Come on Pilgrim

Outside of a game of Keyforge on Christmas Day and a couple of passes at Just One, it's been a fairly game-free Christmas week at our house. That changed today when Stan and I played Coimbra (Coy-eem-bra) a dice-drafting game about something or other in Portugal. It's not totally clear what you're doing in the game - the box suggests you're supplying bouncers to monasteries around the countryside, but obviously someone needs to get them there: and that's the job of your Pilgrim, driving a 2CV through the windy mountain roads with a crucifix dangling from the rear-view mirror.

While they're off doing that, you're currying favour in Coimbra itself by supplying protection (or bribes) to the city's wealthy populace, and - here the enigmatic theme completely vanishes - you do this by drafting dice.

Each round dice are rolled and players take turns to draft one, and place in it the upper, middle, or lower part of the city, in order to buy cards there. Higher dice choose first, but the catch is the dice also defines the price you pay for whichever card you choose: either in guards, or cash.

Or you could go to the castle, where lower dice are better and guards (or money) are to be found, lounging around by (or in) the collection box.

Cards are then purchased and each card improves your standing on one of four tracks - cash, guards, pilgrim 2CV movement, and points. Then the card gives some kind of bonus, either one-off, ongoing, or end-game.

And then you ignore the pips on the dice and simply look at the colours instead: each colour die you have (and you'll have three) triggers the rewards on the aforementioned tracks: they higher up you are, the better the reward. Gain cash or guards or points; move your pilgrim. Move your pilgrim to a monastery: get more stuff! It almost seems designed to drive Martin into a frothing rage.

And then  - we're not finished yet - you can (if you can still follow what the hell is going on) invest in a voyage, which costs guards (or cash) but will get you points at the end of the game. Track placement will also get you points at the end of the game. So will sets of rosettes, that crop up on cards. So will some cards. Possibly some monasteries. And all this takes place within the roiling rainbow of a dozen colours - players (up to four) cards/dice (five, including the wild die) and monasteries (three).

The eventual winner (102-84) sizes things up

And yet... I found myself wanting to return to it.  The generic juggling of multiple parts has a more rewarding feeling than the generic can't do all you want to, although the latter sensation is hiding here as well. There are strategic and tactical choices with every turn... Focus your efforts on the tracks? Or get your pilgrim moving around the map for those generous monks' rewards? Keep cash and/or guard income high for a valuable revenue stream (= more choices on card purchase!) or sail close to the wind with thrifty expenditure? Visit the castle for round-by-round advantages, or eschew it entirely?

The initial bewilderment evaporates faster than I anticipated it would - Coimbra is certainly guilty of the standard Euro crimes of lots of moving parts, but Stan and I really liked it anyway. It looks really lovely, and although each turn has a substantial potential for AP - especially on a first play - you only take 12 actions in the entire game, so must choose wisely.

Felonious Monk

On Saturday night Andrew and I converged at my table for some gentle pre-Christmas fare. With Sally busy baking in the kitchen, we repaired to the table in the front room, however, and what with the Christmas tree and the speakers that don't cut out, it made for a nice festive surrounds.

Possibly we sabotaged the genteel appearance by eating crisps like demented seagulls, but you can't have everything.

We began with a four-player game of Facecards with the boys. Stan and Joe's faces were now mixed into the cards too (the game comes with blanks) and Stan successfully identified himself as a Squirrel. Joe turned up as a bird. The bird seemed to always know what my pair was, but rarely guessed them; content to point them out to other people. The Squirrel ran away with it:

Stanley 14
Andrew 10
Joe 7
Sam 7

As the boys retired to bed, Andrew chose our two-player starter, Rajas of the Ganges. For the uninitiated, this involves using workers and dice to build palaces and markets. The former bring you fame, the latter money, and both fame and money have markers moving in opposite directions around the outside of the board - your aim is to make them meet, and ideally, hurtle past each other at speed.

