February 23rd, 2005 |
Another game night, and Dan and Annie came. Scott would have, but his canceling of dinner plans on Friday caught up with him, as a 4:30 PM Bat Signal sent him off to combat crime and villainy. (Doesn't the Commish know he's not supposed to summon him on Game Night?)
| Santiago |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Annie | 86 | 1 | * |
| Mike | 81 | 2 | * |
| Dan | 65 | 3 | * |
| Karla | 61 | 4 | * |
Notes: I knew I'd like this game from the moment I heard about it, perhaps 6 months ago. The folks whose opinions I respect on the 'geek gave it the thumb's up, and it seemed like it was pretty slick. I was right. This is a cool game.
In Santiago, everyone produces farms full of goods. Each plot of land, though, is only worth anything if it is able to get irrigation. So, each player bids on the possible farm plots, then places them on the grid, with the aim of 1) making big plantations of the same type of crop (which score a lot more) and 2)getting them irrigated. At the end of the game, each plot of land is worth points, depending on how many workers each player has on the plots and how many plots of the same type are connected. So, for instance, if a player has 3 total workers on a banana plantation of size 6, she receives 18 points.
So, without much ado, we started going. There's not much downtime in this game, and even though it was 11 rounds long, it went incredibly quickly, and we finished in about an hour. I was the canal overseer (the person that gets final say in where the canal goes each turn), and I placed it in such a way that only Annie didn't get any water.
In the second round, Karla expanded the sugarcane field we were both working on and Annie started a banana field. Dan connected his second paprika field (each with two workers). I was the first bidder and tried to bid heavy on it (a 5), but Dan saw what I was doing and bid 6. This hosed me, and I was stuck with a tile that turned out to be almost useless at game end (a 2 point bean field, isolated and lonely.) Dan seemed to be forming a huge Escudo grab there for the end of the game, so over the next couple turns I bordered it with lands that never got irrigated, and the lands turned out to only be worth 8 Escudos at the game's end.
Then I made a stupid move, ignoring an excellent tile that was available (and able to be connected to an irrigated canal AND would have connected to about 4 pre-existing sugarcane fields, netting me 12 points (at game end) and costing only 4 to place. Instead, as I took the canal overseer, I was stuck doing a whole lot of nothing while Karla got the points (the tile Karla got to play for only three Escudos in marked as #1 on the image below). Annie expanded her banana plantation and Dan joined her.
Annie took advantage of the next couple rounds to get a couple more banana fields connected to her big plot - it ended up being a 42 Escudo plantation for her by the end. I should have seen it coming and outbid her (I was still the canal overseer), but I totally missed it. In fact, I backtracked out of the highest bid (5 Escudos - Annie bid 4) down to the second highest (only 2 Escudos) to save money, thinking I could still get a good amount of points. This was my second big mistake of the game and my last. Annie could have put her banana field just about anywhere and still gotten some irrigation, but she took the spot I wanted (identified by the number 2 in the image below). As you can see, this would have been a great place for a sugarcane field, which ended up in the worthless position of #3 instead. Had Annie put her banana plot on #3, she would have been fine and dandy (the other banana plots and all those beans and potatoes weren't there yet). In my defense, I thought Annie would let me have spot #2 because I had placed a canal next to one of her fields for less money than I was offered elsewhere - you know, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours - but Annie was in pure screwage mode and I paid for it. Anyway, these two boo-boos really helped me focus from here on in. I thought I was dead in the water at this point, but I made a concerted effort to catch up.
Still, it was tough. Karla took the canal overseer for about 6 straight rounds, trying to build up her money. The problem was that she kept passing to get it. Everyone else was building up farms, and as Karla generally built her canals to the highest bidder, if a player had cash, he could get his plot irrigated. Dan, though, was poor, so he kept building areas either next to canals or in places where he thought Annie would go. He was doing a nice job, but his dependence on Annie also helped her out, and any gains he made usually equalled Annie's own gains.
The game now seemed to be between Dan and Annie, so I made subtle plays to make their plays expensive, but, as I said above, it was difficult. I had to bid first each time thanks to Karla's incessant passing, so I had to try to guess what everything was worth. This resulted in (mostly) overbids on my part. I never had a chance to get something for the highest bid plus one. I generally had to scare people off by bidding something like 6 to 8. I managed to do pretty well, getting several points on a large bean field, but Annie and Dan were still amassing a lot of points. So then I started hosing them. I started creating a potato field, placing two of my own pieces there, and I bribed Karla to put the canal in a place totally useless to anyone else, so she passed and went for a place that would water her own crops. At my proposed placement, Dan complained that I should have placed a canal in such a way that he could use it, too - and he would have aided in the bribe. I have the potato plot he tried to keep from dying marked with #4 in the image below. Instead, I snickered at my clever move and used my own special canal to get the extra points I needed. These two plays ended up boosting my Escudo total by quite a lot while hosing Dan (and Annie) to some extent.
Dan was now doomed and Karla, by virtue of passing almost 6 rounds in a row, hardly had any workers out there. Still, Annie had a huge banana plantation and I had barely managed to get any of it. The game ended, Dan's and Annie's potato fields rotted, and I managed to catch up on them. Annie's banana plantation, though, was simply too large, and she had managed to get enough plots in other plantations (except my potato plantation, heh heh heh) that she held me off by 5 Escudos. Had she not hosed me and had I not messed up the sugarcane bid, I would have won pretty easily, but I learned a lot. As the game goes on, the choices become much more difficult and much more excruciating. Karla simply passed too often, and Dan was not the canal overseer even once, so he was poor most of the game, never having more than 8 or so Escudos.
