Monday night saw two of the Bracknell branch members (There's only three of us) James and Chris (Me) take to the table again.
Having played the original version of Carcassonne several times we were quite interested to give the game's Discovery variation a play. This version is sold as game in its own right rather than as an expansion, where the fields remain but the cloisters, roads and cities are replaced by individual cities, mountains and seas. The scoring for these areas, although similar has some crucial differences where incomplete areas can be scored - albeit for less points - during play, meaning there was a steady build up of points. Also the escalating contention for the high scoring farms is completely eradicated thereby removing the single winning route to victory that the first version suffers from.
So to the game itself. Initial scoring was spread equally between us but after a run where I picked up a bunch of tiles with cities on I was able to place myself in a strong position and scored accordingly. This proved to be enough as I held off a determined fight back by James to win by 20 points. On reflection we both enjoyed the Discovery version but rather felt that we liked elements of both.
On to our second game of the evening, Aton. Some 3 weeks ago James and I attempted to play this but after one and a half frustrating games we decided to pack it away as neither of us were enjoying it at all. In our eyes it didn't seem to work and was very unbalanced. Convinced that we must have interpreted the rules incorrectly we took another look. Sure enough we had. The crux of Aton is whether you get to place your tokens in the temples first or second but equally important you both get to remove your opponents tokens as well. We had been playing that only the winner of Cartouche 2 got to do that, and as it was generally a low number that won, nobody had a card high enough to remove any counters and the temples just filled up.
Unfortunately for me James is rather good at playing this type of game and wiped the floor with me in the first tie winning by 51 points to 23. In the second match I faired a little better and took the game to an exercise in brinkmanship as we both hovered by the 40 point winning margin. However it was James again who prevailed as I dealt myself a hand of kakka poo and my exchange token had already been used. James sailed past the 40 point mark and into a 2 - 1 lead on the night.
Aton is a great, quick little game with some subtlety to it and is a much much better game if you play by the correct rules
I'm intrigued. I got a bit 'over' Carcassone after a few too many plays, and the expansions weren't drawing me in. This sounds more interesting.
ReplyDeleteI liked this variation, although I think we both agreed it 'appeared' to be more tricky to place tiles. I think on reflection that might be because the board looks busier but in fact it's no different.
ReplyDeleteAh, Aton. Sam and I had a spate of this earlier in the summer, and it is a very competitive, satisfying game once you both are up to speed. Our last couple of games were very very tense, as we both recognised the importance of having a majority in a) the blues, and b) the blacks. If one player is allowed to get both of these it's all over. Unless you can squeak one of the instant win conditions.
ReplyDeleteI found that going second was the most important thing usually. Sticking a four in cartouche 2 was really powerful if going second. Also you can perform a double whammy there by (if you can) putting a high card in cartouche 1. That way you often score some points and get to remove some of your opponents counters, usually in the good spots and replace them with yours.
ReplyDeleteThe black squares with the 8 points really makes a difference.
Sam and I got into a thing where we both had thirty-odd points, so we kept putting 4's in cartouche 1 to try and eek over the line. But because we both kept doing it, we were just wasting our best cards and gaining nothing for it.
ReplyDeleteI also like the way that the luck of the draw evens out — if your opponent is drawing tonnes of 4's and you're not, well at least you know that further down the deck the situation will be reversed. Provided you get that far. . .
Thats what happened in our second game.
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