Christine Doiron
United States
Juneau
Alaska
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My husband (Antoine) and I played this game for the first time last night. I bought it because I'd been considering it, and it was on sale for 40% at the book and toy store where I work. The extra discount swayed me just enough.
I have a big problem remembering what color I am when playing a game. So, whenever possible, I play blue so that I'll always know what color I am. I was happy to see that there were blue pioneers (thinnish meeples with hats) to use. Unfortunately, I realized upon counting that in a two player game, they've only provided enough pioneers in red and yellow. So, a two player game will always be red against yellow. Never blue. Bummer!
I got past my irritation and we started. I went first. We placed all of our pioneers, being careful to spread them all around the board rather than clumping them together.
Although both of us were new to the game, I had a bit of an advantage in that I'd read the rules a couple of times and read posts on this site and had a few days to kind of think about my strategy before our first play. As a consequence, I focused on making the largest territories using up the fewest possible pioneers and fewest kinds of landscapes. Antoine made mistakes like sending 3 of his pioneers in to overwhelm only one of mine, in a territory that wasn't worth many points. By the time he adjusted his strategy it was already too late and I was far, far ahead.
The game ended when I had moved my last 2 pioneers into an area to start walling off, then my husband tried to move in and ended up trapping me so I couldn't make a last move. Thus the game ended immediately.
I won handily, 76 to 42
Note: I'll post a thorough review of the game when we've played it more. At this point I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it, and I'm still resentful about them not providing equal amounts of all colors.
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msg
United States
Newbury
New Hampshire
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I still haven't managed to play this after buying it dirt cheap online. But I feel your pain: After opening it I became very, very annoyed that my copy was missing pieces...until I realized that they purposely gave unequal amounts of each color. Even though my copy is "complete," it still feels lacking.
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Christine Doiron
United States
Juneau
Alaska
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Yep. And they don't even tell you that. You have to figure it out by first trying to count out the pieces in the colors you want. Honestly, it pissed me off enough that I'm not sure I would have bought it if I'd known ahead of time. It's just irritating when a publisher tries to cut corners like that.
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Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
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I agree strongly - it's a penny-wise pound-foolish annoyance to save a few cents by reducing the number of certain colors so they can't be used in games with 2 or 3 players. Luckily most games don't do that, which makes it all the more surprising and irritating when I play a game that does do it.
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Cristian Cano
Spain
Sevilla
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I disagree, the publisher is making the work for you, you won't have to remember the number of pawns you need depending in the number of players 2 to 4. You play with predetermined colors so you have the right number of pawns always.
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Russ Williams
Poland
Wrocław
Dolny Śląsk
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bravucon wrote: I disagree, the publisher is making the work for you, you won't have to remember the number of pawns you need depending in the number of players 2 to 4. You play with predetermined colors so you have the right number of pawns always.
Seriously? (I confess this is the first time I've heard someone express a positive response to publishers doing this. I've heard lots of people complain about the frustration of not getting to play with their preferred color.)
But then you have to remember which are the predetermined colors, or compare the number of pawns in each color to figure it out.
For me, the cost of remembering the number of pawns for each number of players, or of spending 5 seconds glancing at the rules, is worth being able to simply say "I want green!" instead of "Is green one of the available colors for our number of players?"
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Cristian Cano
Spain
Sevilla
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OK, although been a game that costs 6 € I think you can't be angry about that... It's a great game for the price it costs.
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