We chose very distinct paths - Andrew eschewing markets and me building a solitary palace the whole game. At various times it seemed like we'd both made mistakes - Andrew was spending actions picking up a single die, whilst I went from having heaps to none at all. My markets were churning out cash, but Andrew's seemingly unproductive turns would suddenly coalesce into huge leaps along the fame track. And as my dice ran out again, Andrew built two palaces to end the game:

Andrew: Raja!
Sam: Not Raja.

my markers (yellow) stare balefully at each other; 

Andrew's (on the far side) have passed

Our Euro glands pumping endorphins now, we went straight from Rajas to Heaven and Ale. With two players there's only three rounds to play, so the sense of time-running-out loomed up at us at the start of the second round. Like Rajas, there was a sense of maniacal racing. Unlike Rajas, getting ahead on the track wasn't necessarily the right thing to do. I kept taking things Andrew wanted - inadvertently, mostly - but struggled to make ends meet whilst Andrew set sail for the final round in a cash-rich position. However Andrew's genial allowance of me having a do-over (I scored the wrong monk, only realising on my next turn) may have been the difference between winning and losing:

Sam - 34
Andrew - 22

The last game of the night was NMBR9. Maybe it's not knocked Take It Easy off the top spot of the Cries Of Despair table, but it's still a wonderful game. It looked like I'd perhaps put all my eggs in a doomed basket...

really need that 1

But fortunately for me the 1 came out, and my literal platform proved to be a figurative one as well...

Sam 92
Andrew 71

A most delightful evening.

A marble-ous evening

On the last Tuesday before Christmas, I turned up at Joe's ten minutes late and found that I was still only the second to arrive. Ian was already there, looking tired and hoping that beer would give him a second wind, while Andy showed up just as Joe was explaining the roll and write game of Twenty One to us. And so he joined us.

It's pretty basic. There are five rows of six dice on your score pad, different for each player, and each turn someone rolls six coloured dice and you have to fill in each dice with an equal or lower score, completing one row at a time. Bonuses are awarded for exact matches. That's the jist of it, anyway. The game ends when a player completes their last row, and when Ian decided to take fewer points to do just that, it left the rest of us desperately writing in whatever shitty scores were allowed. Poor old Joe scored just four points for his last row.

Ian 118
Andy 97
Andrew 94
Joe 87

Sam had arrived mid game and watched proceedings with interest. Next up was the main event. Joe suggested Colosseum as a big Christmas type of game, but in the end Calimala was chosen. It was new to Joe but with his years of Eurogaming behind him, we felt that shipping silk and contributing marble statues wouldn't pose a problem.

Ian shot off in the early stages, winning all four of the four opening scoring rounds, giving him a 12, 3, 2, 1, 0 lead. But then Andy's patient planning paid off as he started a mid game revival. Sam was the last of us to score any points at all but then made great leaps up the score track until he found his player mat devoid of resources or silk with the final round looming. He had to resort to choosing an action he couldn't complete, hoping for a bit of luck with the cards he'd pick up as compensation. He didn't get any.

Joe did fine for a first time, but he admitted that without time to go through the rules once, he struggled with any game. The mid-game discussion about the (almost imperceptible) difference between Greek and Swedish jazz probably distracted him too.

Andy 32
Ian 29
Sam 28
Joe 21
Andrew 18

Next up was a game that was new to all of us except Sam: Tag City. I was intrigued by its vague air of Jet Set Radio graffiti art. It's another roll and write game (or, as we hilariously put it, a Roland Rat game) but this time you are assigning dice to some tetris type shapes that all players can choose to fill up their grid. Points are awarded for completed rows, columns and areas.

We were pushing the boundaries of the game, playing with five players while the box suggests only up to four. We did this by utilising the fifth board supplied with the game and then using a die from Twenty One. Sheer anarchy. The game seemed fine, though. In fact, it seemed better suited to five players than Calimala did, with the previous game having a sense of lack of control over unfolding events.

Maybe Tag City had a sense of too much control since Andy had an attack of AP in one round as he arranged and rearranged the dice, unable to decide. "Are you min-maxing it?" asked Joe as Andy continued to prevaricate.

