Managed to get in a few games with Matt & Dave on Bank Holiday Monday.
We started with Puerto Rico, with quite a few of the expansion buildings thrown in (Black Market, Church, Small Wharf and Library).
The opening of the game sees Matt & I both try to use Black Market to our advantage, but not to any great success. The plantation tiles give me loads of corn, so I end up being the heavy shipper this game. I almost miss Harbour, but luckily for me Dave takes Factory instead.
(This occurs because of the following scenario: I have been saving for Harbour, and can afford it if I take Builder. But this would mean passing over Trader with 2 bonus doubloons. So I do the trade, but now everybody has enough to afford Harbour, and my LHO, Matt, picks Builder, meaning I can miss the Harbour. In my position, heavy on Corn, but with no trade goods, that would be bad).
My lack of income continues to cause me problems, and leads to me missing out on a Wharf. I purchase Small Wharf instead, but in hindsight Small Warehouse would have been more effective. I am hoping to purchase a Customs House, but I don’t come anywhere near affording one before the game ends. Matt doesn’t get one either, but he has still scored considerably more in Buildings than me. Dave ends on two large buildings, but only one occupied, when we run out of victory points.
The final scores are very close
Dave: 48
Simon: 51
Matt: 52
The game is close enough that I probably threw it away with one really dumb Craftsman pick about halfway through. And the player who won was the player with both the Harbour and the Wharf. That is starting to annoy me about 3 player.
Afterwards we teach Dave Goa. (Matt has only played once before, but seems to have remembered the rules very well.)
Goa is a strange game. The economics are very odd, and the luck elements (getting good colony draws, getting useful expedition cards, and hitting expedition sets at end of game) can overwhelm good play.
At halfway I think Dave has the best position. But he makes some mistakes in the second half (miscounting the number of colonists he has available, leading to a bad miss, not properly appreciating that the triangular scoring rewards you for concentrating on maxi one or two ‘tech trees’, and not planning properly for the end of the game, particularly the most cash bonus).
I beat Matt by a couple of points, on some good cash management (I was tracking approximate cash) and an expedition card strategy that saw me end up with 8 expedition cards in hand! This worked as follows: draw up to my hand size of 3, then use the Swap tile to take the Three Expeditions cards tile, and then hit two Expedition card bonuses by advancing Ship Building. I finished with a triple, a pair and three singles for 12 points from expedition cards. It meant I couldn’t play expedition cards for most of the second half of the game but that was a small price to pay.
We end by playing a quick game of Carcassonne Hunters & Gatherers. As usual with Carc I finish last, although this time I don’t think it’s my fault. Dave & Matt got a long sequence of tiles that let them both score for completed river and forests every turn (& when they only had one meeple left each to add insult to injury). I got a sequence of awkward tiles, and couldn’t compete with that kind of scoring.
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