Two gaming sessions this week to report on:-
1 - I met with Julian & Ester on Monday evening as they were keen to get some more gaming in; possibly they are really liking the new hobby?! I first introduce them to Zooloretto & after explaining the rules & basic concepts/tips, we were away. I felt like I started well & didn't have any animals in my barn for a long time, while the other two quickly had a couple of types. They quickly caught on to check what everyone else was collecting so they could try to place a tile in a truck which wasn't benefictial (or as little as possible) to anyone else. I was the first to expand my zoo & thought I was on my way to a win, but after a bit of crafty swopping animal types around, Ester seemed like she was catching up. A bit of buying here & there, I started feeling less sure especially after I had to take a couple of trucks that put a total of 3 animal types in my barn - bad news!
Final score - joint 1st was Julian & Ester on 27pts, me in last with 22pts. Oh, the shame!
We then moved onto Stone Age. We all had a good game the previous week at the Legion with Michel (who doesn't share the same views) & the newbies wanted another go. Julian especially learnt the importance of the scoring cards. This was a game of more bad dice rolls than the previous game & there were quite a lot of cards bought... Julian went up to NINE workers & built a lot of builings (7?) to my 5.
Final scoring - 1st was Julian on 137pts, 2nd was me on 115pts & Ester was on @100pts.
Last game of the evening was Fearsome Floors which I thought would appeal to Julian's back-stabbing nature. I am beginning to think he & Damen were separated at birth! After an explanation of the movement rules & showing examples of how the monster moves through walls, as well as how this can be manipulated to screw around with your opponents, we were off. I was the first to get a person out, then Julian & quickly followed by Ester. By the 2nd phase, Julian had got his 2nd person out ahead of me (so was currently 1st on tie-break of getting out quicker) & we only needed one more to win the game. After a bit of Julian trying to shaft me, which I countered by sacrificing my penultimate person to shaft him back, he had no-one left to move & I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself as I still had one more fairly near the exit & only Ester to worry about. The only way I could lose was if the '1 Kill' or '2 Kills' tile came up (as the monster moves 20 spaces)... unfortunately, it did & the monster soon had me in its sight, gobbling me up & at the same time, giving Julian victory from the hands of defeat!
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2 - at the Legion last night, I had hoped to try out Chicago Express but we (me, Ben, Nasty Nick, Steve & Nick Bleech) decided to settle for Princes Of Florence. I was more than happy as I'd never player a multi-player game of PoF which is meant to be difficult & tense. I chose Works that seemed to rely on large buildings & quickly found myself bidding hard for Builders so that I could put the three large buildings (Lab, University & ?) close together. I also had Works that relied heavily on Religion, Lakes & Forests, so was feeling quite chuffed about that. My final Works Value was 24(!) & converted it all to points. But it wasn't enough to beat Steve (the winner) or Ben (2nd), who both had Prestige cards that gave them extra points. I did end up one point ahead of Nasty Nick, which was enough for me!
Nick B left, so the 4 of us played Yspahan quickly. We saw a huge amount of cards being taken & played, one of which I used to build the +2pts building. This may have been the crucial point that won me the game as I score a gigantic 29pts in the 2nd week for having 4 complete souks, which gave me a bonus 8pts. Towards the end of the final week I was miles ahead, but Steve caught up & ended 4pts behind.
The fact that I beat Nasty Nick TWICE (shock!) was the icing on the cake as he had been stirring things up all evening! But I still love him (oo-er, missus!)...
Friday, 30 January 2009
Saturday, 17 January 2009
15th Jan - Puerto Rico
With the new gamers (Julian & Ester) in mind, I arranged a game of Puerto Rico with them, Michel & Nick. Me & Nick have played Puerto Rico a fair number of times & we seem to favour a strategy of going for the Hospice (+1 colonist for settling) as our first building. I wanted to do something different as it can be a tedious to stick with the same strategy every single time for me.
I was the lucky player to choose the first role & chose Builder, taking a Large Indigo Plant. Unsurprisingly, Nick went for the Hospice. I only remember Ester going for the Small Market (+1 doubloon when selling).
