Elephant in the room

Last night saw the welcome return of Taj Mahal for the Bracknell collective. Paul and I had played it once yonks ago and James was new to it therefore we spent the first 20 minutes or so in a crash course rules refresher. The rules seem to hint at a complicated game but as with the first time I played it, after the first round the mechanics become straight forward. Keeping abreast of the different scoring possibilities proved tricky for us and at one point we had to perform a count back as we were adding a point for every palace placed.

James and I were quickly into a bunch of heavy bidding wars for early territories while Paul sat back waited to see where the dust settled. James identified link between the provinces to be a key to victory whereas I felt getting goods and the elephant tiles as the way to go. As the game developed Paul came more into it. This game has a lovely balancing mechanism where winning a round of bidding can see you dominate a province but repeated wins means you retain fewer cards and are left with just one to add.

Everybody loves the Palace colours

Cards mean power in the bidding and thus it proved that I lost out in the latter stages to Paul's fist full of cards. Such as it was that my game trailed away like a toy boat pushed out to the middle of a pond. The initial shove showed great direction and promise but eventually it just ended up floating around aimlessly going nowhere. Unlike that cracking analogy! Inbox me if you require similar - it's no trouble.

I really fancy a curry

So Paul's late surge made the game a lot closer than it maybe looked half way through, James' Palace links making the difference.

James - 55
Chris - 48
Paul - 45

Then with time short we chose one of our favourites, Medici. There must have been some rustiness as I was allowed to load fairly generous cargos for relatively little money. Although it must be stated I was lucky with one draw where I needed a 5 to win the ships total for my last space and actually drew it out!

Chris - 163
James - 121
Paul - 114