I enjoyed the game, but the lack of single square shapes made me paranoid that I'd leave a shape, row or column unfinishable. We made it to the end with no one accidentally outing themselves as Banksy and, after a series of recounts that saw first Ian then Sam briefly in first, it ended in a tie.

Ian 43
Sam 43
Andrew 35
Andy 33
Joe 21

Although the hour was late, we had enough in us for one last game: For Sale. Sam began by declaring that he never wins this game so he was going to do the opposite to his usual cagey start, opening the bidding with big bold six, with the promise of a 27 for the winner. I bid eight and eventually won. I was quite pleased with it until the next two rounds saw Sam pick up a 28 and Joe get a 29 for six coins each.

Joe went from tragedy to triumph in the cheque round, picking up a zero dollar cheque despite bidding a 19, but then he netted a $14k cheque with only a 10. Similarly, Sam was delighted in the final round when he discovered his 16 was, improbably, the highest card showing and he picked up a $13k cheque with it. Ian ended the game in his second draw of the evening, but this time at the wrong end of the score board.

Sam 65
Joe 61
Andy 53
Andrew 44
Ian 44

And so, the evening ended. There's no chance of a Tuesday meeting any time soon, what with Christmas and New year in the way and a possibility of a mid holiday games evening so I'll bid everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year now. Cheers, all.

Best Games of 2018!

Before 2019 is upon us, there's the question of this year's top ten games! (New to you this year (ie not necessarily published in 2018))

Mine were pretty easy to pick, although no doubt I'll discover there's another ten I should have put in. In reverse order!


10 Wordsy
Need at least one word game on the list and I think this just beats out Letter Tycoon. I'd played Movable Type and Paperback in 2017.


9 Burgle Bros
Co-op that's great fun for both kids and adults. It seems so well engineered to reach a heightened tension at the optimum time.


8 Just One
Just great. Raj-style duplication penalties, but with players working together - a much faster-moving Decrypto.


7 Auztralia
Need a big sprawling story in there somewhere, and although I've only played it twice I really liked it both times.


6 Heaven and Ale
Euro-heaven.


5 Facecards
Gurn-heaven. It got a bit played-out for me (saw the table a lot at home) but those first few times were hilarious.


4 Voodoo Prince
Could have been Texas Showdown or Skull King, I guess, but I think Voodoo Prince probably pips it as trick-taker of the year.  Turns out I played Voodoo Prince in 2017! So Texas Showdown it is


3 Root
Odd to put my probably-favourite-game at number three, but for GNN I was in a minority so it's not been played that much and felt a bit hit-and-miss when it has. Nonetheless I love Root.


2 The Mind
Could almost have been played exclusively for the first three months of the year. Hysterical and would have been a worthy number one. But...


1 Decrypto
Yeah, it's heavier than Just One and there's considerable lulls in play. But I've had so much fun playing it, almost always losing! - I think it bumps The Mind and Root out of top spot.

Bubbling under: the lovely solo-game that is Nemo's War, Euro-bunfight Calimala, Risk-done-right Spheres of Influence, spreadsheet civ Historia,  and any number of Martin's trick-taking games!

So what's yours?

Exhausting the cabin boy

After a Saturday that promised nothing but cold and rain, the bad weather eased off long enough for Ian and I to get to Sam’s house for an evening’s board gaming. He’d emailed us beforehand suggesting we try Tales of the Northlands: The Sagas of Noggin the Nog a new game that he’d tried solo not so long ago.

When we arrived, with the game already set up on the table, Sam admitted that his solo experience had been a bit longer ago than he’d thought, and he was a bit rusty of the rules. Of which, there are plenty. Every option on the board seems to have its own caveats, and it never seemed to gel with us. The main aim of the game is to complete sagas, but they come in multiple sections. This means that everyone can help in a saga and share the points, but it also means they hang around for far longer than they should.

Er... Wut?

Sorry to say, it didn’t seem like much fun and we abandoned the game after a few rounds in favour of something more knockabout and entertaining.

