Just the pax, ma'am

A little note to mark yet another game of Pax Pamir on Thursday, the third in three days for GNN and the fourth in four for Sam if you include his solo walk through. This kind of ardent adoration for a game hasn't been seen since... Well, since Orbit, about a month ago.

But Orbit is a pussy cat compared to Pax's wave of rules, trimmed down from the first edition but still a hefty amount to take on board. As three Afghan war lords, Sam, Martin and I placed armies, built roads and sent spies out so that we could gain influence.

We started all loyal to the Russian forces, but I broke ranks first, cosying up to British before too long. Sam picked up a tableau of purple cards since they increase the size of your tableau and also, since the favoured suit was purple, he had a range of free actions to supplement his two free ones.

The first scoring card came out and, thanks to a little luck, a second one followed it which meant an immediate dominance check before Martin could change things in his favour.

Sam was sitting pretty despite our attempts to change the favoured suit away from purple. Martin decided to swap hands with Sam, only to realise he'd given him a card that'd let Sam switch the favoured suit back to purple. And if that weren't enough, another dominance card came out and cash-rich Sam was able to snap it up and score big. He won by being so far ahead that the end of the game was triggered.

I didn't note the scores, but I had no points at all. I'd spent the evening trying things out and not really obsessing over tactics but even I had moments of AP when the cards available all seemed equally good. Or interesting.

After this we played Metropolys, a game rarely seen but was perfectly suited to end the game. Take control of city regions by bidding for them with incrementally higher tower blocks.

Sam was quick to put down plenty of blocks while Martin held back his most powerful for the big moves. I was pleased with my clever move which allowed me to surround a lamp post (one of my secret criteria - I suppose this is important to civil engineers) by creating a dead end that I could bid for and win immediately. But Martin won even if he was so obvious with his moves that Sam and I worked out both of his secret criteria mid game.

Martin 25 ish
Andrew approx 20
Sam 15 more or less

And we were done! At a reasonable hour, too. An evening of two games I'd like to revisit soon.