A Road Paved with Corpses

Last night Ian and I (Sam) bashed through a couple of games of The Road to Canterbury. This 2 or 3 player challenge sees the players as a bunch of ne'er do wells conning pilgrims out of their money, and the most successful con merchant wins the game. You are rewarded for tempting the pilgrims to sin in the first place, for pardoning them, and even for killing them off by adding the seventh sin - an indulgence too far in the eyes of God.

There are three pilgrims around at any given time, joining the players on the road from Greenwich to Canterbury. Each player begins with five sin cards and on your turn you can tempt any one of the company to sin. Because they are pathetically weak, they always succumb, and when they do you can add a cube of your colour to the matching sin on the circle of sin to show how dastardly you are - the point of this is that the first player to tempt pilgrims into the seven different sins gets a bigger reward than the second, and so on.

circle of sin

But obviously, you want to pardon the sins too, as that's where you make your money. So at the end of your turn when you replenish to five cards, you can forego another sin cards in favour of a pardon card. And on a subsequent turn you can pardon any of the pilgrims for their transgressions, as long as your pardon card matches at least one of their sins. How many of the matching sins you pardon denotes how much you make on the deal, as you count up the amount of matching sins, and the parson if appropriate (he spirals around the circle of sin, preaching, and if you forgive the sin he's currently fixated on, that's good) and square the total: that's your cash reward. You also get to put a corruption cube on that pilgrim to show your responsibility for their fall from grace.

pardons, sins, relics

If you play the seventh sin to any one pilgrim then they die. At this point the player with the most corruption cubes gets a reward; placing one of their cubes on the road board and getting a windfall - these get bigger the closer you get to Canterbury. They also take a Last Rites token which they can add to their score at the end, or cash in for an extra turn. As soon as the last pilgrim dies (filling the Canterbury space) the game is over.

Finally there are Relic cards to be had that do all kinds of nonsense but if you pick up a less effective one then it's kinda taking up space in your hand. They can be very powerful though, a fact which is slightly undermined by the appalling puns they contain.

dead pilgrims

We really liked it. There is a lot of room for chicanery here - you can see when your opponent is gearing up for a juicy pardon and beat them to it; either pardoning the sin yourself or even killing the Pilgrim off. There are Death cards hidden in the sin deck to expedite deaths unexpectedly and Last Rite tokens - which we kept forgetting to use, but could see the potential in them - to swing the majority on pilgrim corruption your way or grabbing some quick cash by taking two turns in a row.

There's also a nice balance between spreading out your temptations (for that juicy 20 gold reward on the circle of sin when you complete all seven sins) and focussing on pardons instead, which can get you up to 16 gold when timed judiciously. And majorities on the dead pilgrims can be a deal breaker too - at the end of the game the amount of cubes you have on the road gives you cash, as well as the amount of cubes on the surviving pilgrims - there are always two who make it to Canterbury. So there's a balance between hanging on for a big cash reward pardoning, or just making a bunch of small pardons for a smaller return, but - you hope - a bigger presence in majorities.

Deadly for everyone - Ian won the first game something like 50-40, and in the second familiarity made a huge difference to the scores, as I won something like 140-110.

We moved on to Quantum, and at Ian's suggestion removed a central planet on an already fighty board to add The Void - the expansion where any ships in the void at the start of your turn add a point to your research. Placed dead centre, it was to prove a gladiatorial arena. If the road to Canterbury was bumpy, this was like climbing in the ring with Tyson and getting repeatedly punched in the face. I started on the offensive, but that lasted about as far as my first turn as I spent the next half an hour being blown to shit, over and over again. My constant rolling of fives and sixes didn't help, but it was an awesome performance by Ian, who practically sashayed his way to a 5-2 victory. Even invoking the spirit of Katy with some well-aimed name-calling made no difference.

evil red

So a small measure of comfort was derived from beating Ian all ends up at Elk Fest, after which we rounded off the evening with a game of Diamonsters, which I also won. But I will be smarting from that Quantum result for some time!

not space

Palaces of Dorra

Sunday night, and Ian and Andrew joined me (Sam) for a little light gaming to wrap up the weekend.

Only as it turned out, Medina wasn't quite as light as advertised. This is a pretty abstract game of palace building, where the palaces are in four colours and you the players are only able to take ownership of one palace in each colour. On your turn you simply add pieces to the board - either the palaces, or the stables that go with them, or the city walls and merchants they like being next to. And at some point, you choose to place a roof (of your own colour) on an unclaimed palace, nabbing it for yourself.

