Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Monday 7th May, 2007

Monday night is games night! Lisa and I were joined by Greg and Vin. To begin with we introduced them both to Trans Europa (definately my 'game of the moment!'). They both really enjoyed this and, similar to Lisa on Saturday, tried different approaches. It was interesting for me playing it with 4 (previous player numbers were 2 or 3) and thus all 35 cities, rather than the usual 25. It was quite a different game. Your network would be impossible to complete if you did not join to other people's. Occasionally a link would be started and abandoned when another player's network suddenly became closer to your own somewhere else on the board. All the rounds we played were close - which made it quite exciting! In the end Vin won with Greg and I drawing for second place. Lisa brought up the rear... but only just! We agreed it was a good game and Greg is contemplating purchasing it to take on holiday.

Lisa then departed to do some work. The three of us decided to have another go at Tigris & Euphrates. We agreed that we had all enjoyed it when we played it previously, although we found it quite abstract and didn't have a clue how to form a strategy. This didn't really change much as we played! I was convinced Vin had won after he spent several rounds gaining loads of cubes from 3 temples. Then I thought Greg took the lead as he forced me into a run of disastrous conflicts. I never thought I was in the lead or that I was doing particularly well. Vin appeared to have a clear strategy with his temple building, Greg seemed commited to consistently finding ways to stop Vin. Yet in the end I won! I still don't know how. The fewest number of any coloured cube I had was 18 compared to Greg and Vin's 13. I amassed cubes by slowly and innoccuously placing tiles and scoring for them.... winning the occasional conflict... dividing a kngdom to palm off some of the temple goodies.... and avoiding some conflicts wherever I could. This seems to have been a winning strategy even if it wasn't a conscious one!

I like this game but I don't feel I've learnt to play it yet. Tonight's performance probably won't inform how I play next time as I still don't really know what to do.... still it's well worth playing again.... and again..... and again....

2 comments:

Coldfoot said...

To partially steal from a recent geeklist concerning T&E:

If you feel as though you are getting your head kicked in you are probably doing okay. If you start to feel secure with your position, you are probably missing something.

What a great game. Can you imagine how much intensity that game would lose if there was open scoring?

...Not that you implied anything if the sort... but can you imagine? I just felt inclined to include that comment.

Coldfoot said...

anything "of" the sort.