And our idea of knockabout and entertaining was Macao! It’s usually played by only Sam and myself, so to have a third player was a real treat. Ian shot off into an early lead by repeatedly exploiting his cabin boy for prestige points (it really was a different world back then). He also had both the Helmsman and the Captain for a very nautical tableau that worked together well. Sam picked up an early -3 tile for a full tableau but was able to put together a chain of city quarters for an end game boost. I made good use of a +1 point for each ware tile delivered: I only delivered six tiles in the whole game, but they netted me 36 points.

Sam 80
Andrew 71
Ian 62

Finally, we ended on Take It Easy. Today’s categories were Discworld novels (Ian), sitcoms (Sam) and ZX Spectrum games.

It has been said that if you were at a banquet with the Queen and you spilt your soup, she would also spill hers in order to distract any embarrassment from you. I wonder if can use a similar excuse to explain my third round performance, except that instead of deliberately spilling my soup, I picked up the bowl and flung the contents into my own face.

You see, in round two, Sam had a nightmare. He realised he’d left no rows open for nines just as one nine after another was called. He scored a mere 61 points. But in round three, I fell foul to every piece of bad luck and lack of concentration possible. By the end, I was relying on the 9-8-7 tile to bail me out, but it never came. My only scoring rows were ones, twos and threes as I picked up an earth-shattering 21 points. I fell from first to last.

Need a 9-8-7!

Need a stiff drink.

Ian 399
Sam 329
Andrew 289

The next morning, I tried to work out what the highest possible score with those tiles were, and got as high as 151, making Ian’s score of 143 in round three look very impressive.

Anyway, it was nice to be back and, despite Noggin’s cognitive load, a lot of fun.

Railing against the Dying of the Light (Railway)

Once upon a time we may have laughed off the future as the trifling concerns of others, but last night Joe and I (Sam) rolled up to the kerb outside Martin's house swapping mid-life medical worries, before going inside to eat chocolate and bombay mix. We were joined by the host, of course, along with Ian - now living south of the river - and Andy.

Although before Andy joined us, the quartet snuck in a round of Yokai Septet, the team trick-taker that debuted a couple of weeks back. Martin and I were paired against Ian and Joe, and we pretty much swept the board in the opening/finale:

Martin and Sam: Three tricks, four Sevens
Joe and Ian: Two tricks, no sevens

Whether they would have come back at us to win a full game, only an alternative universe can tell. In this one, Andy arrived, and we started the evening proper with some Cadbury's Fruit and Nut and a five-player assault on Mini Rails. Assault is the operative word, too, as despite the exceedingly light rule-set, every action carries ramifications. Build track and you might help someone else. Take a share and it may cost you points.

But building track and taking shares are the only actions you can do, so you want to be careful that the companies you have shares in pay their taxes: companies that don't count against you.

We all negotiated that particular challenge, avoiding penalties, but table-talk was prevalent as we tried to talk each other into screwing over someone else, rather than us. Joe - was he the only player to take two shares in the same company? - saw his investments in the grey track pay off big time:

Joe 15
Martin 14
Sam 11
Andy 8
Ian 6

Ian then suggested Powerships, but Martin seemed reticent. I seconded, but Martin still havered. We kept saying Powerships as a kind of social experiement, and it turned out Martin's uncertainty wasn't about the game itself but the challenge of setting up the board, which always foxes him. Fortunately Andy was there to pitch in and in no time at all we'd constructed the solar system. Now all we had to do was fly around it.

I began well, shooting off into an early lead. Martin assured everyone I would "fuck up at some point" though, and I agreed he was probably right. But as first Andy and then Ian slalomed involuntarily around the cosmos, I circled buoy one and two and headed for three, with only the green ship of Martin visible in my rear-view mirror.  He was still sure I'd make a mistake, but I, foolishly, had begun to feel confident.

On the last turn around buoy three I needlessly rolled my die, hoping to turn my 2 into a 1. I rolled a 3 instead and ended in a cul de sac of yellow arrows, floating in space. Martin shot around right behind me, straight into an arrow. There followed a period of confusion, as the arrow was supposed to push Martin back - but I was in the way. Did he move back at the start of his next turn? Or stay where he was and ignore the arrow? Much frantic BGG-ing ensued, which ultimately made no difference. Either way, I now had fucked up, and ceded ground to Martin who claimed the win.

