I decided to give poor old James a break from reading rules to new games this week and declared that we would select from my improving back catalogue of titles. I piled up the most likely picks at the end of the table and revelled in the delicate selection process. To my surprise El Grande was plucked from the mini wall and I couldn't have been happier.
All three of us adopted differing tactics from the start. I spread my men very thinly over the whole board in an attempt to gain influence whereas James hoarded his chaps in court and opted to see how the land lay and Paul banished his voters to the castillo in order to perform his favourite "Shock troops" move. With the usual jiggery pokery taking place over home territories the scores remained close. Paul then pulled a high risk "Jefferies" move where he redistributed all of his cabelleros from one region all over the board. It was something like 8 pieces and neither James or I came out very well from it. When it came to the last scoring round Paul and James had cleverly exhausted their cabelleros whereas I still had a stack unable to be used having played a fairly miserly game of bringing in just what I needed. The upshot of this was James' home region Basque Country being the most congested I've ever seen with at least 20 guys in there. Thankfully the king was on it at the end to prevent anymore being stuffed in.
Paul's air dropping tactic came up trumps this time granting him his first win ages.
Paul - 147
Chris - 141
James - 135
Then on to Medici after Alhambra was craftily discounted by me.
My really boring tactic of winning the boat count saw me coming in first after some tense bidding rounds and out right luck.
Chris - 158
Paul - 153
James - 105
In the next round of Medici James and Paul made sure I paid a lot more heavily for my tiles and my boat tactic went up in smoke. Again some fortuitous final draws from the bag made this an exciting and unpredictable game. James' usurping in me in indigo in his final cargo haul was enough to reel me in and gain an impressive win.
James - 131
Chris - 120
Paul - 117
So we all won a game which was nice.
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