Saturday 22 December 2012

And then we played Biblios!

December 22nd 2012. What better way to celebrate the reprieved apocalypse than to play a game?

So that's what Andrew and I did. Three games, actually, all of which featured in our games of the year. We started with Castles of Burgundy, that dry yet gripping contest of castle-ground development by Stefan Feld. Dice were rolled, hexagons were shuffled, calculus was engaged. In the mid-game I felt I had a strong position, only for Andrew to belatedly start completing various areas and scoring enormous points. Fortunately, it wasn't quite enough to catch me.

Andrew: Let me tell you, never play Burgundy against a seasoned player after you've been explaining the rules to a novice the same afternoon. I was very slow off the starting blocks, while Sam picked off single hex areas for fun. I put all my eggs in one basket with my eight-square city and thanks to me getting starting player and the right building coming up at the same time, I was able to complete and reduce my deficit drastically. With my multipliers, I did wonder if I had enough, but it wasn't to be.

Triumverate of shit photos starts here

Sam 206
Andrew 201

Next up was Macao, by the same designer. It's a teeny bit less cerebral, but that's no bad thing to my clouded eyes, and the game followed a similar pattern. I began reasonably and in mid-game was feeling confident. But wait - here comes Andrew with his multiple card-laying strategems and action cube multipliers. Again, though, I'd done just enough to hold him off:

Sam played an... interesting game, quite unlike his usual style. He picked up cards that were difficult to complete, but gave nice bonuses if you did. And then he didn't get the right cards to trigger the bonus. But even with this, I wasn't able to overtake him. I enjoy this game but my main worry about Macao is that there only seems to be one way to win: buy lots of goods, and sell them. The bonus cards almost seemed like a tie-breaker. But maybe it's possible, once you get a chain of cards that work together. Possible, but difficult.

#2

Sam 70
Andrew 65

It was barely half-nine so we poured ourselves some whisky and cracked open perrenial fave Biblios. This is probably the one game I have some pedigree in, yet it can still flummox everyone - or both of us, in this case. I was feeling confident come the count-up, only for Andrew to beat me (alphabetically) to the green die, and clinch the victory on colours:

Yes, my plan was to pick up as many book cards as possible, and avoid money but that soon fell through. Then I focused on browns, unaware that Sam wasn't collecting them at all. Spent a fair amount on them. Interestingly, with little information about what the other was collecting, instead of putting the dice-manipulators in the pile for the second half, we kept offering them at the start to see if that gave us any clues. I also kept an eye on the letters of cards as they were played, which I don't usually do, and that helped in the end. But a win's a win, whether you know how it happened or not.

slighty more interesting


Andrew 8 (wins on brown books)
Sam 8

Nice way to see in the new long count...

1 comment:

  1. I must disagree with your comment re: goods selling in Macao, Andrew! I sold a total of four goods. What won the game for me in the end was my collection of city quarters, worth 22pts.

    I think there's three or four ways to win; to put it in a slightly reductionist fashion. Selling goods, establishing city links, getting a card chain set up that brings you gold (for the prestige track) or most likely a combination of the above. I remember Adam set up chains of cards that worked very well together, whereas (in a different game) Steve won with a long chain of city quarters.

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