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Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
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A couple of games that we've been looking at recently are Reef Encounter and especially Parade.
Parade has been a go-to game since I picked it up. It is light and quick but needs just the right amount of thinking about to be interesting, without getting too much for an evening game before bed.
Our last 2 player session went something like this: it was Saturday afternoon and we were planning on going to see Harry Potter part 7.2. The show wasn't for a little while. So ...Parade it is then.
First game was hard fought, solid majorities were pushed out and otherwise low cards were taken, making it tight. And as seems to happen, the fallen majority calls the game - it was my yellows that did for me this time. 22-26.
Second game and another close one, right down to the wire. My wife's attempt to break my yellow majority was defeated, but she kept compact, only taking purple other than that, while I sat with many colors, though nothing high. One majority I held was in green - 2 cards, both low though (0 and 4). With the end game, J played the green 3 down, making my 2 points into 4 and making the difference between us from me winning by a point into her winning by a point! 19-20
Although perhaps I simply took too many in my majorities. It is hard to say where the mistake lies.
A final game before we left, and far from low scoring this time. I took many in red without a clear majority, she did the same in green. I had too much in yellow too, though it was her who went to 6 colors (I had 5). In the end, the epic contest added up to a tie. 52-52
As it happened, the show was full - that will teach us not to book our tickets in advance. So we came home and played Reef Encounter instead.
We had played it the previous night after a peruse of the game shelves. How is this for 2, she inquired. Works perfectly fine, I replied. So we played. It had been a while for her so it needed some rules review, but we were quickly underway. Somehow, the game did seem to drag a bit, with neither of us able to push our corals for the end and the final came when all 10 open sea tiles were fixed (and both of us still had shrimp on the board). We added up - I had more tiles overall but she had the most valuable (the color of my final coral too).
Her: Black(5)x5+Yellow(2)x7=39
Me: Pink(3)x6+Orange(3)x5+White(2)x3=39
Tiebreaker 1: tiles in front of screen: 1-1
Tiebreaker 2: tiles behind screen: 11-11
Tiebreaker 3: coral on board: 3-3
We'll call it a tie then.
However, my wife was dissatisfied by the tied game, feeling that the game had lacked a certain something. I thought it probably just a poor flow of tiles - the color of tile never seemed to match the cube so it took a while to accumulate. We applied some house rules (she suggested that we could put as many tiles into the box at the beginning as we liked, but all one color). We did so and she wanted to adjust the end conditions too, but it was unnecessary this time. It just flew, with the same color tiles turning up in multiples and on the same color cube more often than not, it seemed. She ate her coral most efficiently, twice playing a color then expanding it the following turn, then eating it. She had a long lead in manipulating the dominance, so she had more and they were worth more. My coral seemed to grow to 4 then I'd grow another color and eventually get back to the first color. I was crushed utterly.
Her: Yellow(4)x5+Pink(4)x5+Black(4)x3+Orange(2)x2=56
Me: Yellow(4)x4+White(1)x2+Pink(4)x3=30
After such a quick game we wanted to try it again. One of the things that had bothered her was the abandoning of the board through the game, opening too much space so it became solitaire like at the end. So we instituted a house rule that you could re-use a shrimp that had been eaten other than the first one, with the game end trigger either being all 4 shrimp off the board or the dominance tiles all fixed.
This allowed a bit more growing of the coral and some big coral did indeed grow up. I twice ate a coral of size 8, she ate one of size 9, among others. We both favored the orange coral, but that was not obvious from the opening, with both initial plays being of other colors. So unsurprisingly, orange was the most valuable but sadly I had less of that, after some tiles early on, the growth stalled out for me. I had decent scores for each one, but her's were more plentiful and better.
Her: Orange(5)x7+White(1)x3+Yellow(3)x5+Black(3)x4=65
Me: Orange(5)x3+Pink(3)x8+Black(3)x3=48
I'm not too sure about the effect of her house rules (or if they were even necessary). I do find myself less enamored of the game than I was initially, though it has been many plays in the reaching this point. Perhaps my wife is right that the 2 player game, though still decent, lacks a certain something that more players give it?
But we were back to Parade later on. We introduced the game to our friends Geoff and Leah after the delicious dinner they brought. They took to it well, though Leah had a knack for picking up cards and in a diverse number of colors too. Geoff, as a result, was able to miss out on the points and finished with a very low score indeed. My wife and I did OK, but not quite enough to challenge. Geoff won 3-10-12-28
They both liked it enough to play again (a common request with Parade so far - it seems it is rarely played just once at a time), though Geoff was much less able to duck this time, seemingly getting the wrong card on picking up points regularly. He would turn some of that into majority to mitigate the damage, but it was still a good few points. Leah did much better, working her cards well, and I had a nice majority in one color and low points in others. But none of us could challenge my wife who had one color in a solid majority and 0s in 2 others. Adding a 2 for her last play, she got up to 8. 8-16-20-28
We finished off the night playing The Red Dragon Inn. I always find myself pushing my cards too hard and never win. But I can never resist playing a card just to read the title. Despite this, I was "not allowed" to be the Sneak - I was Zot the Wizard and Pooky. Gerki stole the pot from me after my Winning Hand and then took another for himself. Gambling more or less abandoned, I was as much in danger from passing out from alcohol as anything. Deirdre too was getting the worse for wear (though she did heal well). Fiona and Gerki started off almost immune, but things shifted and all of us were feeling the effects, Gerki taking hits as well and even Fiona was racking up the alcohol. At one point, I drew my drink with my tokens almost touching - coffee! But a drinking contest on Deirdre's turn did for me - and Fiona too. My next card was one to avoid a drink (and my next drink was water!) So close. The last two went back and forth, but Gerki was always teetering on the edge and eventually fell.
Sometimes this game comes off as just a bit too random but this one (perhaps played in the right spirit?) hit the right spot for that point in the evening.
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