It's a Euro-Rover, old man

Andrew and I (Sam) met up this evening for our occasional Thursday sorties into the cupboard - not literally - and with both of us still intrigued enough, we set up La Granja again. This was my fourth play this week, and I enjoyed it as much as the other three.

What we'd all - those who'd played it - commented on previously was how the craft buildings seem to be too expensive for too little reward. You make your stuff on the farm and take it to market seemed to be the way to go. But I was sure that playtesting would have thrown this up, so told Andrew I was going to experiment with delivering goods to these buildings and seeing how I got on.

And after a period of early stasis it seemed like it was starting to pay off - I was getting extra points all over the place and extra income each round. Someone more gamey than me can probably find a way to make it work. But what I found was at the point where the craft buildings no longer felt sustainable - and before for that matter - Andrew had free run of the market. He wasn't scoring points for bumping me out, because I wasn't there. But he was scoring points - and more than me.

Andrew 60
Sam 51

Now in a very euro-y mood we elected to play The Voyages of Marco Polo, "before we forget the rules" as Andrew put it. However it still took us ten minutes or so to get back up to speed, and we went wildly diverse paths again - as Andrew completed lots of contracts, I travelled the world. I got a heap pf bonuses for doing so, but just as Andrew outwitted me in Mallorca, he did the same across the whole of Eastern Europe and Asia:

Andrew 61
Sam 53

Remarkably similar scores, but - euro-flavour aside - rather different games. We both found that Marco Polo seemed to pale slightly in comparison to La Granja. That might change when the novelty wears off, perhaps...

We finished off with Extreme Biblios, which was mainly notable for the fact that we both thought the other was winning. Andrew made me eat shit three times, and I ate my own shit too. I also lost out on a bunch of church cards as Andrew bumped 'his' dice up serially. As I chucked away cards of my own colours (to get gold) I truly worried we might be crowning a new King Biblios tonight... but thankfully, I managed to pick up a whole three dice in the final reckoning!

Unthankfully, Andrew won on the tie-breaker:

Andrew 8 (wins on colours)
Sam 8 (loses on colours)

Mr Endersby is now Mr Biblios! - for now, at least....