Tony and I went round to Fiona's on Sunday evening. It was still quite light, and the table inside was mess, so we decided to play outside.
We start with a couple of hands of San Juan. In the first game Fiona and I are both into trading (she has Silver and Well, I have built Tobacco, Well, Aquaduct and Trading Post), whilst Tony is the odd man out, though he does have the strong Quarry & Carpenter combo. Fee and I then also both build Prefecture, to make Tony’s position look really bad, but he is fortunate enough to find the final one a few turns later.
I have the sort of balanced trading / violet position where I’m happy to find either Guild Hall or City Hall. I find a Guild Hall, so I close out with all production buildings. Tony doesn’t find a City Hall but does hit Triumphal Arch, a couple of monuments and Palace for a two point win over me. Fiona’s position looks awful but she has a final build City Hall to not lose by too much.
The second game is really weird. I get a first turn Poor House, and then proceed to rapidly build a collection of one cost buildings, triggering the poor House each time. I get to my eighth build four (!!!) buildings ahead of both Fiona and Tony. In addition to all my one cost buildings I have a Coffee for trading and a Chapel that is helping to keep me poor, effectively providing free victory points. Tony is amassing an okay (small) collection of violet buildings, but he has a Palace as opposed to a City Hall or Triumphal Arch, and that means I can close with a score of 22 for a 2 point win. I’ve never seen that strategy work in a three player before (and I’ve only seen it a few times in two-player). My draws during the opening turns were ideal – it seemed that every time the Poor House triggered the card I drew was another 1 cost building.
After that Fee wants to play something that will leave time for another game afterwards. Tony suggests Lord of the Rings (with F&F expansion), I foolishly describe it as a “one hour game” and we managed to talk Fee into it. This game of Friends and Foes proceeds much as the last one, we start with Sauron on 15, are never really in any danger of dying to 8 foes, and manage to skip Helm’s Deep and Shelob’s lair without too much trouble. In fact the four foes required to skip Shelob’s Lair are the last four in the deck, so under the rules as originally printed we would have won at that point. Instead we are playing the variant I saw suggested on BGG where we gain the Watchful Peace card when we kill all the foes. (Note that if we had been playing the official Black Gate variant this also would have lead to a trivial win – three of the last four foes re
The final board is only interesting as we manage to bugger up who is to be the ring bearer on the Mordor board, and I end with the ring, despite being the only one anywhere near Sauron, who is still on 14. Still we still have Gandalf’s Healing and the OOO Feature card, so we were never in too much danger, and sure enough we get near the summit, I put on the Ring and use Gandalf to automatically move four spaces, and we reach the summit and win.
Somehow Friends and Foes feels easier than the regular game. I think part of this is due to the fact that with Sam’s new ability and the new Gandalf card ‘Sauron does not advance’ you can effectively cancel three events, rather than just one. Gandalf cards that used to be quite important like ‘double wild’ and ‘draw four cards’ aren’t always needed any more.
Of course the game took much longer than one hour and by the end the light was failing badly (we were playing in the garden), which made it hard to see what was going on, which had a negative impact on the game I think. It’s hard for everyone to be involved when they can’t see what’s going on. Not a great gaming experience.
It’s getting late by then, so the only way we’ll have time for another game is if I stay outside and clear up LotR whilst Fee and Tony go inside, clear some room and setup something else. When I get inside they’re setting up Settlers of Catan.
I’d never played Settlers before, and based on this game I don’t particularly want to again. Trading & negotiation isn’t a mechanic I particularly enjoy, so for me it was just an hour of sitting around, rolling dice, occasionally trading when somebody made an offer that tempted me. My interest diminished even further during the game when it became apparent we weren’t going to finish in time, and I was in last place anyway. Sure enough we didn’t finish. A lame finishing to an overall sub-par evening. And we won’t be able to play for the next few weeks probably (more re-enactment events).
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