I hadn't played for a few months & as the game progressed, I was beginning to feel I was lagging behind most of the others once we all began to produce a variety of resources to ship for VPs; due to only producing 1 Indigo & 1 Sugar in the early game, I wasn't gettin many VPs while Michel & Nick seemed to shipping more than the rest of us. I decided to try & get the Wharf (+1 VP per shipment) followed by one of the large 4VPs buildings, so this strategy began with an early purchase of the Construction Hut (may take a Quarry instead of a plantation in the Settler phase) & this reaped rewards as I has 3 manned Quarries & used it in conjunction with the Large Market (+2 doubloons when selling) as well as taking the Prospector role if there were extra coins on it, to sell Tobacco for a large sum. This enabled me to have the money to buy the Wharf, which I didn't use as much as I wanted seeing as the ships got very full up and/or were stocking up with resources I didn't produce (coffee & corn). I quickly got up to 10 coins again & agonised over whether to go for a Harbour (your own ship) which would have been excellent seeing as I had the Wharf, but I noticed Nick was amassing lots of colonists & would probably look to buy the Residence (4VPs, +1 VP per 3 colonists) in the game as it would give him a siginificant number of bonus VPs. I decided to stir things up a bit by buying the Residence to Nick's dismay, but in part, I took this for myself because I was estimating this would also happen to be the 4VP building that would given me the most bonus points by the end of the game.
Ester was also rolling in the money with selling coffee & using her Small Market, which she used to buy the Guild Hall(?) (bonus points for production buildings). Michel was struggling for cash, although he seemed to be producing & shipping a lot. Julian was also producing a fair amount & had the Factory to gain extra doubloons with production. I think Nick ended up going for the 4VP building that gives bonus points for violet buildings, he wasn't exactly rolling in the money but he had two manned Quarries which helped him out enough. Both Michel & Julian had the Hacienda which also you to draw a bonus plantation in the Settler phase & it didn't seem like their draws were doing them any favours; I am personally not a fan of the Hacienda myself.
The game ended as a result of running out of colonists. Results:-
1st - Matt, 33pts & 7 doubloons.
2nd - Nick, 33pts & 6 doubloons! (3 doubloons, 3 corn)
3rd - Ester, 31pts.
4th & 5th - Michel & Julian (can't remember who won the tie-break).
Very close game, though unusually low-scoring as me, Nick & David pointed out.
I also had the pleasure of sitting next to Huggy, who was playing A Game Of Thrones. I took great delight in scattering his carefully arranged wooden pieces at his side twice & making sure he was not cheating!
I was the lucky player to choose the first role & chose Builder, taking a Large Indigo Plant. Unsurprisingly, Nick went for the Hospice. I only remember Ester going for the Small Market (+1 doubloon when selling).
I hadn't played for a few months & as the game progressed, I was beginning to feel I was lagging behind most of the others once we all began to produce a variety of resources to ship for VPs; due to only producing 1 Indigo & 1 Sugar in the early game, I wasn't gettin many VPs while Michel & Nick seemed to shipping more than the rest of us. I decided to try & get the Wharf (+1 VP per shipment) followed by one of the large 4VPs buildings, so this strategy began with an early purchase of the Construction Hut (may take a Quarry instead of a plantation in the Settler phase) & this reaped rewards as I has 3 manned Quarries & used it in conjunction with the Large Market (+2 doubloons when selling) as well as taking the Prospector role if there were extra coins on it, to sell Tobacco for a large sum. This enabled me to have the money to buy the Wharf, which I didn't use as much as I wanted seeing as the ships got very full up and/or were stocking up with resources I didn't produce (coffee & corn). I quickly got up to 10 coins again & agonised over whether to go for a Harbour (your own ship) which would have been excellent seeing as I had the Wharf, but I noticed Nick was amassing lots of colonists & would probably look to buy the Residence (4VPs, +1 VP per 3 colonists) in the game as it would give him a siginificant number of bonus VPs. I decided to stir things up a bit by buying the Residence to Nick's dismay, but in part, I took this for myself because I was estimating this would also happen to be the 4VP building that would given me the most bonus points by the end of the game.