The whole game is an exercise in brinkmanship - you want to grab the biggest palaces for yourself, but once you do, they can't be made any bigger. And because there are rewards for the biggest palaces, it did encourage a bit of AP.

You also get rewarded for proximity of your palaces to various things: the well, the towers, the merchant street (which the players themselves build). I hung back as long as possible, and as a result had a lot more flex in the last third of the game. But I couldn't catch Ian with his spread of rewards for building close to towers...

Ian 58
Sam 51
Andrew 30

Andrew wasn't blown away by it, feeling the game played itself for the final stages. But Ian and I would like to try it again. With it's Mexica/Origin-esque flavour I can imagine Martin enjoying it.

We moved swiftly on to Take It Easy. Andrew called Countries that no Longer Exist, Ian Final Fantasy characters, and I went for Al Pacino movies. Except I ran out halfway through and changed to Robert De Niro. The less said about my Pacino impression the better, but at least I won:

Sam 417
Ian 374
Andrew 331

Then we played Love Letter. the first two rounds I began with a King and a Baron and took turns to knock out my opponents, winning the rounds as well. When Andrew won the third I suspected my streak was over - in fact I assumed Ian would win - but I claimed the win with a spawny Princess/Handmaid combo in round four:

Sam 3 cubes
Andrew 1 cube
Ian 0 cubes

As if riled by his lack of Love Letter action, Ian came back at us with a resounding victory in Push It:

Ian 11
Andrew 8
Sam 8

...before he called it a day. Andrew and I were inebriated enough to play a quick game of Elk Fest which became a mix of cagey strategy and drunken cackhandedness, as at one point I simply flicked everything as far down the table as I could. Despite my spoiling tactics, Andrew got his moose home first and claimed the win:

Andrew: wins
Sam: doesn't

A no score report

Saturday, Sam and I met up for a quick evening of him versus me. It was not meant to be blogged, hence my lack of notes regarding the scores, but my remarkable performance on Take It Easy cannot go without mention. Luckily I’d been trying out the camera on my new phone this evening, so we have photos too.

We began at seven, with a game of Circus Flohcati. A simple game of set collecting. The main mechanic being a bit like Port Royal: keep turning cards as long as you want, but if you turn over two of the same kind, you go bust and cannot pick up a card.

Unlike Port Royal, though, only the last card goes into the discard pile. The rest remain on the table and your opponent can take one. And then you can take one. In fact going bust doesn’t seem massively punitive, apart from having one less card.

The idea is to put down trios (three of a kind in value) and with seven suits there were enough of each value for us both to complete any value of trios. I won’t go into the scoring system, but although Sam scored a “Gala” (got a trio of each value) I got points for unused cards in my hand.

Possibly Knizia’s simplest game. Maybe too simple? Looks nice, though.

Andrew won!

Then Sam mentioned that he’d bought a number of games from Joe who was having a bit of a clear out. Among the titles was Russian Railroads! We got it down and, after some rule refreshment, we got going.

It’s all well and good remembering the rules, but I’d forgotten about the strategy. I went for the usual Eurogame thing of “a little bit of everything” while Sam focussed solely on the top track with its multipliers. It was a thrashing.

Sam won!

It was over rather quickly, so we played again. This time, I went for the Kiev track as the quickest route to victory and it worked. My margin of victory was small – less than ten – by a victory is a victory, right?

Andrew won!

Then we played Codenames as a co-op two-player. We played twice, taking a turn to be the Spymaster, and both times we got a “Your watches are synchronized” rating on the chart of success in the rule book.

Sam knows me well, and went for a childish clue “Off” which I used to successfully identify “Mouth” and “Pants”. He needed to consult Google though, regarding a particular definition: Kiwi was a fruit but was it also a bird? When it was my turn to pick out the word, I also found myself hesitant over the definition of Kiwi in exactly the same way.

We both won!

Then we played Take It Easy, a game that I have difficulty with. This time, I boldly started by placing my first tile in the middle. After that, things started to go downhill and I ended the first round with what might be an all-time low score of 57.

Sam, on the other hand, got lucky in round two. He needed three five tiles in a row to finish and that was exactly what I chose.

Sam won!

So with the score tied at two wins apiece, we needed a decider. We chose Elk Fest, the game of shove ha’penny with massive ungulates using the pennies as stepping stones. Being quite drunk, the most difficult part was putting the elk on the stones.

Although I got almost within stepping distance of Sam’s base first, I couldn’t get that final stone to stop in the right place.