1 Martin
2 Sam
3 Joe
4 Andy
5 Ian

Ian, as he foretold, came last. Joe and I noted how the winning spaceships seemed to be engaged in some kind of group hug/orgy. Andy missed the fun as he was still reading the Powerships forums.

I went to the loo and when I came back unwittingly was the winning vote on Abluxxen, once often-seen on the table in these parts. We all needed a refresher, and Joe in particular seemed bamboozled by it. It's like Fuji Flush in a way, but without the teamwork: play a single card or set of (matching) numbers to the table, get busted if someone else plays a card or set of a higher number. The key is to try and build big sets by getting shot of singletons to pick up cards that match your hand.

We only played a single round, at the end of which cards on the table score a point and cards in hand score minus points. I thought I was on the verge of a spectacular seven '4's, (having just played seven '8's) to put me on 14, when Ian ended the game by getting all his cards down!

Ian 17
Joe 9
Martin and Andy 4 each
Sam 0

We ended our evening as a quintet with current trick-taking favourite Voodoo Prince. I think I usually do ok at this game but last night I fell victim to a first round last-out having no trumps, and then when choosing trumps on the next round had four sets of high numbers and a bundle of blacks - too many to safely imbue with trump power. I tried to bluff that I was going for an early trick, but nobody fell for it - I won the early trick. It fell apart swiftly after that.

For the others things were much tighter though, and on our third and final round the scores between them were tight - anybody could have won. In the end Ian - who was first out in round one - picked up his second win in a row as Martin and Joe tied for second, with Andy hot on their tails. I did at least win the last round to add a bit of respectability...

Ian 27
Martin and Joe 22
Andy 21
Sam 15

Martin enticed Andy to stay for one last game, whilst the decrepit (me and Joe) and the long-distance traveller (Ian, now headed for Bishopsworth) hit the road. Whilst we reflected on the evening and the state of the world - Bishopsworth in particular - Martin was whupping Andy at Patchwork:

Martin 46
Andy 10

Until the next time...

You try to be evil, and look what happens

This week's post title comes courtesy of Adam, who remarked on Ian's inadvertent niceness during the highly-combative trains-and-shares game that is Mini Rails. We were all trying to be evil, but evil's by-products were sometimes running off in unwelcome directions.

Oven, with Adam 

But I'm getting ahead of myself, because before Mini Rails arrived, some other games were seen. We assembled around Steve and Anja's table, joined occasionally by bag-fetishist cat Molly and, somewhat incongruously watched by an oven in front of the bookshelves. As well as the hosts there was me (Sam), Adam, Ian and Martin, and after some preliminary chat we played a six-player game of Just One, the co-operative challenge of word-guessing and clue-giving. I was first to guess and appalled Martin (maybe everyone, but Martin put it into words) by not getting the word 'Large' from the clues Massive, Little, Big, Elephantine, and Hadron. I'd forgotten the Hadron Collider is actually the Large Hadron Collider. To be honest, having used the word 'Elephant' as my example when explaining the game, I kept looking at 'Elephantine' in some confusion, wondering if it was some meta clue.

We shrugged off my error and steamed on to a victory the game grudgingly declared as reasonable, with Anja the other incorrect guesser. I can't remember what the word (or guess) was now, but fun was had.

Then we split into two threes, with Martin coaxing Steve and Anja into playing his latest Knizian purchase, Prosperity, and Ian, Adam and I playing Letter Tycoon.

Letter Tycoon has light rules but does require some thinking time, so I didn't really perceive what was happening in Prosperity. It looked like a score-track, some communal tiles, some communal tile claiming and individual tile appropriation/arrangement in ways that made them help each other. Possibly. I did hear Steve complaining that he wasn't being prosperous, though.

