Monday 3 November 2014

The Constantinople Gardners

Ian, Sam and I met up for some weekend gaming. New to the table was Istanbul, GNN’s first dip into the murky waters of Essen exclusives.

The game plays out across a four-by-four grid, which can be either one of the arrangements suggested in instructions, or it could be completely random. Each space has an action, and the idea is to work out how to best put these actions together in order to buy gems. The first to reach a certain number wins the game.

You have a stack of counters, and every time you move to a new place, you take that action and leave one counter behind, like a little trail of rabbit droppings. However, once your stack of counters is exhausted you either have to retrace your steps (which means you can use that action again) or you can go to the fountain and gather everyone back again. But the fountain doesn't have an action, so it feels like a wasted move.


It's nice and fast-moving. It seems to scratch a similar itch to Five Tribes, with the random board and moving, but with far less processing power needed to work out what you should be doing. Ian, Sam and I liked it enough that once we were done with the first game, we decided to play again.

The first game ended:

1. Ian
2. Sam
3. Andrew

And the second ended

1. Andrew
2. Sam
3. Ian


After this, we went for something warm and comforting that we all knew and loved. 7 Wonders was pulled down from the high shelf it sits on, and we started to play.

Again, the GNN aversion to sciences was in full view, as none were built in round one and the moment I decided to take the plunge and try them, Sam started building them, too. In the end, I forsook science, and went for big blue buildings and a couple of guilds to squeeze me past Sam's armies and Ian's other guilds.

Andrew 57
Sam 55
Ian 47

Finally, to finish off the evening, we went for No Thanks. Should've know better, with King Of Chains at the table. Ian went on his usual run of good luck, putting together another improbable series of cards.

Ian 31
Andrew53
Sam 58







Points
Ian 1 3 3 1 2 10
Andrew 2 1 1 3 3 10
Sam 3 2 2 2 3 12
Joe 3 2 3 3 1 12
Martin 5 3 2 1 1 12
Katie 1 5 1 2 4 13
Chris 4 2 4 4 1 15
Matt 1 3 2 5 5 16
Hannah 2 2 2 5 5 16
Adam 4 4 3 3 5 19
Stanley 4 1 5 5 5 20

1 comment:

  1. I think with the exception of Martin, whose aversion to worker placement would probably apply to the assistant-dropping, most GNNers would enjoy Istanbul. It's quite a friendly game - you can usually do Plan A and in the unlikely event you are stymied by costs Plan B suggests itself pretty quickly. We zapped through it.

    Great to play 7 Wonders too. I made a catastrophic error in No Thanks - with only a couple of cards to go I gambled that a linking card would come up. Gah!

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