Tuesday 8 October 2013

Your Purples are Finite

As I missed Tuesday last week and will again this evening, I really needed to fondle some card and to that end, after having played Galaxy Trucker with the boys (Stanley won) I coerced Andrew up to the house for a game.

Andrew was invited to choose and picked out Macao, the Stefan Feld game of dice wheels. We set up and realised we'd forgotten to set up. Then we started playing and realised we'd forgotten how to play. I ambitiously went for multiple-colour cards while Andrew kept his goals more achievable - but due to the vagaries of the dice and our own brains, neither of us could really get going.

Then Andrew suddenly surged along the scoring track and the wall, only to just as quickly lose momentum. And I fretted about the fact I couldn't activate any of my cards - I picked up two penalty chits and was about to receive a third when I pretty much stumbled on the tactic of using the joker cards from the city quarters - I had less goods to deliver as a result, but allied to my Statue card (which gave me bonus points for the dark city quarters, where the jokers were purchased) meant I was onto a winner, running out 60-something to Andrew's 40-something.

In the game's final quarter I'd finally accelerated through the gears. However I still forgot to implement one or two cards several times, and we're not sure if I mis-used the Midwife card... so it should remain non-leaderboard.

Macao is a great game but every now and then you seem to run into a bit of a dud - it happened before with myself Hannah and Anja, where none of us could really get going. If the dice help you and the cards come out in a way that invites chaining it can be brilliant. You also need to be switched on, and we really weren't last night - both of us finding that we didn't have enough cubes to do anything significant several times... hence the title of this post.

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