Just another day in Junkie Town

Like alcoholics pretending that there’s nothing wrong in having a sixth drink because you’ve already finished the fifth and because you’re going to have a seventh, the GNN regulars sent out a call for any attendees this evening for a quick game. Myself (Andrew) and Adam heeded the call and, for the third time in four days the Leaderboard was called into action.

We chose Eketorp as our first game of the evening. This game of Viking-placement is still new and with naive excitement coursing through his veins, Sam started out by sending five of his men to pick up one bit of granite. While he got the piece of granite, it did mean that Adam and me were able to take the rest of the materials without too much opposition. This left Sam in a position of disadvantage that he never really recovered from.

As a three-player game, the balance of the game changed slightly, and there seemed to be far less combat this time. Adam picked up high-scoring materials almost without opposition. Before long, Adam had five -sixths of his castle built and Sam and I were playing catch-up. But Sam turned against me in the final round in a last desperate attempt at getting second place, and although he managed to scurry away with some turf, it was too little too late.

Adam 43
Andrew 30
Sam 15

It’s quite a different game with fewer players, and think it may be better the more people there are. It’s a bit difficult to say, since we’ve only played it twice.

We then searched for another short-ish hour-long game to fill up that annoying final forty-five minutes before we really should have finished. We chose Trans America, and discovered that this was the first time that Adam played the “Vexation rule”. Unfortunately, it was second nature to him, and he easily strode to his second win of the evening.

Adam 2
Sam 8
Andrew 13

I can have no complaints about my third place. In the first round I had some very lucky cards, but spent too much time fretting over my one far-flung station to wrap the round up as quickly as I should.

Although the leaderboard may look a bit daunting for the newcomer, don’t forget, there are plenty of ways to win apart from not having anything to do with your weekday evenings except endlessly racking up points in one game after another.

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Sam	9	38.5	4.28
Adam	7	34.5	4.93
Andrew	9	30.5	3.39
Joe	5	16.5	3.3
Dan	2	8	4