Sam, Adam, Joe and me began the evening with a quick game of Dixit. This clever game of bluffing relies on the sly imagination of the player to describe (in one sentence) a picture they hold in their hand of cards. Then other people have to find a card in their hand that could, at a pinch, also relate to that sentence. The cards are all mixed up and displayed for people to vote on. Points are allocated for popularity. In the end, Anja and Steve arrived having dealt with a bicycle puncture, so we finished the game early with three of us on the same number of points, and Adam in last (ie, second).
Then Anja, Steve and Sam set forth once more into the tumbling world of Wallenstein, while Adam, Joe and I sat down for the new experience of deciding the succession to the Austrian throne by playing a version of trumps. With a map. We went through the rules which seemed complicated at first, but once you start, they make more sense.
Sam, Anja and Steve seemed to have a jolly old time with Wallenstein. I'll leave it to them to fill in the details in the comments, but hearing Sam say the phrase "Despotism brings out your feminine side" mid-game made me wonder if they were playing a variant. Anyway, the scores were
Steve 57
Anja 57
Sam 54
With Steve and Anja tied on points and then on number of palaces, so it went to number of churches which Steve just won by. A very close game.
This meant I couldn't stop his slow spread of blue (for a change) cardboard chits across the map. Joe tried his best to fight on two fronts and I made a fatal mistake of going for a poorly defended town miles from anywhere, while there were more towns to conquer in the middle of the board.
It was okay. I'd like to play the full version, with all three against each other, rather than two against one. Plus it was quite long. In the end, Adam fulfilled his winning criteria just after midnight, long after the Wallenstein crew had packed up and re-inflated their flat tyres. Regarding second place, strictly speaking there isn't one in this game but I decided that Joe should take it since he was two-thirds of the way to reaching his target, while I was barely past halfway.
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| The final state of the board. Is that . . . blue custard? |
Adam: best player!
Joe: noble effort
Andrew: clueless
This is now the third or fourth game based in Germany/Austria that has lots of fiddly rules and that Adam is good at. It pushes him to the top of the Form Table.
| Points | ||||||
| Adam | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 8 |
| Sam | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 10 |
| Steve | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 11 |
| Andrew | 3 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 12 |
| Joe | 2 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 3 | 15 |
| Anja | 2 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 15 |
| Hannah | 1 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
| Quentin | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Jonny | 2 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Sally | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
Wallenstein: Although we didn't finish our game of a few weeks back, half a game was enough to make me confident I could compete against the Anja-Steve axis. But I hadn't reckoned on the importance of territory choice at the start - I knew I didn't want to be completely disparate but I managed to set myself up in no-man's land; so that in year 2 I was placed betwixt the North/West arc of Steve's black armies and the South/East crescent of Anja's red.
ReplyDeleteDespite Anja's sublime 'moment of truce' - having just shaken on our non-aggression pact, I found myself run through with a bayonet - it could have been a lot worse for me, as in the final round the two likely winners crossed swords with each other in an attempt to establish themselves as a clear victor. So my poorly defended territories lay unmolested, giving my 54pt second a somewhat misleading sheen.
But it's a great game, Wallenstein, I really enjoyed it.
that should say 3rd, I just realised...
ReplyDeleteMaria gets to the table!!
ReplyDeleteThanks chaps, for persevering with the rules when I was ready to throw in the towel - once we got going is was far more straightforward than it seemed.
And well done Wallensteiners for an amazingly close game.
Even in the full game, you wouldn't be able to fight Prussia as France Andrew, but you could lay into the Pragmatic Army on the Flanders map. I like Adam's suggestion that we swap roles next time, though I'd be equally happy to play Maria Theresa, or Mother Theresa as Andrew likes to call her, again. I would do a lot of things differently.
We could easily get the intro game done in under two hours now we know the rules - the full game would require a very early start or a saturday night . . .
I really like the playing card combat - very simple but clever. In the full game the cards get used to bid and bluff in the politics phase, so you have to balance your military might with political shenanigans.
Will upload a few pics to the blog now too. Thanks everyone for a great evening.
I feel like I'm ready for the full version of Maria, but maybe another go at the intro game would be a good idea...
ReplyDelete