First up was Citadel. Since it was the first time since Stabcon that we’d played it, there was a quick run through of the rules before we launched ourselves into a world of medieval town planning in the face of a constantly shifting monarchy and a shockingly high crime rate of thefts and murders.
It’s a game that encourages suspicion and double-crossing. The Architect, for some reason, was particularly picked upon by thieves, while the assassin roamed unchecked. Meanwhile, Sam was building a wide and varied selection of buildings, and quickly became the person to attack. Of course, he then took defensive measures to protect his lead. In the last round Adam used a warlord to take out one of my buildings, thus giving him second spot.
Sam 36
Adam 26
Andrew 22
Joe 19
Citadel had been suggested by Joe as a quick opening game, but it proved to be surprisingly lengthy, taking a little over an hour for the game to end. Not to be deterred, though, we chose Tinners’ Trail as the next game. Adam was quickly told the rules, but perhaps not quickly enough judging by how quickly he grew accustomed to them.
I chose to score big in round one, and then not score at all in round two. That was my strategy, but it failed in the face of three other more measured approaches. With no capital to buy more mines in round two, I was left behind in terms of mining capacity in rounds three and four. Adam, meanwhile, took to the game like a duck to water and soon became Cornwall’s own Rockefeller with six mines to call upon in the last round.
The tensest moment of the game, though, concerned the track used to decide whose go it was. Joe said that the counters moved up to the highest available space and that’s how we played it before, whereas Sam and I expressed surprise since we hadn’t played it like that in our first game at all: instead everyone kept to their original track. Joe firmly insisted we had, sparking a brief debate about how we'd played it before. But when Joe went to the toilet a quick conflab between me and Sam confirmed our original memories: we hadn’t played like that. We didn’t press the matter though, since even if we had played it our way (which, according to Joe, we hadn’t) we were wrong, and the rule book was quite clear on this. This controversy was perhaps the closest that our little games night has come to fisticuffs, but any unpleasantness was avoided by simply not mentioning it again and watching Adam win while the rest of us tussled for the minor positions.
Adam 81
Joe 76
Sam 76
Andrew 73
So now it was eleven o'clock: time for Sam to head back to get enough sleep in order to face his two young sons the next morning. But Joe had other ideas. He suggested a new game: Poison by Reiner Knizia. Just the mention of that name is enough to make grown men happily submit to sleep deprivation, and Sam is no exception. He agreed to a brief one-round taster but after the first round Joe just happened to mention that a full game would last only another three rounds. Sam was already hooked and saw out the game to the end.
In this card game, picking up cards and scoring points is bad but if you really have to pick them up, then it helps to specialise in picking up one particular colour so if you had the most, they wouldn’t count against you. It’s this kind of cunning twist that we expect from Reiner Knizia, and this is where this post's title came from. At the end of one close round, I reassured Joe that "your purples are fine," by which I meant: he had the most purple cards. These innocent words were twisted such that I appeared to be talking about Joe's plums, and much hilarity ensued.
Once the laughter had died away, Joe mentioned that, according to the internet, there didn’t seem to be any strategy. But having already played a few rounds against his super-intelligent children, Joe clearly had an advantage against us newbies. Adam made the early running, but was undone when his strategy suddenly stopped working in round four. So much so, that it pushed him from first to last! Sam and myself, meanwhile, managed to erase the humiliation of our first round with a clean zero-point last round, putting us in joint second.
Joe 23
Andrew 27
Sam 27
Adam 32
This doesn't change the Leaderboard in terms of points scored but, as usual, I already find myself drifting to the back of the pack regarding points ratio: in this category only 0.06 of a point separate first from third.
The Leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Sam | 8 | 37.5 | 4.69 |
| Andrew | 8 | 32.5 | 4.06 |
| Adam | 6 | 28.5 | 4.75 |
| Joe | 5 | 23.5 | 4.7 |
You did WHAAAAT!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes well, coincidentally, when I went to the loo, I had a quick conflab with my old chap, who confirmed that we had played correctly the first time.
I know you're both convinced we played the time track wrong, but I'm equally convinced we didn't: partly because I taught the game, having read and learned the rules, and the time track order rule is so integral.
But the other reason I'm sure we played correctly is because we're all three of us seasoned gamers, and we would have noticed that, if played as you think we did, the first player advantage is massively unbalanced. It would allow you to take the same amount of actions as your opponents and then get first chance to pass, meaning you remain first player for all four rounds. I'm sure that wouldn't have escaped our notice.
Flame wars!!
Citadels does run a bit too long for what it it, doesn't it. Adam suggested playing to six districts rather than eight, which I think could work well. I like the machiavellian aspect to it, but I think I need to hone my game — several times I realised I'd made a very stupid choice of role - lastly targetting Sam with the assassin when I could have let him end the game on the round I played my eight gold card, which might not have left me in last place. Might not. Hmmm.
And I enjoyed Poison. As Sam noted, there's a bell curve on your strategies: but it's nothing to worry about - your purples are fine.
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ReplyDeleteOkay, the bruises on mine, Andrew's and Joe's faces have died down now so I can attest to the fact that despite him being irrevocably WRONG about this, my infamous 'removed post' (above, as GNN) was in fact a thoughtful and delicate rebuttal, not a foul-mouthed rant as Adam would like to believe.
ReplyDeleteI'm not beyond a foul-mouthed rant though, so when Joe starts telling us we have ALWAYS used community chest cards in Dominion, I'll get the fireworks out.