Thursday 8 December 2011

Torres Redux

As ever, when Thursday arrives my early morning thoughts of hitting the sack 5 minutes after the kids do have dissipated by the time evening rolls around. The games cupboard calls my name, and like a sailor dashed on the rocks, lured by a siren's wail, I respond.

So does Andrew. I guess we're the ones with bugger all else to do.

So tonight we revisited Torres as a 2-player game, having discovered on Tuesday that one pertinent rule about knight placement had eluded us. We'd enjoyed it the first time; this time it was even better. We played the 'Master' version: Adam might like to know that this eliminates the chance element of Action Cards, as each player starts with their own set - and it also supplies you with the option of gaining a bonus from a 'Master' card drawn randomly at the start of the game - in this case the bonus available was 40 points if you had all your knights orthogonally adjacent at the third and final scoring round.

I started well, but just as with our first two-player game Andrew outscored me in round two, moving just a few points behind me on the score track. Come the third and final round I sacrificed scoring Andrew's castle to line up my knights and go for the bonus. But having made it I realised I would have scored more sticking with the castle and building upwards - Andrew picked up 54 points compared to my 40. I also lost out on the King's bonus, but did manage to put together 81 points for the biggest castle - 9 tiles high x 9 area. But it wasn't enough to win - Andrew's more nomadic knights brought home the scoring bacon in the tightest finish possible:

Andrew 268
Sam 267

We'd raced through Torres so fast it was a wonder any of the castles stayed upright, but having done so we had time for Citadels. Again I established an early lead; again Andrew's canny play won the day. I was nowhere contemplating the finish line when he suddenly - courtesy of the architect - built three buildings to end the game, and left my wayward assassin twiddling his butter-fingered thumbs:

Andrew 31
Sam 21

If Endersby can bring this form to Tuesday nights we may have a new aspirant to the ratio throne...

3 comments:

  1. Very happy with my performance today. I think that warming up with FIFA, and helping Arsenal beat Barcelona (albeit on the easiest settings) helped.

    The big difference to Torres this time was the tactic of adding to the surface area of a castle in order to get extra points. Previously I seem to recall the ratio of height to width was much closer, but this time castles were much wider than tall. Apart from Sam's high-scoring monster-castle, that is.

    In Citadels I hit Sam with an "Assassin kills the Bishop and the Warlord destroys a building" combo, which edged me into the lead and once I saw the opportunity to end the game, I took it. The game was remarkable for its civic-minded assassins who, while they weren't killing people, were building universities and places of worship. They'er not all bad, you see. Just misunderstood.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I was warming up by singing the Dinosaur song to Joe (little Joe) which is fairly soporific. To go from that to putting up medieval scaffolding and dealing with the frankly basic hygiene standards afforded by the king - well, it's no wonder I lost.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You've never sung me the Dinosaur song, Sam :(

    ReplyDelete