On our wordy side of the table we were trying to make long words and buy patents on letters, which would pay us whenever our opponents used the letters in question. Some patents (on the lesser-travelled letters) also gave special powers: Adam scored double, for instance, when his word began and ended with vowels. We also discovered a new rule (© me) that you can only buy the patents for the letters in the word just played, which made a lot of sense, albeit it did make the game marginally slower. Ian got lots of cheap patents that didn't pay out a great deal. Adam saved up for the E. My combo of T, R and S paid dividends, literally:

Sam 46
Adam 41
Ian 27

In Prosperity there was still much hypnotic staring at the table in process, with raucous laughter and high-velocity swearing (©Martin) notably absent, and the end not yet in sight. So we decided to give Mini Rails a go, albeit BGG warned us it was a better game with 4 or 5 players rather than three...

Over six rounds every player takes two company discs and activates two actions: build track (for one of six companies); or take a share. Whatever share you take has a value of zero at first, no matter what the current value of the company. And the company value changes when track is built: building onto a hex with white pips increases the value; red pips make it drop, and shares can drop well below zero. Everyone wants the companies they've invested in to take the most fruitful route to the centre of the board (five white pips!) only to have Adam or Ian (or me) veer their track off in shitty directions.

To that very simple premise though there is a considerable catch - at the end of each round, one company disc will be left over, and this company has 'paid its taxes'. At the end of the game all companies who have 'paid their taxes' can ignore any shares in the negative values. And any companies who haven't, ignore shares that would have paid out (but still take the hit on negative value shares). So it's quite possible to invest heavily in a company only to have it never pay taxes and subsequently turn to Madoff Investement Securities in your hands. And as Adam noted, it's also quite possible to set out nefarious and end up accidentally benevolent as well...

Second round in process. Yellow paid taxes in round one.

There's quite a bit of head-scratching as every action you take has considerable ramifications -temporary alliances are forged, and then broken, in an ongoing game of track-based regicide. I won, but I can't really claim to have done so with wit or cunning. We were all faintly bamboozled, but also bewitched. An intriguing game!

Sam 10
Ian 9
Adam 3

Prosperity was still prospering - in terms of time, anyway - so the three of us bashed through a quick three-player Just One, using the variant of being able to pitch in two clues each. It makes the game too easy, really, but it was quite fun finding ways to combine your clues together.

My clues for 'lake'

Then, just like for the UK in the near future, Prosperity ended!

Martin 38
Anja 21
Steve 13

Nobody seemed electrified, though they all said it was interesting. Maybe the comments will illuminate us.

Steve, who'd been managing a dicky tummy as well as those clever Knizian cogs, instantly retired to bed. Anja stayed up for one more game - another blast of Just One, where our attempts to achieve the perfect 13 were undone on our very first word. I can't remember what it was now. We were all impressed by Martin getting 'pebble' from this though:

Martin hazarded you'd use a pebble to judge the depth of water (listening to the sound it makes) although Echo clue-giver Anja was actually referencing 'Echo Beach' by Martha and the Muffins. She said she was assuming someone else would write 'beach' as a clue, although considering Martin's clue-giving was, wherever possible, based on niche indie bands, I thought if he'd got that, he might well have ended up guessing 'muffin'. But he didn't.

We ended with another average score, according the rulebook's palpable disdain, but everyone enjoyed Just One - it serves as a good evening starter and ender. Which brings us to the end of this particular one, with thanks to our gracious hosts and big digital high-fives all around.  Until next time...

Gothic Horror

The recent Chess World Championship has seen a spike in interest in the game. When Lee Sedol played AlphaGo, it seemed that every website that supplied Go boards completely ran out. Alas, my coverage of our approximately monthly Time Of Crisis games has not had a similar reaction.

The four of us, Ian, Martin, Joe and myself set up at Martin’s house. The game was so familiar that we all joined in with the unboxing without any real prompting. We sat down to begin at five to eight. I went in Gallia, Martin chose Pannonia, Ian set up in Hispania and Joe went for Thracia.

I didn’t go for my usual unorthodox opening and so all of us had identical cards for the first three rounds. In the Three Blue Two Red opening round, I set up a new base in Egypt and then watched in annoyance as the neighbouring Syria was invaded by some early Sassanids. Martin took Macedonia, Ian took Africa and the rival leader Postumus turned up on my doorstep in Gallia, and Joe took Asia.

