Friday 1 July 2011

Carl came to dinner and afterwards I taught him Jaipur (a 2 player trading game).

Jaipur
Jaipur is a largely tactical card game where taking advantage of your opponent's proximity to the hand limit and situations where all the cards in the market are camels is the name of the game. There is also a game of chicken over holding out long enough to get a set of 5 in order to get the 8-10 point bonus tokens.

I won the first round, but Carl came back in the second round with a score of 85 (70-5 is more normal). I took out the third round, to win 2-1.

7 Wonders
Ceedee and Rob arrived with a stack of games including: First Train to Nuremberg, a shrink wrapped Hansa Teutonica and 7 Wonders (which Carl hadn't played). Ceedee taught Carl while Rob and I set up the pieces during it which felt like the start of a Tolkien novel as people arrived in ones and twos until there were ten of us. Andrew, Anna, Sharon and Anne decided to play Tichu, leaving 6 of us to play 7 Wonders. I sat between Rob and John. I decided to go after green and military cards. I thought I had enough access to resources but by the third era I found myself often unable to build. and I also allowed Rob to out build me in military a couple of times.

I don't have the final score sheet but I think Carl won.

Tichu
Sharon and Anna proved too good for Andrew and Anne winning two games of Tichu: 1180 to 520 (in 9 hands) and 1015 to 95 (in 8 hands). I suspect Anna's creative scoring penalized Anne and Andrew 190 points in the second game!

Princes of the Renaissance
Instead of doing the sensible thing and splitting into 2 threes, people started suggesting 6 player games. Princes caught Rob's imagination and Ceedee was happy to give it a go. I taught the game in a somewhat chaotic fashion, though roughly working backwards from the main sources of victory points through to the actions, what the various tiles are and the details of fighting battles. With the game under way Carl, John and I possibly handed out more advice than was welcome. Then again Ceedee's strategy of doing the opposite of the advice offered stood her in good stead.

Andrew had first pick of the family tiles and choose Baglioni (the warmonger), Rob chose d'Este (the gunner), Carl chose Bentivogli (the treacherous) as a self imposed challenge, I chose Montefeltro (the art collectors), Ceedee chose Gonzaga (the other art collector) and John was left with Malatesta (the treacherous). The Cavalry were snapped up quickly by the first few players (though Rob was persuaded to invest in Artillery instead). I followed my usual practice of auctioning off popular city tiles to entice people to spend cash and commit to cities. Wars broke out early on and Venice (red) gained in status while Naples (yellow) dropped to the bottom. There was plenty of treachery, for instance in one war Carl bribed my only troops to go home so that neither of my bonus tiles (which would have given me +3 on defense) were valid.

Ceedee was attracted to merchants particularly the yellow/Naples ones, and also to the Pope. Carl despite not having a discount on bidding for attack or defense was winning wars all over Italy. Andrew despite having a discount didn't win any wars but astutely bought into Venice. I bought art and initially invested in Naples and Milan. The first decade ended with everyone short of cash, no-one rushed the event tiles so each decade had its full complement of wars and gave everyone plenty of time to buy city tiles. The final decade saw Venice in an untouchable position on the status chart with Naples rising fast. Other than Venice the cities were close together but I tipped the balance in favour of Florence (green) because I thought I could get some Florence tiles (there were no Naples left).

At the end of three decades of war, investment and treachery Ceedee showed us how the merchant strategy plus good choice of city tiles works wonders (53 is a very good score).

Ceedee   39(Cities) +  8(Merchants) + 6(money)     = 53
Ian      21(Cities) + 14(Artists)   + 4(influence) = 39
Andrew P 36(Cities) +  3(Pope)                     = 39
Carl     14(Cities) + 21(Laurels)   + 3(money)     = 38
John B   29(Cities) +  6(Laurels)                  = 35
Rob      13(Cities) +  6(Laurels)                  = 19