Martin B
China
Jiading
Shanghai
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So I was going to be away from my gaming collection for two weeks staying with my wife's family for the holiday. What games to bring? In the past we've played No Thanks! and Dixit with them. My wife wanted me to bring Wits & Wagers and really I only had space for maybe one more game. Naturally I decided upon The Downfall of Pompeii; good length, not language dependent and with fairly simple mechanics.
Today is new year's eve so we had some time with the whole family around needing some entertainment. I brought out the game. My two brother-in-laws had played it earlier in the week so they helped explain everything to the others. So the first game is my wife, Rose, her brother, Fangyuan, my wife's sister's husband, Zhimin and myself. This is the first time I've played with a full four players.
It started nice and simple, the first part is always so peacefull. After the first AD card we got to the omen cards. Everyone drew one and Fangyuan got two. Pretty even but Fangyuan was also getting a larger share of relatives on the board.
Things don't last long in Pompeii, however. That darn volcano always gets in the way of city building. This is where I realized that the in-laws and I have completely different tactics when it comes to lava flow. While I always try to up the body count as much as possible, they all tried to work together to get as many people out of the city as possible, only burning people when there was no other choice. For some reason they thought I was mean for blocking city gates and accurately playing out history.
The final score was Fangyuan 9, me 8, Zhimin 8, and Rose 7.
Usually I play the game with the same set of people who play the same way as me and I really wasn't ready for this different play style. I guess there really are two ways of playing and I learned a bit from the experience. The second game my tactics changed some but so did theirs. In the second game the lava always headed right for my guys, sparing theirs. I guess in some way I had that coming. Still good fun.
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