Dan said that it was a "pretty cool game," and Annie liked it (probably because she won). Karla was in agony most of the game because she saw that she was in bad shape.
The big plot of yellow with all the little gray cubes on it was Annie's cash cow in this game.
| Ra |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Karla | 32 | 1 | |
| Annie | 27 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Dan | 27 | 2 (Tie) | |
| Mike | 17 | 4 | |
Notes: Next up was fan-favorite Ra, which we managed to play in about 35 minutes. The first round was pretty kind on us all, as we all managed to get some Civ tiles and start a foundation. I had some rivers and about 5 monuments, but only one dude in a chair. Karla had just enough dudes in chairs to avoid the penalty and also had some rivers and some monuments. Dan and Annie had each used their gods to get Civ tiles, and Dan had the lead in dudes in chairs. He was the only bidder left by the end of the round (when there were still 3 Ra spaces left), and he only greeded it twice, managing to get some pretty good stuff, but not the world-shattering stuff he normally gets.
In the second round, I got mega-hosed. While Annie had amassed a nice group of dudes in chairs and rivers (and got a civ tile), Karla racked up some gold and 3 different Civs and Dan just barely kept his lead in dudes in chairs. I managed a few points in river tiles, but when I had two opportunities to greed it up at the end, I pulled a Ra tile after two tile draws the first time (and passed) and then pulled a Ra tile immediately afterwards. With the Civ AND pharaoh penalty, and no appreciable gain in rivers or monuments (I was only at 6) to show for it, I needed a miracle.
Miracles, as they so often are for me in Ra, were in short order (again). Annie bulked up her dudes in chairs, using a god tile to amplify her total. (I was still at 1.) Dan, in retaliation, also used a god tile to grab one, keeping him in the lead by one. Something happened to me, as well. Usually, I'll invoke Ra on a set of tiles that is a pretty good buy for me but a mediocre if not poor buy for someone else, and someone else will take it anyway. In this game, Annie used her last tile (an 8) to get a set of tiles that was almost totally useless for her. They consisted of a river, a flood, a red civ, and a monument. As she already had a flood, this set of stuff was hardly worth anything to her, especially since she was combating Dan for the pharaoh lead. Instead, she squandered her last tile on this stuff, simultaneously hosing both of us. (Everyone else realized that this stuff was useless to them, as Dan was going for sets of monuments and both he and Karla already had floods, too.)
Karla had an excellent last round (as opposed to me, who was again hit with the Civ and pharaoh penalties). She managed to get a gold tile and to fertilize her rivers. She also got a Civ, and had 6 monuments plus the bidding chip bonus. Dan took the -5 penalty for least amount of bid points (and a further -5 for not having a Civ), and Karla, to my surprise, won.
The game was low-scoring. The disaster tiles showed up early, and no one wanted a lot of the early tile displays. Plus, there were very few Ra tiles early on, and Dan's greed used up even more tiles, which lowered the ratio of goods tiles to Ra tiles substantially. The second round started revealing more and more Ra tiles, and by the end, it was difficult to build up to four goods tiles without getting a Ra tile. Dan, I felt, didn't play very well. (And I know how to play poorly, just check out my score.) He still managed to get the pharaoh lead, though that was pretty much all he had. Annie, I guess, was hindered by using her chips to get just enough pharaohs to take 2nd, which is costly. Karla had just enough pharaohs to stay ahead of last place and focused on other things. If you're going to go after pharaohs, you have to go for it all.
Dan (again) had the pharaoh lead all three turns. He does this every game somehow. This time, at least Annie gave him a run for his money.
I've discovered what always happens to me. Number 1, bad luck. I've watched Dan greed it up perfectly about 80 times and it's never worked for me (not once). Number 2, my crucial bargains never work. As I mentioned above, someone would rather overbid on a set of stuff that is of almost no usefulness to them rather than let me have it at a bargain. I can't remember ever getting a deal on stuff, and it's mostly because Annie (or Dan, if it's the last bid of the round) will screw it all up for no good purpose to her (or him). Number 3, I get pissed because Number 2 happens (and Dan once again gets the pharaoh lead) and I complain, targeting me for further Number 2's, now from both Annie and Karla.
| Gang of Four |
| Results | |||
| Player | Score | Place | First Time? |
| Mike | 27 | 1 | |
| Dan | 46 | 2 | |
| Karla | 53 | 3 | |
| Annie | 61 | 4 | |
Notes: Annie (I think) wanted to play this, so we played this for the last hour of game night. We still haven't gotten through a full game, but we're getting there. We still have a lot of rounds where the highest point total is 7 or less, but out of 8 hands, we had 2 hands with big scores. It was very tight, with Dan taking a small lead early. I thought I had everyone set up to get some big points in the third hand, but Annie had a better full house than I did, and so rather than winning and sticking everyone with a lot of points, I was stuck with one point.
Then Karla crushed us with a hand, sticking Dan with 12 cards, me with 9, and Annie with 11. Then I had another close bout of knocking everyone out early, but most of the hands were tight. Then, we finished the night on my big hand, as I managed to stick Karla with 33 points (and Dan and Annie with 2 and 6, respectively) to rocket back into the lead and claim victory as Karla said she didn't want to play any more.