The the Three Red Two Yellow round, I used my reds to reinforce my army in Gallia and then killed Postumus with my militia. The two legions stationed there seemed happy to let the militia do all the work and die in the process. Then, unobstructed with matters of war, the rest built armies and buildings. Martin put an army in Macedonia and a Limes in Egypt. Ian put an army in Hispania and a Limes in Africa. Joe put an army in Asia and a Basilica in Thracia.

In the Three Blue Two Red round, I reinforced Egypt and hired a new governor since I had an eye on Syria. Martin moved his army from Macedonia into Galatia and stationed a governor there. Ian went from Hispania to Britannia and put a governor there. At this point, two Goths invaded Thracia, where Joe had been the only one of us to decide not to build a Limes. His lovely Basilica was under threat. Joe attacked the Goths, getting only one hit while they did three points of damage and wiped out his army. He then moved his spare army from Asia into Thracia and, just for the hell of it, tried to get voted into Rome, needing four votes from two dice. Nope.

In round four, I (4R 2B) moved my army from Egypt into Syria and tried to wipe out the Sassanids there. I failed, and now Egypt was undefended. Martin had 6B and 3R, and he foederatied a Frank into his Pannonian army and reinforced it, before moving into Rome and becoming an Emperor. The first of the evening. Then more Goths invaded Joe’s territory: this time, Asia. Ian (3R 3B 3Y) stuck a mob in Pannonia, built a Basilica in Hispania and recruited a new governor. And he tributed the Goths in Asia as an act of kindness towards the already beleaguered Joe. Especially since Cniva, the Goth leader, suddenly turned up in his homeland looking menacingly south.

Joe, meanwhile (3B 3R) built and reinforced a new army in Thracia and took on the lone Goth. He killed him, but the Goth got three hits and Joe’s brand new two-legion army was reduced to a single wounded legion army. But they were still alive, and Joe managed to get voted back into Thracia. He also tried to get voted into my Egypt. He needed two votes with two dice, so just had to avoid ones. He rolled double ones.

It was an appalling stroke of luck which was compounded by Joe bemoaning his misfortune and picking up the two dice to roll them again. Another set of double ones. It’s wrong to laugh at a man at his lowest ebb, but we did.

At this point the scores were Martin 18, Ian 14, Andrew 13, Joe 12.

I repaired my army in Syria, attacked and finally beat the Sassanids. I got voted in by a grateful populace. I put a militia in Egypt and failed miserably to get voted into Emperor Martin’s Pannonia. A Sassanid invaded Martin’s Galatia, showing that the game itself was better at trying to unseat the Emperor than we had been. Martin spent his round getting rid of the mob and then boosting support in Galatia to a safe level where it fell back down again. Ian reinforced his army in Africa and built a Basilica in Britannia. Joe built another new army, this time in Thracia, then boosted support in Asia and Thracia. The barbarian leader Shapur I turns up among the Sassanids.

I foederatied a Sassanid into my Syrian army and attacked Martin’s militia in Pannonia, before being voted in there. I had four provinces but felt very thinly spread. Emperor Martin got himself voted into Egypt, where he built a new army. He then killed the Sassanid in Galatia, foederatied another Sassanid from its homeland into Galatia and then boosted support in Egypt and Macedonia.

And finally, we were all ready to mount an attack against our Emperor. Ian built a new two-legion army in Africa, and sent it into Egypt to attack Martin. He failed, but then used six blue to get the votes he needed to get his governor in there and then boosted his support there.

Joe moved his spare army from Thracia into Macedonia and won (with lots of sixes) and then got voted into there. Martin was down to only two provinces. I moved my army from Gallia into Roma and, despite being outnumbered, I attack. And won! I moved my army into the capital, then built a Basilica in Pannonia and got myself voted in the senate. A new Emperor!

Martin, with just one province, was swiftly voted back into Egypt and then, with his army moving from Rome into my Gallia, got himself elected there, too. Then a second barbarian leader arrived among the Sassanids, making them look rather menacing.

