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Gary Heidenreich
United States
Milwaukee
Wisconsin
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January 18, 2012
Yes, I know it's Wednesday. It has been a hectic beginning of the New Year so the days have been all off. A spur of the moment make up day for this Tuesday happened. It was Chris, Timm, Kevin and myself yesterday. With four, I wanted to teach Chris and Kevin, Luna, my hot game of the moment. I managed to acquire a copy relatively cheap ($50) and since I'm a Stefan Feld fanboy, it was one I had been trying to get at a reasonable price for awhile. Anyhoo, I got it about two weeks ago and had played two two-player games of it. It was time to play a four player game. So, we got the game set up, rules explained and off we went. If you haven't played it, it is basically a worker placement game. A different type. Every turn you have your choice of 14 or so actions you can do. Each action is very quick but to get something done it might take three actions to get to do it. The isles are the actions where you have your novices placed to be able to do a few things. Then, you can promote your novices to the temple where there is a whole other place you can work and play to get points for placing in the temple and each round you have novices in the temple. Of course, there is the "Feld Wall" to work for points, as well. I call this a "head rubbing" game. You have a ton you want to do and since the players drive how long or short the round is, you aren't sure if you are going to be able to do what you need to do before it ends. Very tense.
This game, Chris and Kevin both picked up on it quickly as they had the highest scores. Chris got 87, Kevin had 84 (in a very tight finish, obviously), Timm had 69 and I scraped up 63 (as I did not get involved in a few of the early scoring situations). I read about bad AP with this game and how it takes some very long. We can be somewhat bad with that but the game, each time I've played it, has clocked in right at the 25 minute per person time (as noted on the box).
Thurn and Taxis was pulled off the shelf. I suck at this game. I like it but for some reason I get slaugtered at it. This game was no different. It started out ok as the cards that were availble to me allowed me to get a seven route right away, with dropping five into the middle section. Cool. But, I had to abort a route after that immediately. Ouch. Everyone else seemed to be moving right along, filling areas, etc. It felt like I had my turn skipped about six times with as much as everyone else did compared to me. I didn't but man, it felt like it. Kevin forced the end game (and I was the start player) and won the game. Everyone had bunches of houses left. Kevin scored 21, Chris had 14, Timm had 9 and I had 2. Two! I have a feeling when I go back to look at my last game I got the same amount of points.
We then broke into teams, Kevin and I versus Chris and Timm for a game of Some'R'Set. First hand I won the bid with 15. Came up with fourteen points. Big ouch to start the game. Then the bad guys won a bid and earned five sandbags. Okay, we can bounce back. Down 37 to -2. We did and won the next two if three hands to bring the score to 47 to 32. Timm and Chris dominated the last hand, scoring 20 (after dropping points for their sandbags) to earn the win.
#167
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