Tuesday 12 February 2013

Webbed Feat

The members of the Bracknell three met up on Monday night despite the news of the pope retiring. In an attempt to put that sad news behind us we quickly unboxed Lords of Waterdeep easily the the trio's favourite game. The instructions state that the last person to visit a city should go first. Although Paul technically lives in London I actually visit Birmingham every month. Because of this it seemed unfair that I should always go first so I deferred to my left which happened to be Paul.
Pope quits:"I've never seen my boss at work since I started"

Inexplicably Paul refused any of the juiciest of building offerings and instead went for a choice quest. James needed no further encouragement and snapped possibly one of the strongest buildings in the game, Smuggler's Dock. This little beauty allows the agent to pick any combination of 4 warriors or rogues and the owner receives 2 gold. It was used every turn. Soon after James was on a roll snapping up other useful buildings which offered nice rewards and completing tricky quests early on to give him plot quests that actually were worth something. Where Paul and I gave ourselves false hope by barreling off down the scoring track with easy to fulfil quests James eventually reeled us back in and sailed past to comfortably win.

James - 171
Chris - 157
Paul - 152

For our second game we chose Web of Power. Back in the day this was a firm favourite for the London 4 as an evening starter. Even so both Paul and I were full of half remembered rules and made the knowledge transfer to James hideously complicated. However he manfully stood up to the plate even though he admitted he had no idea what he was doing. (Often the case with new games). For the uninitiated Web of Power is a territory and counter placement game where the object is to be winning amounts of Cloisters and Advisors in each territory so that you can score points for the various links between them. My faint memory of the game was that getting advisors down early was good as they took up a large part of the scoring at the end. My plan sucked and it turns out a more focussed and balanced approach worked better. Who knew.

Paul
James
Chris
(No points on the score track).

Also for the record I played James at Stone Age last week but was too busy to post a report. I won but spent the latter stages of the game telling James that I thought he had won. For this I apologise!!!

4 comments:

  1. Ah, Web of Power. One day it'll be said in the same tone of voice as Spangles.

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  2. Ah, Michael Schacht's Spangles.
    I haven't played Web of Power, but it clearly remains one of Schacht's favourite designs - he is still making new maps available for download on his website.

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  3. As Chris said, it's a starter course really. There is some strategy but you can be hobbled by the available cards on your turn and spend the whole game cursing your luck.

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