Joe focused most of his resources on two mines, while Sam fretted over having one less mine than the rest of us. I went for the Adam-esque tactic of not scoring in a round in order to build up my reserves for a big push next round. Unfortunately the push wasn't big enough, as all of us were stymied by a stubbornly low price on copper, and a lack of tin in our somewhat soggy mines.
But the high point was when Joe had to roll for tin and copper prices. He casually leaned over to his bag and pulled out his esteemed dice arena. He used it to roll the three dice and then put it back, and we never saw it again. A cameo to rank amongst the best, I think
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| The Dice Arena in action |
Joe 100
Sam 96
Andrew 93
After this was a new game! Coup. This may be a French word, but the game is set in Italy. Except it's not really, since it's a simple game of bluff and has no real sense of anything Italian. Each player has two cards and is allowed to take actions according to whatever cards they have. But those cards are hidden, allowing a player to take an action of a particular card that they don't have. If someone suspects them, they can challenge them. The loser of the challenge loses one of their two cards. The winner is last man with a card.
We played three games, and somehow managed to share the honours evenly.
1. Sam, Andrew, Joe
2. Andrew, Joe, Sam
3. Joe, Sam, Andrew
The night was still young (before 10) and Sam was eyeing the whiskey on the shelf. Another game was brought to the table along with the shot glasses: Africana.
Imagine The Cannonball Run set across the great continent of Africa except instead of racing from A to B, it's more like doing laps as we sped north then south then back in our search for adventures and new discoveries. I started badly, finding my adventures completed by other people before I got to the end, so I got an extra joker, and a bunch of discoveries and that really helped. Sam's early good form petered out towards then end, so by the end I really had no idea who had won.
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| A shadow falls across Africa... |
When it came to counting up, it was very close with me and Sam tying for first, except that I thought we'd counted one category twice. I demanded a recount, and with good reason, as I squeaked into first with my last minute dash to Casablanca to get a necklace to go with my bongos giving me a set of discoveries that scored enough points to give me the win.
Andrew 40
Sam 39
Joe 37
We managed to squeeze five leaderboard games into one crazy evening. And, amazingly, we all came away with the same score on the form table. I scramble into third on the "best most recent score" rule, but it's tight at the top. Now, if we could just convince Steve to play five games in an evening...
| Points | ||||||
| Steve | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 |
| Anja | 1 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 10 |
| Andrew | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 10 |
| Sam | 2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 10 |
| Joe | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 10 |
| Adam | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 13 |
| Hannah | 1 | 1 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 17 |
| Paul | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 19 |
| Jon | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
| Chris | 6 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 23 |
Lovely to play Tinner's Trail again - it'd been too long. Coup felt like it'd be better with 5 or 6 players, but I like the bluffing element. Africana I enjoyed more this time around - it felt really close and I like a game where things can swing on the very last turn.
ReplyDeleteTinner's Trail remains for me a copper-bottomed classic - I love everything about it. I looked it up on the Geek when I got home, to see if I could work out why it isn't higher up than it is (I think it's just breaking the top 100).
ReplyDeleteThe main gripe seems to be that the investments track isn't cut-throat enough - there is little point to the two cubes limit, since a person can generally make up the numbers elsewhere if they're shut out of a particular box.
For me, I'm glad that part isn't more combative - the game has just the right amount of direct 'take that' I think.
In the past I think I recall we have played (incorrectly) that each player was limited to two cubes per investment round - I think that's been suggested on the Geek as a way to add more tension to the game. Anyway, I'm amazed it's not higher up than it is - it's brilliant.
Coup was fun, and would be even more so with more players - plays up to six! And Africana I really like too, though I've come last in both games we've played - I think playing against Matilda has softened me up. Sam was managing to pull off quite a few good chaining moves, and I was pretty convinced he had the edge, but Andrew managed to pip him to the post.
Andrew and I were ruminating on the drive home about the benefits of those extra assistant cards. -10 points for three, but you could probably make that up in the fact that you'd never have to spend an action taking cards. Might try that next time . . .
I was wondering the same thing. Also if you'd have time to get all three, seeing as they cost money and turns.
ReplyDelete