Sunday 8 May 2016

Palaces of Dorra

Sunday night, and Ian and Andrew joined me (Sam) for a little light gaming to wrap up the weekend.

Only as it turned out, Medina wasn't quite as light as advertised. This is a pretty abstract game of palace building, where the palaces are in four colours and you the players are only able to take ownership of one palace in each colour. On your turn you simply add pieces to the board - either the palaces, or the stables that go with them, or the city walls and merchants they like being next to. And at some point, you choose to place a roof (of your own colour) on an unclaimed palace, nabbing it for yourself.


The whole game is an exercise in brinkmanship - you want to grab the biggest palaces for yourself, but once you do, they can't be made any bigger. And because there are rewards for the biggest palaces, it did encourage a bit of AP.


You also get rewarded for proximity of your palaces to various things: the well, the towers, the merchant street (which the players themselves build). I hung back as long as possible, and as a result had a lot more flex in the last third of the game. But I couldn't catch Ian with his spread of rewards for building close to towers...

Ian 58
Sam 51
Andrew 30

Andrew wasn't blown away by it, feeling the game played itself for the final stages. But Ian and I would like to try it again. With it's Mexica/Origin-esque flavour I can imagine Martin enjoying it.



We moved swiftly on to Take It Easy. Andrew called Countries that no Longer Exist, Ian Final Fantasy characters, and I went for Al Pacino movies. Except I ran out halfway through and changed to Robert De Niro. The less said about my Pacino impression the better, but at least I won:

Sam 417
Ian 374
Andrew 331

Then we played Love Letter. the first two rounds I began with a King and a Baron and took turns to knock out my opponents, winning the rounds as well. When Andrew won the third I suspected my streak was over - in fact I assumed Ian would win - but I claimed the win with a spawny Princess/Handmaid combo in round four:

Sam 3 cubes
Andrew 1 cube
Ian 0 cubes

As if riled by his lack of Love Letter action, Ian came back at us with a resounding victory in Push It:

Ian 11
Andrew 8
Sam 8

...before he called it a day. Andrew and I were inebriated enough to play a quick game of Elk Fest which became a mix of cagey strategy and drunken cackhandedness, as at one point I simply flicked everything as far down the table as I could. Despite my spoiling tactics, Andrew got his moose home first and claimed the win:

Andrew: wins
Sam: doesn't




6 comments:

  1. I totally forgot we also played Blockers: which I think Andrew won? Andrew 2 Ian 3 Sam 6 if I recall. I was fixated on keeping all my tiles in one group, which I managed to do. But as the scores give away, at a cost...

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  2. Can't say I was hugely keen on Medina. But I got my revenge in Blockers. Oh, and my score in Take It Easy was three hundred and thirty something, not 33. I know I'm bad at it, but not that bad.

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  3. "With it's Mexica/Origin-esque flavour I can imagine Martin enjoying it." - I've been wanting to try it for years!

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    1. Can probably pop over if A&H are hosting, more unlikely otherwise.

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