I arrive to find Fiona playing Palabra with Marlena and Jim – so we have five players, and I haven’t brought any games that play with five. Doh! Luckily Tony did bring some suitable games.
Palabra is a card based word game. It basically plays like Scrabble, with you trying to make the highest scoring word from the seven letters you have, but some of the play options and scoring are quite unbalanced. As the score multipliers are on the cards (rather than on the board as in Scrabble), you have very little chance if you don’t draw multipliers. And two of the cards let you cancel somebody else’s word and you can draw a card to replace it!, Still, it plays quite quickly, so you can overlook the deficiencies.
Tony arrives 10 minutes later, in time to see the end of the game of Palabra, which Jim wins, despite Fiona’s first word scoring 106, and Fiona only telling Jim and Marlena that cards in hand at the end count negative after the draw deck has gone!
After Palabra we decide to play Puerto Rico. Jim and Marlena have never played before, so we take some time explaining the rules before we start, and the rest of us haven’t played five player for a long time. The player order is Simon, Tony, Marlena, Fiona, Jim.
The game plays really weirdly. Part of the reason is probably the destabilizing effect of two beginners and the unfamiliarity of five player, but probably a bigger reason is that I don’t flip up any corn for the first three Settlers phases!
Early on shipping is very slow, and everyone is trying to make and sell more expensive goods. I am trying for coffee, but it’s very slow, because I just miss out on the Roaster by 1 doubloon. Meanwhile Fiona, one of the starting corn players is accumulating a lot of shipping points, whilst Tony has the first Tobacco trade – taking trader with two bonus doubloons! (set-up by a beginner mistake from Jim).
Still I am the first player to trade coffee, and have realised that I am only going to win by concentrating on building, so I grab a second quarry, and set myself up for a second coffee trade. I even make good use of office. The shortage of buildings in five player does make you use buildings that you wouldn’t normally touch.
With both offices purchased we get some really weird trade houses like Coffee / Coffee / Corn / Corn and Coffee / Coffee / Indigo / Coffee.
Coming in to the endgame the games is too close to call, Tony and I both have two large buildings each, whilst Fiona has the Customs House and obviously more shipping points. In the end I take the game by 53 points, to Tony's 52 and Fiona's 51, but it' s fortunate for me that Marlena causes the game to end by picking mayor. If the game goes another round I definitely get overtaken.
After PR, it's getting late and Jim and Marlena have to leave, leaving about 75 minutes for Tony, Fiona and me. Instead of sensibly playing Carcassonne or Alhambra, we decide to play Dos Rios, after I teach it to them. As we take 15 minutes setting up and going through the rules, we don't get anywhere near finishing. When we call time Tony probably has an unassailable lead - with a good postion on the board, and plenty of Dams.
After playing with both two and three players I think Dos Rios is hitting the trade list (or maybe the UK math trade!)- the position can change so quickly that it isn't worth planning much before your turn, making the downtime bad, and the huge changes to the board make the individual tactics each turn seem to dominate the long term strategy. In the two player game you could plan a coherent strategy, but the game can be decided by favourable harvest draws, which can overwhelm an advantadge gained through good play. I don't have any desire to play four-player.
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