Ian repaired his legion in Egypt and had another attempt at fighting Martin there. Failed again. Again, this time, was unable to get voted in either. So he took solace in boosting support in Britannia, a country that so often promises quite stability but had recently been a hotbed of activity in our games. In this game, though, this island saw no action at all and was a solid banker for Ian.

Then a rival emperor turned up but, thankfully, arrived in my Syria so I didn’t have to go far to attack him.

Joe attacked the Goths in Asia, even though they’d been tributed. He rolled a one! And they rolled two hits, wiping his army out. More astonishing bad luck for Joe.

I foederatied a Sassanid into my army in Syria and then attacked and killed the Priest King there. He got two hits in response, but those went to the Sassanids in my army who were wiped out. They do say a war isn’t a war until a brother kills his brother.

Martin foederatied an army from Frankland into Gallia, moved that army back into Rome and unseated me from the capital. He became Emperor again, and ended the round on 59 points. So close to ending the game unusually early! It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

Ian has the unusual hand of 1Y 12R. But he had a Pretorian Guard among those cards allowing him to ignore Martin’s four-legion army in Rome when going for election. He used all twelve red points on getting into the senate and succeeded! Emperor Ian! Joe took Gallia in an election and then built yet another army. This one was in Asia and it attacked the two Goths there. Joe rolled 2-2. No hits. He declared a Flanking Manoeuvre and, after the Goths got no hits, he rolled again. 2-1 Still no hits. Still no joy.

At this point, heading into what must be the final round, the scores were Martin 59, Andrew 50, Ian 44, Joe 30.

I reinforced in Pannonia and then lost to the Alamanni there. Pity. I became Emperor with a Damnatio Memoriae but did not damn Ian’s memory because I’m so nice. Now it was Martin’s turn with 7B and 9R. He needed to become Emperor to trigger the game end so first he tried to use two blue points to get voted into Gallia, but failed. He cursed his choice to only use two points when he realised that, with his army in Rome, he only needed one vote to become Emperor and he had six points to do it with. A bit of overkill even if my governor in Rome had a Quaestor token on it, meaning other players needed a roll of three or above to register a vote instead of the usual two or above. With that regret hanging in the air, he rolled six dice for one vote.

2-2-2-2-2-5.

It took us a couple of seconds to mentally process such a roll but, when the shock faded, we realised that he had managed it. Just about. “Good job I only used two dice on Gallia,” he remarked as he became Emperor once more. He then damned my memory, so I lost some points. Only three points, though. Worse things have happened. To Joe, mostly.

He then spent his red points attacking our weaker armies for points, me in Italia, Ian in Egypt, before heading into the Sassanid homeland and killing those two barbarian leaders just for show.

Ian’s crisis roll suddenly sent four nomads into his own territories. After an entire game where it looked like they weren’t going to join in, they suddenly pitched up. And Ian had no red cards in his final hand. But he was able to tribute the group of three in Africa and foederati the single on in Hispania, so it was all good. He then failed to get voted into Gallia and built an Amphitheatre: the most useless building in the game. We all cheered.

Cniva finally invaded, but it was Ian’s Galatia so it was of no consequence. In his final go, Joe kills those pesky Goths in Asia, then moved into Pannonia and killed the Alamanni there, before finally ending on a flourish by building not just one but two Amphitheatres! Hurrah!

Martin 85
Andrew 60
Ian 56
Joe 43

We all agreed it was a weird game, and Martin’s luck with holding on to Emperorhood for three turns near the start was invaluable. Still, each game offers a unique experience. This time, it was quite a short experience, ending at about 10:20pm, so we played Yokai Septet a trick taking game that involves winning tricks with sevens in them, and avoiding those that don’t.

We were seated with Martin and Joe pairing up against Ian and me. I was a newcomer and Ian didn’t seem confident against the mindmeld that Martin and Joe have built up over the years of lunchtime gaming. It was over in four rounds when Ian got a hand of mostly high cards and we ended up winning lots of tricks with no sevens.

Joe and Martin 10
Andrew and Ian 6

And then we were done. Thanks for hosting, Martin. And thanks to all for the evening.