Ester was also rolling in the money with selling coffee & using her Small Market, which she used to buy the Guild Hall(?) (bonus points for production buildings). Michel was struggling for cash, although he seemed to be producing & shipping a lot. Julian was also producing a fair amount & had the Factory to gain extra doubloons with production. I think Nick ended up going for the 4VP building that gives bonus points for violet buildings, he wasn't exactly rolling in the money but he had two manned Quarries which helped him out enough. Both Michel & Julian had the Hacienda which also you to draw a bonus plantation in the Settler phase & it didn't seem like their draws were doing them any favours; I am personally not a fan of the Hacienda myself.
The game ended as a result of running out of colonists. Results:-
1st - Matt, 33pts & 7 doubloons.
2nd - Nick, 33pts & 6 doubloons! (3 doubloons, 3 corn)
3rd - Ester, 31pts.
4th & 5th - Michel & Julian (can't remember who won the tie-break).
Very close game, though unusually low-scoring as me, Nick & David pointed out.
I also had the pleasure of sitting next to Huggy, who was playing A Game Of Thrones. I took great delight in scattering his carefully arranged wooden pieces at his side twice & making sure he was not cheating!
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Right, I thought it was about time I put some kind of feline-related - and non-gaming! - post on here... makes sense since I've called this blog 'The Best Blog Concerning Games & Cats'!
Since I was born, we've lived around cats. My mother was (and still is, to a lesser extent) involved in Persian cat shows in a big way & years ago, it felt as though there was a conveyor belt with a new kitten every 6 months or so with a stunning & cute fluffy creature for the latest project. The most cats we've ever lived with was 20...! Yes, I know... a lot of dead mice & furballs!
Due to several reasons, the number of cats has now dwindled down to 7 - the main one being the 'cat boom' years turned into an aging population, which meant we've had a lot of nine lives being used up. It's much more manageable now - all the cats we have currently are Zendique exotics, which basically mean they're still Persian but with a short coat rather than being long-haired. It seems the latest trend in cats these days...
Since I was born, we've lived around cats. My mother was (and still is, to a lesser extent) involved in Persian cat shows in a big way & years ago, it felt as though there was a conveyor belt with a new kitten every 6 months or so with a stunning & cute fluffy creature for the latest project. The most cats we've ever lived with was 20...! Yes, I know... a lot of dead mice & furballs!
Due to several reasons, the number of cats has now dwindled down to 7 - the main one being the 'cat boom' years turned into an aging population, which meant we've had a lot of nine lives being used up. It's much more manageable now - all the cats we have currently are Zendique exotics, which basically mean they're still Persian but with a short coat rather than being long-haired. It seems the latest trend in cats these days...
The picture above; the white boy is Dylan & was made the first UK Imperial Grand Champion & UK Imperial Grand Premier at the height of his 'fame' a couple of years ago. Apparently, people still talk about him at cat shows. The grey boy (Iggy) is actually's my sister's & has done reasonably well - he looks very similar to a grey boy (Tzar) that my mum has at the moment.
Well, that's it. Probably not very interesting but thought it was worth adding a useless fact about me on here...
Friday, 9 January 2009
First game of 2009 - Caylus
It was the first gaming session last night back at the Legion, after the previous two Thursday evenings fell on Christmas Day & New Year's Day. So it was good get back into a weekly routine.
Quite a big turn-out saw three games being played; a 4-player group, including two newbies (Esther & Julian), played Ticket To Ride:Marklin, 6 played the full number accommodated for in Pillars Of The Earth with the expansion.
Keith, Paul B, Andre & I played Caylus. I am extremely fond of worker-placement games, even though there seems to be increasingly more & more of these coming out, but I consider Caylus the best of them all even though I'm also fond of Agricola (which feels more of a fun game). After all, when Caylus first came out in 2004, it was considered by some the father of the worker placement mechanic. Despite my fondness for Caylus, it remains a game which I still feel I haven't quite mastered the best strategy/strategies to be pursuing so I tend to go on an instinctive basis as the game progress. Perhaps I just haven't played it enough yet (approx. 5 times)?
