Friday 9 September 2011

John arrived on time and keen to play Modern Art. But his wish was thrawted by other people arriving one by one. So we switched to Condottiere instead, with John explaining the rules three times as players arrived.

Condottiere
Condottiere is an even more unforgiving game than Taj Mahal. In both games you play cards one at a time, dropping out when you wish but losing all cards played regardless of reward. Unlike Taj Mahal there is only one reward in Condottiere, so the only incentive to drop out early in Condottiere is to cut your losses. Players are dealt 10 cards plus 2 for each province they own, leading to a run-away leader syndrome. I think this is a good thing as it tends to prevent the game dragging on too long.

I usually lose badly in this game but this time was an exception, I won three connected provinces before some people won their first. Most of the newbies didn't enjoy Condottiere and I don't blame them. I certainly didn't enjoy it the first few times I played it. Like most masochistic pursuits, its an acquired taste.

Mogul
Looking for a shortish six player game I suggested Mogul, which was new to Ceedee and Mark. I started off (as I did 2 years ago) with the classic mistake of selling off my first share (for 6 points). But it took quite awhile to build up the cash to buy a replacement share and then several more turns before I had the cash to do anything else. This game does tend to favour those who build up a portfolio and collect dividends for most of the game before selling off just before the crash and I should know this. Nigel made similar mistakes to me and we were both cash and share poor for most of the game.

John B 24
Ceedee 17
Mark   16
Nigel  13
Andrew 11 (beating me on tie break)
Ian    11

Modern Art
After Mogel, Nigel and Mark left and we could teach Ceedee Modern Art. I started by putting up a Krypto for sale and Krypto turned out to be the only artist to sell for the first half of the game, making for a short game. Krypto even came in second in the third round! The fourth round saw four artist's paintings selling. It was a remarkably short and low scoring game.

Ian    $369
Ceedee $361
Andrew $282
John B $259

Hornochsen!
We taught Ceedee this painful game to finish the evening. Andrew and John both had a handful of red cards which they gradually inflicted on us. I finished by taking two moderately negative piles to avoid getting one moderately negative pile followed by a very bad pile. The average score was -15, which is unusually bad.

Ceedee  13
Ian      8
Andrew  -8
John B -28