Sam won!

Then we played Push It. First to eleven and I had an end-game collapse, giving Sam an easy win to finish the night with.

Sam won!

Phew. What an evening.

The Longest Half an Hour

Tuesday, Joe's house. After a Tuesday night (last week), Thursday night, and all day Saturday and Sunday, we'd finally managed to break Andrew, who couldn't face playing any more. Adam had no such qualms, and with Gonz to join us later Joe suggested setting up Trains as a starter for ten. After that, it got confusing.

Firstly I (Sam) somehow read "Trains" as "Railways" and anticipated Railways of the World. Then Quentin showed up unannounced - a delight for us, but Trains didn't play five, so we needed a rethink. Adam and Gonz were both delayed, so Quent, Joe and I went through a protracted and frankly unnecessary discussion, as having reached a choice of two we could agree on, we couldn't make a final decision on the other's behalf.

The games in question were Steam and Spyrium. Steam is the brother of Railways, but having sold it to us Joe started to go curiously cold on it. Gonz of course hates anything to do with trains, so voted for Spyrium, as did I. Adam and Quent both voted for Steam, and Joe's casting vote went on Spyrium, as it would be "a bit quicker".

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Rewind back to me staring gobstruck at "Trains" and realizing that any train-based words for me now spell "Railways". It's only just gone seven, and finally starting on Spyrium is an hour and a half away. With Adam and Gonz delayed Joe and I played The Duke, which is like acrobatic chess on steroids. There's an 8x8 grid around which you move your pieces, trying to catch your opponent's Duke. When a piece is moved, though, it flips, and now has a new set of movement capabilities. For some reason Joe's tankard seemed thematically appropriate.

How we dreamed we'd be as children

After a cagey opening I took the game to Joe and got myself in a strong position. But in a Hollywoodesque reversal of fortune I managed to box my own Duke in, giving Joe a simple victory.

My Duke shoots himself in the foot

It's a game that is growing on me. You can learn as you play, and although it's quite thinky (and long) it's not thinky enough to feel heavy.

There was no-one here yet, so we then played Elf Fest. And I must say mastering the taxing game management afforded by the game of the night Spyrium is all very well, but nobody moves an elk across a series of disc-shaped wooden islands quite like I do. I won.

Just out of shot are nine small grey thingies

Back to Spyrium. This had its debut at Novocon so the rules were fresh in Joe's mind, meaning we'd have a speedy game and time for something else afterwards. At least, that was the plan. However Gonz and I both found it hard to get our heads around the game early on, and all of us had our moments of taking our time and working out what the best possible move might be.

There's some delightful elements to it - I like the risk factor in weighing up when to remove workers and when to keep placing them. And the money-collection mechanic is pretty neat for the same reasons. However when your workers are left high and dry - as Adam and Joe were early on, and I was in the last round - it can be quite frustrating. Not knowing what else to do at the start, I tried to take an extra worker as early as possible and push myself up the income track. That meant I could see what everyone else was doing and try and mimic what appeared the best ideas.

Joe was finding it hard to build buildings, Quent was finding it hard to raise cash, and Adam and Gonz - despite the latter's professed bafflement - seemed the likely eventual winners to me. After lagging behind everyone for three rounds I managed to catch up, but the final round stumped me and I stagnated. Joe produced an electrifying surge of 30 points over the final two rounds, but as we suspected it was between Adam - with his incessant minor point-scoring - and Gonz - with his large collection workers getting him valuable buildings - who fought for first place, Gonz emerging victorious:

Gonz 65
Adam 63
Joe 60
Quentin 59
Sam 52

Opinion was divided. Quentin loved it. Gonz, despite winning, was less enamored. I was cheesed off with my plans being accidentally sabotaged by Joe in the final round (I think I could have managed third place), but up until that point I think I was enjoying it - I certainly felt a little more forgiving this morning than I was last night, anyway.

But it was certainly longer than half an hour though - it was now 11pm and talk of a light game to finish off with did not re-emerge, as we collectively exhaled after a tense couple of hours.

						Points
Adam	2	2	1	3	1	9
Gonz	1	1	3	5	2	12
Sam	5	2	2	2	1	12
Chris	1	1	3	4	5	14
Joe	3	3	2	2	4	14
Quentin	4	1	1	5	3	14
Andrew	3	3	4	4	5	19
Hannah	2	5	5	5	5	22
Steve	2	5	5	5	5	22
Anja	3	5	5	5	5	23