Another Sunday, another boardgame session! This week Becky joins us. Apparently she used to play, but hasn’t been around for a while.
We start with Domaine (the “knight and castles” game), which Fiona has been pestering me to bring again since we first played it a few weeks ago. I miss out a couple of rules during the explanation (we forget to place starting knights with the castle until about turn 3, and I forgot to mention about paying for knights in forests).
Everybody knew about the importance of starting round the edge, and gaining early income (which we all did), but Becky didn’t realise that the other main point of the game is claiming the large negative spaces that are left in the middle of the game, so she finished last by some way.
I was placing Castles last during setup, so I had less access to the external mines than the other players. So once I have my first mine, I concentrate on playing Knights onto my central castle to set up a high scoring central domaine. At one point Becky can screw me over before I complete it, expanding through the middle of it to cut off most of my points, but she probably doesn’t see it (she admitted afterwards that had trouble visualizing the empty spaces, which is completely normal for a first game), and I get to complete a high scoring domaine with four knights in it. My first prime target for expansion was Fiona’s domaine, but she has an alliance card, so after expanding into the Capital City I am forced to expand into Becky’s only decent domaine (feels a bit rude as she is the beginner, but I had no other decent choice).
Whilst I was plodding along with an income of 1 a turn (2 when I completed the central domaine) Tony quickly got an income of 2, then 3, and had 4 before the end of the game. He gets a decent large domaine, and has most money at the end for a five point win over me. (Fiona finishes second richest, but still a few points behind me).
I could have won on the very last turn, but Tony has an alliance card that prevents me from using my last expansion to get a Diamond monoply. Foiled!
After Domaine I want to play Ticket to Ride, to see if my extensive online experience (50+ games, almost all fourplayer), will tell in the real world. I’m pretty certain they won’t have seen strategies like “ignore almost everything except the six-train routes” and “complete your initial tickets, then ignore everything except six-train routes” (my favourite strategies for the original TTR).
But instead we play Alhambra. It’s the game that defines our group really; we always seem to end up playing it.
For the second time in the evening we bugger up the setup – this time everybody seems to assume that somebody else has dealt with the scoring cards, and they end up just randomly shuffled into the deck. I was in the toilet, so it’s wasn’t my fault!
The first round turns up almost all of the gardens, and goes on for slightly too long, before we get suspicious, and fix the scoring cards. I have a couple of majorities, for second place behind Fiona, who had Towers plus a huge wall. My strategy for this section of the game was not to waste money fighting over the Gardens, a decision that definitely paid off (I didn’t buy any throughout the entire game).
At the second scoring I go into the lead (I still have two outright majorities, and some seconds), just ahead of Fiona, but she just catches me on the final scoring round (111) with a huge wall (fourteen I think). Tony finishes third, and sadly Becky finishes miles behind.
This game is probably representative of our overall Alhambra results – generally Fiona and I tend to do the best I think.
I’ve now played Alhambra probably five or six times, and I developed a strategy that works for me, based on efficiently acquiring tiles that actually matter in terms of majorities (don’t buy stuff just cause it’s free!). I tend not to worry about building a really large wall, preferring to have a flexible city, with plenty of room for new purchases.
Fiona adopts a different plan – she tends to be more of a committed wall builder, as shown above. It works well for her.
After Alhambra, we have just about an hour before Tony has to get his bus, so we decide to play San Juan. Becky has played Puerto Rico before, and it’s not very difficult, so we’re underway pretty quickly. This time I remember to explain all the rules!
It takes Becky a while to fully comprehend what’s going on, but she has a really good early position (Smithy built & Guildhall in hand!), and is able to claim the victory by a few points from Fiona, who has a nice City Hall setup, but struggled to find good final builds (despite Councillor with Library double privilege!). Tony has an okay production position (Well & Aquaduct etc), and has both City Hall and Guildhall in hand when the game is about to end, but not enough time to build them both, and finished third. He probably underestimated how quickly the Smithy player can end the game. Once they’ve built the Guild Hall, they will quite happily build Indigo every turn if they can. I have a terrible hand all game, only seeing a Palace and Triumphal Arch very late in the game, and I’m only able to build them buy overbuilding with a crane. I get just over 20 points in last place.
I don’t think San Juan works particularly well as a four player, for two reasons.
Firstly, there just aren’t enough six-costs buildings to go around (this isn’t helped by the fact that Guild Hall and City Hall are so much better than the other two). If you don’t get one early you have to play flexibly, but then even if you do draw one you’ll still lose to the player who got Guildhall or City Hall early, and played to maximise it.
Secondly there aren’t enough roles - the ratio of three roles out of five that occurs in two and three-player feels right to me, as it requires you to think about what’s going to happen. With four of the five roles occurring every round, the balance seems off.
For four player card game fillers I’ll try to stick to High Society in the future.
I was going to insert a rant here about people who chat too much when it’s their go, but it was probably a bit mean-spirited, so I’ll skip it. [During the evening I actually swore at Tony - he’s slow enough anyway, without spending his turn chatting about comic books characters. This drew a shocked “Simon swore!” from Fiona, that being the point of not generally swearing, people pay attention when you do.]
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