By the time the Dungeon scoring happened, both Keith & Andre were in the lead followed by me, then Paul B. All of us seemed to be managing to contribute to the building of the castle (you need 3 different resource cubes - one of which MUST be a food - per house) fairly equally & constructing a few buildings. No-one seemed to be in a particularly more advantageous position at this point.
By the time we reached the Walls scoring, I had noticed something significant something about Andre's game; he had built a number of buildings that the other three of us seemed to be using quite a lot in comparison & getting extra points - in particular, the buildings that provide more than one resource; Farm (two cloth or one food), Quarry (two stone) & Workshop (two stone & one cloth). I had a Stone building that I thought would be useful - Farm (two food & one cloth) - as this would give me a food or cloth in addition to a point each time someone else used it. I made a tit of myself when I placed a worker twice in Paul B's Mason to build a Stone Building... only to remember I wouldn't have any stone once the Mason was activated! Stupid.
The turning point in my strategy came when Keith built the Bank that allows you to buy 1 Gold for 2 coins or 2 Golds for 5 coins (Gold is worth 3pts apiece at game end) & I decided I would pursue a Gold-gathering strategy by collecting money where I could & buying it up, as well as placing a worker in the Mine. I also constructed the Alchemist that allows you to convert 2 resources into 1 Gold or 4 resources into 2 Gold as an alternative to buying if I needed it.
As we ended the last stage of the game, all apart from me had built a Residence to gain extra money in the collection phase & it became clear both Keith & Andre seemed to be working towards getting a Prestige building. Whether Andrew twigged that I was focusing on gathering Gold for game-end, I don't know, but I got the impression he was keen to speed the game up by moving the provost ahead of the balliff. Both Andre & Keith managed to build a Prestigue building by the last turn & it was looking close as I had 7 Gold cubes twinkling away...
Final scoring:-
1st - Andre, 74pts
2nd - Matt, 69pts
Keith - circa 60-62pts?
Paul B - circa 50-55pts?
A great game by all & I was left wondering what if I hadn't wasted those two worker placements? So slight is the line between success & failure....
Quite a big turn-out saw three games being played; a 4-player group, including two newbies (Esther & Julian), played Ticket To Ride:Marklin, 6 played the full number accommodated for in Pillars Of The Earth with the expansion.
Keith, Paul B, Andre & I played Caylus. I am extremely fond of worker-placement games, even though there seems to be increasingly more & more of these coming out, but I consider Caylus the best of them all even though I'm also fond of Agricola (which feels more of a fun game). After all, when Caylus first came out in 2004, it was considered by some the father of the worker placement mechanic. Despite my fondness for Caylus, it remains a game which I still feel I haven't quite mastered the best strategy/strategies to be pursuing so I tend to go on an instinctive basis as the game progress. Perhaps I just haven't played it enough yet (approx. 5 times)?
By the time the Dungeon scoring happened, both Keith & Andre were in the lead followed by me, then Paul B. All of us seemed to be managing to contribute to the building of the castle (you need 3 different resource cubes - one of which MUST be a food - per house) fairly equally & constructing a few buildings. No-one seemed to be in a particularly more advantageous position at this point.
By the time we reached the Walls scoring, I had noticed something significant something about Andre's game; he had built a number of buildings that the other three of us seemed to be using quite a lot in comparison & getting extra points - in particular, the buildings that provide more than one resource; Farm (two cloth or one food), Quarry (two stone) & Workshop (two stone & one cloth). I had a Stone building that I thought would be useful - Farm (two food & one cloth) - as this would give me a food or cloth in addition to a point each time someone else used it. I made a tit of myself when I placed a worker twice in Paul B's Mason to build a Stone Building... only to remember I wouldn't have any stone once the Mason was activated! Stupid.
The turning point in my strategy came when Keith built the Bank that allows you to buy 1 Gold for 2 coins or 2 Golds for 5 coins (Gold is worth 3pts apiece at game end) & I decided I would pursue a Gold-gathering strategy by collecting money where I could & buying it up, as well as placing a worker in the Mine. I also constructed the Alchemist that allows you to convert 2 resources into 1 Gold or 4 resources into 2 Gold as an alternative to buying if I needed it.
