The call came in at just before 7pm: Joe was doing impromptu games. Despite feeling exhausted I knew the thought of handling meeples would keep me awake if I went to bed - is there a support group for this? - so off I went, joining Adam and Andrew at Joe's house - which unbeknownst to us, disappointed Joe. He was hoping for just one opponent to play A Few Acres of Snow with.
Instead we broke out Alhambra - new to me, but not the others who had played some time back. This is a Dirk Henn creation, he of Eketorp and the highly-rated (on BGG, at least) Shogun.
Each player in this game is building their own version of Alhambra - starting with a central fountain they lay tiles around it representing various buildings, sometimes walled, sometimes not. As long as they are accessible from the central fountain these castles can take on any kind of shape - much the same method the Moors adopted for the real deal, I imagine - and to counter your building efforts you need to choose whether to take your turn laying a tile, or collecting the money that allows you to buy a tile in the first place. Come the three scoring rounds players score for the amount of buildings they have for each colour - naturally, the most contested buildings are the most valuable.
It's very easy to pick up but deceptively deep, with room for strategy. When is the right time to buy a building? When to pick up cash? Do you use your 'reserve' and keep a building for the future, when it'll maximise your design (longest walls in each castle score points, so the layout needs to bear this in mind as well as the limitations of the tiles themselves). A little gem in the mechanic is the ability to take more than one turn if you pay for a building with the exact price - not always possible when the money cards come up randomly, with random numerical values.
Joe shot off into an early lead in the first scoring round as the rest of us bunched together. Andrew was looking healthy in the second round but slipped back on the third and final round, as Joe came slightly unstuck courtesy of some unrewarding gardens. My uncontested middle-range building allied to a very long wall saw me into comfortable second, but long-game-visionary Adam reaped the rewards of his investment in the most monied buildings to claim first place:
Adam 105
Sam 103
Joe 92
Andrew 68
This game ticked a lot of boxes for me - fun, looks good, easy to play but with depth, and over quickly enough to squeeze in another game afterwards, in this case Poison, a perennial filler everyone is amenable to.
My starting hand had a lot of green poison cards and, though this game is still a bit of a mystery as to what the best tactics are (the obvious ones being obvious to your fellow players as well) the freedom of laying them wherever you like does seem to help. In a tight first round I picked up no cards and nobody scored over 10. The second hand saw me strike it lucky again with a series of low-value cards, with which I managed - inadvertently - to screw over Joe, who picked up a hefty 19 points. Andrew, Adam and I were still in close contention though, and Adam took the lead after round three. But I managed to pull it back for another win in a high-scoring third round:
Sam 18
Adam 22
Andrew 24
Joe 35
Thanks for hosting Joe.
The leaderboard...
| Played | Points | Ratio | |
| Sam | 7 | 31.5 | 4.5 |
| Adam | 5 | 24.5 | 4.9 |
| Andrew | 7 | 23.5 | 3.36 |
| Joe | 5 | 16.5 | 3.3 |
| Dan | 2 | 8 | 4 |
My tactic in Alhambra was if I could get a building for the exact amount, then I did. But this left me with few cards in the later half of the game.
ReplyDeleteSimilar to Ticket to Ride in that having a fistful of cards puts you in a strong position. But it has a better balance, I think, in rewarding those who build-as-they-go, though there is still A. a need to pick and choose tiles carefully and B. a streak of luck in what cards you have and where your building of choice ends up.
ReplyDeleteBig streak of luck, but it remains a firm favourite with me — it's a very accessible game. I wonder how my game would have fared had I not made a stupid bid for the gardens . . .
ReplyDeleteI think I was ManU-playing-at-Old-Trafford-lucky at the end of Alhambra - had Sam and Joe split the left-over buildings in any other way I wouldn't have won Chambers with everyone else tied for second. Take 10 points off me and add 2 or 7 to the rest of you...
ReplyDeleteIt has got a different card hoarding/spending balance than Ticket to Ride. I spent most of my time with so few cards you couldn't call it a hand - maybe a couple of fingers - which led to a bit of nail biting! (sorry).