster of castles. It looks as though Sam has ignored his moats completely - he'd begun to tidy them away |
We described the rules of Arkadia to Adam once he'd arrived, and we seemed to do quite well as he used his pennants to score early. But Arkadia is a game where knowing the rules isn't enough, and he later admitted to being a bit baffled by what to do next. Steve, too, found that he was unable to plan any smart moves since either Adam or I would do them before it was his turn again. Arkadia is definitely a game where you wait for your opponent to make a mistake rather than forge any long-term strategies of your own.
In the end, the game was won on the last go, as I was able to place a building that completed itself and another building. This allowed me to change the values of the colours in my advantage, and I snuck in front of Adam right at the death.
Andrew 110
Adam 106
Steve 89
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| At the start of a very long road to St Petersburg... |
Castles of Burgundy carried on, so we began a game of St Petersburg, apparently under the illusion that it was quite short. From the other table we heard Sam talking to himself, and Anja cry out in despair at Joe's last minute dash to into first place. I'm sure more happened than that, but in the meantime, the scores were...
Joe 82
Anja 81
Sam 78
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| Joe's finished estate. Only 2 pastures and 3 boats away from the full complement. |
We were still playing St Petersburg, so they had a game of Biblios...
Sam 8
Joe 5
Anja 4
And as we were finishing off St Petersburg, they played 6nimmt.
Sam 26
Joe 31
Anja 62
Finally, as eleven o'clock threatened to turn into twelve, we finished our game. It had been a while since we all played, and there was a certain amount of rule checking at first, but before long we were back in the swing of things.
Steve started with an aggressive tactic of picking up a library early. Expensive but high-scoring. But this left him permanently behind in terms of cash. As Adam pointed out, the fact that Steve couldn't buy so much meant more choices for me, which explains how I was able to keep up with Adam, despite his two Observatories getting him cards as and when he pleased.
Adam 129
Andrew 125
Steve 83
The form table shows that Steve suffered heavily from the curse of the host: whereby looking after everyone detracts from the cold, calculating mind-set you need for Tuesday nights. He drops down the table faster than that bowl of popcorn fell off the couch when he was playing with his cat. Joe makes a charge into third.
| Points | ||||||
| Sam | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| Adam | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 8 |
| Joe | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| Andrew | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 11 |
| Anja | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 13 |
| Hannah | 4 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 14 |
| Steve | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 17 |
| Dan | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 21 |
I enjoyed Castles of Burgundy a lot. As Joe pointed out there's no fire-fighting or staving off mongrel hoards in it, it's all about expansion so you're looking for your optimum move. Unfortunately I pulled Anja's trick of imagining a rule that wasn't there (thinking you couldn't score complete areas more than once in a round) so that wasn't exactly optimum.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless it looked like it was going to be a close-run thing between myself and Anja mid-game, until Joe came surging up the track like a demonic land-owner with a plough and hod combo designed by Wilf Lunn.
It's definitely a game of fine margins. Had I rolled a four in the penultimate round I would have shipped my goods and picked up another 5 points, pushing me into first. But to be reliant on the dice roles at the finale is clearly not a good strategy.
Anja specialised in mining and Joe, after looking fairly balanced at the start, spent the second half of the game picking up buildings, consolidating his multiplying tiles.
It's a great game. My one reservation is that it is very long.
Whereas Biblios... who can fathom the inner workings of this strange beast? It continues to bemuse. Or in Anja's case, annoy.
Very nice eveing all, thanks.
Mongrel hoards. Hoards of hungry dogs.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed last night a lot. Despite it's length, I really enjoy Castles of Barrow-Gurney - it feels like there are always opportunities, and it's very satisfying when you manage to chain your actions together. I think as you get to know the game the pauses for thought get less, so we could probably shave 10 mins off a 3-player game in the future. But still it's long, and may be better as a two-player; good two-player Euro's aren't to be sniffed at.
ReplyDeleteIt shares with Endeavour a slight sense that there are no 'wrong' moves, only slightly less optimal ones; everything you do helps, but if you can identify the one move that helps that little bit more, it edges you ahead of the pack. Thus scores at the end are very tight, which makes for an exciting endgame.
Chinatown has that as well; since you can all calculate the relative worth of businesses and plots fairly easily, if everyone is playing at the same level the winner will be the one person who manages to squeeze a marginally better deal. I like this style of game, it can be quite forgiving; and forgiving is not normally a word that one associates with Stefan Feld games.
Glad that we managed to squeeze in a couple of shorter games too -
I still don't understand Biblios, though I do really like it. Last night was the best I've done I believe, coming second, but it was all down to the blue cards I picked up in the first phase, so didn't feel as though it was through canny play. That said, I was able to boost the blue die to five, and used my money to ensure that I got that last minus die card so no-one could drop it to a four.
As Sam demonstrated, to win you have to take two colours (or was it three?) - there's clearly strategy in there, probably more than Poison and definitely more than 6Nimmt, but the way the gameplay weaves together makes it very difficult to grasp for me. A very clever little game. And 6Nimmt is always fun - sorry Anja!
Thanks to Anja and Steve for great hosting, and Adam for introducing 'coconut peanuts' to the proceedings - please keep them far away from me in future.
In Biblios I was going for brown and red categories, but because I had a green 2 and you guys both passed on a green 1 in the auction, I thought it was worth picking up. So I ended up with three colours in the end, but all low-scoring ones. Had Anja outscored me on green she would have won.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I decided to back orange as my second colour. And then none came out!
ReplyDelete