As we ended the last stage of the game, all apart from me had built a Residence to gain extra money in the collection phase & it became clear both Keith & Andre seemed to be working towards getting a Prestige building. Whether Andrew twigged that I was focusing on gathering Gold for game-end, I don't know, but I got the impression he was keen to speed the game up by moving the provost ahead of the balliff. Both Andre & Keith managed to build a Prestigue building by the last turn & it was looking close as I had 7 Gold cubes twinkling away...
Final scoring:-
1st - Andre, 74pts
2nd - Matt, 69pts
Keith - circa 60-62pts?
Paul B - circa 50-55pts?
A great game by all & I was left wondering what if I hadn't wasted those two worker placements? So slight is the line between success & failure....
Friday, 26 December 2008
Gaming with Huggy - Day 2 of 2
On Monday, I had the day off work & went to Huggy's place again for another day of gaming.
As seems to be customary between us, we warmed up with two games of Mr Jack - one as the killer & one as the Detective - both of us winning as the latter, while Mr Jack was coincidentally identified as John Smith (the guys who can switch on/off streetlights) both times.
We then progress onto Dominion again; 3 games using the other three suggested start-ups in the rulebook - Big Money, Interaction & Village Square. Huggy won the 1st (Village Square) convincingly with a Gold-heavy deck, followed by a draw on 25pts apiece with the Big Money set-up. Huggy went for a Gold-heavy deck again. Finally I levelled things by winning quickly on the Interaction set-up.
We then had another go of Le Havre; I went for an all-out building strategy & bought several buildings from the Town which I thought were going to useful to either of us; Huggy ended up paying me plenty of Francs and/or food for this while he pursued a ship-building strategy. End game got tense as he was able to build a couple of the Steel ships & paid off 3 loans before the final action. Final score was 206-186 in my favour, but closer than both of us had expected.
We then decided to try out Through The Ages:A Story Of Civilisation, a game I had wanted to try properly for some time & one I thought Huggy may like. This is a complex civilisation-building game which is entire card-driven & mapless as you attempt to guide your initial civilisation from Antiquity through to Age I, II & III; taking on Leaders, Wonders, Technologies & Military amongst other possibilities. We started off with the basic game (Antiquity & Age I) to learn the ropes - this was over fairly quick with a close win for me.
Huggy then wanted to try the Advanced game, which I was slightly hesitant to as I hadn't digested the rules properly yet, so this was more of a 'feel our way through' attempt. We certainly enjoyed it a lot more, although we didn't explore the military aspect much as we were still trying to work out the best way of improving our civilisations. Again, this resulted in another win for me (without having any kind of strategy!) but we both agreed it had great potential to become a favourite of ours & should play again soon.
Another great day - thanks Huggy!
As seems to be customary between us, we warmed up with two games of Mr Jack - one as the killer & one as the Detective - both of us winning as the latter, while Mr Jack was coincidentally identified as John Smith (the guys who can switch on/off streetlights) both times.
We then progress onto Dominion again; 3 games using the other three suggested start-ups in the rulebook - Big Money, Interaction & Village Square. Huggy won the 1st (Village Square) convincingly with a Gold-heavy deck, followed by a draw on 25pts apiece with the Big Money set-up. Huggy went for a Gold-heavy deck again. Finally I levelled things by winning quickly on the Interaction set-up.
We then had another go of Le Havre; I went for an all-out building strategy & bought several buildings from the Town which I thought were going to useful to either of us; Huggy ended up paying me plenty of Francs and/or food for this while he pursued a ship-building strategy. End game got tense as he was able to build a couple of the Steel ships & paid off 3 loans before the final action. Final score was 206-186 in my favour, but closer than both of us had expected.
We then decided to try out Through The Ages:A Story Of Civilisation, a game I had wanted to try properly for some time & one I thought Huggy may like. This is a complex civilisation-building game which is entire card-driven & mapless as you attempt to guide your initial civilisation from Antiquity through to Age I, II & III; taking on Leaders, Wonders, Technologies & Military amongst other possibilities. We started off with the basic game (Antiquity & Age I) to learn the ropes - this was over fairly quick with a close win for me.
