Friday 2nd March 2007

Lisa and I enjoyed a couple of games of Diamant with Lisa's 8-year old god daughter, Maisy. She really likes Diamant and requested that we play it!

I won the first game with 66 jewels; most of these came from the first mine when Lisa and Maisy both came out too early. I also profited in the third mine as they stayed in and got squished whilst I beat a hasty retreat. Lisa came second with 31 and Maisy was third with 9.

In a reversal of fortunes Maisy dominated the next game and finished with a massive haul of 83 jewels. A lot of her stash was collected in mine 2 as Lisa and I came out far too early. there was then a run of nine cards without a disaster! Maisy played this mine really well, getting out just before the roof caved in! I caught up in the fourth and fifth mines to finish with 67 jewels. Lisa was more cautious than usual and so came last with 41 jewels.

With Maisy tucked up in bed, Lisa and I broke out Carcassonne. We decided to add on the Inns and Cathedrals expansion - our first time! In the end, Lisa won with 173 points to my 158. It had felt like a close game throughout. I caught up at the end, mainly due to winning possession of a field with 11 cities in it! Lisa completed a large city containing a cathedral for 48 points! This was finished about midway through the game, although neither of us thought it would be completed (in fact, I had banked on it not being!). Neither of us were happy with our use of the big meeples. The inns seemed to work well as we both finished all of our roads except one.

We decided to give it another go. This time I won with 182 points to Lisa's 122. I managed to complete a city with a cathedral for 36 points. I also pushed Lisa out of a field with 12 cities in it!

We are not sure if this expansion adds much to the 2-player game. We thought that being penalised for not finishing the roads and cities would make it more interesting. But it just meant that we worked harder to finish them! We got into the habit of placing the cathedral tiles to scupper a city for the other person. This didn't really work either. We enjoyed having the additional tiles but it felt like 'more of the same' really, although that isn't a bad thing! We don't think we've got our heads around effective use of the big meeples; we didn't get to use them as farmers where we expect they would be particularly useful.

All in all, a good game but not improved as much as we had hoped by inclusion of this expansion.