Merric Blackman
Australia
Waubra
Victoria
Ramping up my reviewing.
Happily playing games for many, many years.
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Paul had indicated that he had a light headache, so learning a new game would probably not be the best option. As a result, we played a second game of In the Year of the Dragon, where we could see if anyone had learnt anything from the previous game.
As it turned out, someone has. And it wasn't me!
Here's the initial set-up:
So: Peace, Peace, Sickness, Tribute, Invasion, Sickness, Tribute, Festival, Drought, Festival, Drought, Invasion
Merric-green; Paul-purple; Ben-blue; Rich-red.
The initial stages of the game were very tight, with Ben purchasing a double-privilege, Paul building a third palace and with me building two new palaces. Rich kept up with us through scholarly ways, and the first quarter of the game ended with all of us on 10 points.
I constructed a fifth palace and began to build my rice supply for the inevitable droughts that would come up late in the piece. However, Ben, due to his double privilege, was able to maintain fewer palaces and gain the same score per turn. This wasn't so great. Mind you, Ben didn't have that much in the way of people, they having died due to sickness and the great invasions.
Rich was keeping level with me, but Paul was beginning to drop back.
Ben 28, Rich & Merric 27, Paul 23
Rich was hurt by the drought badly, and just didn't have the funds to keep up. The actions he needed to take were the same as the actions we were taking, and he concentrated some of his attention on getting towards the lead in the character track, but even with being second, the leader was still able to hurt him badly. When you're in a bad position in ITYOTD, it's hard to get out of it.
I survived the first drought with 5 palaces and 1 food remaining, but I'd been unable to compete in the festival due to needing to feed my people. Ben had thereby opened up a handy lead.
Ben 51, Merric 44, Paul 41, Rich 39
The last three turns were brutal, especially for Rich and Paul. I survived the drought, but Ben scored heavily for fireworks, and that was the difference between us in the end. We were both scoring six points a turn, and I had ten people to his six, whilst our priests were equivalent, but I couldn't make up the difference.
Final Scores: Ben 107, Merric 96, Paul 71, Rich 69
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Ramping up my reviewing.