Huggy then wanted to try the Advanced game, which I was slightly hesitant to as I hadn't digested the rules properly yet, so this was more of a 'feel our way through' attempt. We certainly enjoyed it a lot more, although we didn't explore the military aspect much as we were still trying to work out the best way of improving our civilisations. Again, this resulted in another win for me (without having any kind of strategy!) but we both agreed it had great potential to become a favourite of ours & should play again soon.
Another great day - thanks Huggy!
Sunday, 21 December 2008
Gaming with Huggy - Day 1 of 2
Saturday 20th Dec - I went to Huggy's for a few hours of gaming. As usual, it was full of banter between ourselves, attempting to talk down each other's attempts of winning. In brief, this is what got played:-
Mr Jack (x2)
Game 1: Huggy wins as the Detective on Turn 10 (Mr Jack was Sir William Gull).
Game 2: Matt wins as the Detective on Turn 10 (Mr Jack was Sherlock Holmes).
Fast Flowing Forest Fellers (x2)
Game 1: Matt wins.
Game 2: Huggy wins.
Dominion (x2)
Huggy was new to this, so I explained the rules & gave a few sample turns before we played a couple of the pre-determined 10 Kingdom card sets in the rulebook...
Game 1: Matt wins (First Game set-up).
Game 2: Matt wins (Size Distortion set-up).
Le Havre
Matt wins 166-151 using a strategy that mainly used buildings available to generate Francs. Huggy was building more buildings than I was.
Talisman 4th Edition Revised
Huggy reaches the Crown Of Command with the Prophettess & killing everyone else. Huggy showed his aging years with this trip down memory lane!
Day 2 is tomorrow - watch this space for a summary.
Mr Jack (x2)
Game 1: Huggy wins as the Detective on Turn 10 (Mr Jack was Sir William Gull).
Game 2: Matt wins as the Detective on Turn 10 (Mr Jack was Sherlock Holmes).
Fast Flowing Forest Fellers (x2)
Game 1: Matt wins.
Game 2: Huggy wins.
Dominion (x2)
Huggy was new to this, so I explained the rules & gave a few sample turns before we played a couple of the pre-determined 10 Kingdom card sets in the rulebook...
Game 1: Matt wins (First Game set-up).
Game 2: Matt wins (Size Distortion set-up).
Le Havre
Matt wins 166-151 using a strategy that mainly used buildings available to generate Francs. Huggy was building more buildings than I was.
Talisman 4th Edition Revised
Huggy reaches the Crown Of Command with the Prophettess & killing everyone else. Huggy showed his aging years with this trip down memory lane!
Day 2 is tomorrow - watch this space for a summary.
Saturday, 20 December 2008
Twilight Struggle - Parts 1 & 2...
Me & Keith arrange two games of Twilight Struggle the penultimate week before Christmas - nothing like a vicious struggle for global domination to put you in the mood of festive shennigans!
This is, at the moment, easily my favourite game despite my affection for Euros such as Pillars Of The Earth, Power Grid & Le Havre. Perhaps it has something to do with the elegant, yet ingenious card system as I seem to gravitate towards games that have cards for some reason.
Keith was new to Twilight Struggle & after a run-through of the rules, we decided he'd be the USSR in the first game since there is something more of a slight advantage to the USSR in the early stages. I was hoping that if I could hold out until the end of the Mid war, then the balance might shift to the US during Late war.
I don't remember a lot about the actually development of card play, but Asia was a massive tug-of-war for control of countries. I had started a build-up in SE Asia during the end of Early war, since I knew the SE Asia scoring would be coming up in the next 1-3 turns & this can yield quite a few points. Keith was countering a lot of my moves & soon swung control of the region in his favour - I began to wonder if he had been dealt the Asia scoring card on Turn 3, but it turned out he thought I had it! Oh well, this set him in good steed as he scored quite a fair few points when the SE Asia scoring card came up. I think Keith also had a slightly better position in Europe as well, so I wasn't feeling as confident as I'd hoped.
