Torres Redux

As ever, when Thursday arrives my early morning thoughts of hitting the sack 5 minutes after the kids do have dissipated by the time evening rolls around. The games cupboard calls my name, and like a sailor dashed on the rocks, lured by a siren's wail, I respond.

So does Andrew. I guess we're the ones with bugger all else to do.

So tonight we revisited Torres as a 2-player game, having discovered on Tuesday that one pertinent rule about knight placement had eluded us. We'd enjoyed it the first time; this time it was even better. We played the 'Master' version: Adam might like to know that this eliminates the chance element of Action Cards, as each player starts with their own set - and it also supplies you with the option of gaining a bonus from a 'Master' card drawn randomly at the start of the game - in this case the bonus available was 40 points if you had all your knights orthogonally adjacent at the third and final scoring round.

I started well, but just as with our first two-player game Andrew outscored me in round two, moving just a few points behind me on the score track. Come the third and final round I sacrificed scoring Andrew's castle to line up my knights and go for the bonus. But having made it I realised I would have scored more sticking with the castle and building upwards - Andrew picked up 54 points compared to my 40. I also lost out on the King's bonus, but did manage to put together 81 points for the biggest castle - 9 tiles high x 9 area. But it wasn't enough to win - Andrew's more nomadic knights brought home the scoring bacon in the tightest finish possible:

Andrew 268

Sam 267

We'd raced through Torres so fast it was a wonder any of the castles stayed upright, but having done so we had time for Citadels. Again I established an early lead; again Andrew's canny play won the day. I was nowhere contemplating the finish line when he suddenly - courtesy of the architect - built three buildings to end the game, and left my wayward assassin twiddling his butter-fingered thumbs:

Andrew 31

Sam 21

If Endersby can bring this form to Tuesday nights we may have a new aspirant to the ratio throne...

Of Castles and Saraglios

Tonight once again saw the four core members of GNN arrive for their weekly board game fix. We did wonder if it was some personal hygiene problem that was keeping other people away. I thought perhaps the blog posts describing complex battles over intricate games was putting off the casual gamers, and maybe something lighter was needed to bring in the punters. So I was ready to suggest a game of tag and bobbing for apples this evening, but by the time I’d arrived Torres had been chosen as the evening’s opening game.

The rules for this kind-of-3D-draughts (where you build up the board yourself) were described by Sam, and we began. Before long Adam was asking chillingly pertinent questions and I was convinced that he had instantly acquired a deep understanding of the rules. He found himself in an early tussle with Sam, which had the advantage of them giving each other points as they built up their shared castles.

Joe, meanwhile, concentrated on the more affordable end of the castle market, with some dainty little castles that no one bothered to challenge him on. Instead, he got his points from the King’s Bonus (hur hur, he said "boners") which a knight would receive if the King stayed in his castle.

I played a middle road, mostly sneaking some points off Sam and Adam by joining in with their castles. But Sam played the board like a master. Or at least like someone who’d played before and paid attention. He got points from the big castles and for also receiving the King’s Bonus. Final impressions of the game were that Joe thought it was too abstract, and Adam thought it wasn’t abstract enough. We counted up the scores, with Joe’s dog adding sighs of approval/disappointment as we did. The final scores favoured those who’d played before, but only just:


Sam 204
Andrew 177
Adam 175
Joe 168


Next we chose Alhambra since it was still early. Although it’s not often that we begin a game of Alhambra when we’re already tipsy, and thus the game took longer than usual. Sam went for his usual tactic of a long, snaking wall. Adam had a very neat and symmetrical set of tiles, and I sort of bumbled through the game without really paying much attention. I did get lucky with a couple of tiles which helped me connect my wall and score me points, though, so that was nice.

Sam’s concentration was almost ruined by me referencing a Genesis song during one of our many witty exchanges. Since Joe and Adam were keen to hear more about this "worst song ever written", Adam found it on the internet and we had the displeasure of sitting through a live version while we played the game. (You can hear the album version here, but you may hate me afterwards if you do.)

The final scores were added up, and for once Sam’s long wall didn’t get him first place, but only by the slimmest of margins. It was Joe’s balanced play that won the evening. Meanwhile Adam cursed me and Sam for picking up the wrong kind of tiles in the last round, costing him dearly in points. Oh well.

Joe 101
Sam 100
Andrew 87
Adam 85

Not a great night for Adam in the controversial new leaderboard. Perhaps new rules will be brought in for the new year. In the meantime I think my position on the Form Table is as good as it’s going to get, unless I can return to winning ways. Adam drops to a very uncharacteristic fifth.

(JB butts in)
At the end of the evening, Sam and Andrew were so busy discussing the intricacies of the latest form table, they failed to notice Joe using his cardboard-mage skills.

The Form Table...

						Points
Quentin	1	1	1	2	1	6
Andrew	3	2	2	1	1	9
Sam	2	1	3	3	2	11
Joe	1	4	4	2	3	14
Adam	4	3	1	4	3	15
Jonny	3	2	4	5	5	19
Dan	3	1	5	5	5	19
Steve	3	2	5	5	5	20
Andy	2	4	5	5	5	21
Sally	2	5	5	5	5	22

Torres: Worth it?

My copy of Torres arrived today - all the way from Greece, it came, in exchange for Popular Front - and Andrew was good enough to pop around and give it a trial run.

The game is fairly abstract but the tacked-on theme involves building castles for the king - the bigger your castle, and the higher your knight placed in it, the more points you get in the three scoring rounds, when the size-obsessed King comes to visit. There's four turns in each round (in the two player version) where you build castles, place knights, and get to ignore the basic rules via the implementation of 'action' cards.

Andrew tried to ignore the pumpkin...

On an aesthetic level it's quite pretty if you ignore the castles, which are the colour of a 1970's bathroom suite and overtly plastic. On a strategic one it's quite a thinker; though both Andrew and I ended up with nothing to do with our action points on a given turn - that may be a slight downside to the 2-player version or possibly we haven't fully comprehended the rules yet.

But aside from that it was relatively straightforward in the rules department but with depth to the possibilities - always a good ratio, I feel. And in terms of the mechanic it's very different to anything we have on GNN; certainly anything I can recall. Tikal lets you build (or 'discover') upwards, but not with this amount of flux and manipulation. You start with a nearly-flat board and as the game progresses it builds upwards as players construct their own castles and pop around to each others to claim credit for them as well.

We ended the game intrigued by it and enthused about playing with more people. I claimed a narrow victory (251 to 241) having played the first sneaky move on round two and shot ahead - though Andrew outscored me over the next two rounds, I just held on.

Definitely one to get to the table for 3 or 4 players in the near future.