The second reason this was memorable is because twice, when Keith was 2 or 3 points shy of a 20pts victory, he played a card on the Space Race track & a separate event card which both needed a 50-50 dice roll to get the points... both times he rolled wrongly! I was feeling somewhat awkward for him as if the game ended in a victory for me, it was feel a bit of a lucky win iven his back luck. However, as we enter Turn 8 & Late war he was able to degrade DEFCON to Level 2 with 'Cuban Missle Crisis' followed by 'Wargames', of which the latter allows you to end the game after handing your opponent 6vps. He was comfortably in the lead, so did just that.
Excellent game, though not quite as good as his shortbread again!
We had a 2nd game two days later & Keith decided he wanted to try the US. This one seemed a much tenser affair with the USSR (courtesy of me!) aggressively attacking Europe & quickly rolling in the VPs. SE Asia was yet again closely contested although the USSR didn't quite get as many points this time. The USSR also took strong control over South & Central America, so Keith was understandably looking a bit edgy!He did manage to pull back control of Europe, which I hadn't notice under excitment of a wee bit of clever card play that would have let me be one card away from victory... then he played the Europe scoring card & scored about 9 or 10pts. I'm sure my face was a picture when I realised what he had done *tut tut*!
The game progressed until Turn 10, with mostly points slowly going to the USSR once more. We were hit by deja vu as the 'Cuban Missle Crisis'/'Wargames' combination ended the game yet again with a comfortable win for the USSR.
Ending the game on two consecutive plays in that manner was a bit bizarre for me because, in about 15 games, I've never had a game end like that - then it happens twice in a row!
Still, two excellent games played.
This is, at the moment, easily my favourite game despite my affection for Euros such as Pillars Of The Earth, Power Grid & Le Havre. Perhaps it has something to do with the elegant, yet ingenious card system as I seem to gravitate towards games that have cards for some reason.
Keith was new to Twilight Struggle & after a run-through of the rules, we decided he'd be the USSR in the first game since there is something more of a slight advantage to the USSR in the early stages. I was hoping that if I could hold out until the end of the Mid war, then the balance might shift to the US during Late war.
I don't remember a lot about the actually development of card play, but Asia was a massive tug-of-war for control of countries. I had started a build-up in SE Asia during the end of Early war, since I knew the SE Asia scoring would be coming up in the next 1-3 turns & this can yield quite a few points. Keith was countering a lot of my moves & soon swung control of the region in his favour - I began to wonder if he had been dealt the Asia scoring card on Turn 3, but it turned out he thought I had it! Oh well, this set him in good steed as he scored quite a fair few points when the SE Asia scoring card came up. I think Keith also had a slightly better position in Europe as well, so I wasn't feeling as confident as I'd hoped.
The second reason this was memorable is because twice, when Keith was 2 or 3 points shy of a 20pts victory, he played a card on the Space Race track & a separate event card which both needed a 50-50 dice roll to get the points... both times he rolled wrongly! I was feeling somewhat awkward for him as if the game ended in a victory for me, it was feel a bit of a lucky win iven his back luck. However, as we enter Turn 8 & Late war he was able to degrade DEFCON to Level 2 with 'Cuban Missle Crisis' followed by 'Wargames', of which the latter allows you to end the game after handing your opponent 6vps. He was comfortably in the lead, so did just that.
Excellent game, though not quite as good as his shortbread again!
We had a 2nd game two days later & Keith decided he wanted to try the US. This one seemed a much tenser affair with the USSR (courtesy of me!) aggressively attacking Europe & quickly rolling in the VPs. SE Asia was yet again closely contested although the USSR didn't quite get as many points this time. The USSR also took strong control over South & Central America, so Keith was understandably looking a bit edgy!He did manage to pull back control of Europe, which I hadn't notice under excitment of a wee bit of clever card play that would have let me be one card away from victory... then he played the Europe scoring card & scored about 9 or 10pts. I'm sure my face was a picture when I realised what he had done *tut tut*!
The game progressed until Turn 10, with mostly points slowly going to the USSR once more. We were hit by deja vu as the 'Cuban Missle Crisis'/'Wargames' combination ended the game yet again with a comfortable win for the USSR.
Ending the game on two consecutive plays in that manner was a bit bizarre for me because, in about 15 games, I've never had a game end like that - then it happens twice in a row!
Still, two excellent games played.
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