August 13, 2008

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Amir, Hillel, Binyamin, Rivka, Dov, Hannah, Saarya

Binyamin brought his wife Rivka, and parents Dov and Hannah again. Amir returns for his second attendance.

Prototype: Vacation

Jon, Nadine, Amir

I tested a prototype, but it definitely needed some work. And Nadine was distracted, too, and didn't give it her full attention. No more to say about it now.

Princes of Florence

Binyamin 62, Rivka, Dov, Hillel, Hannah

They played on the new edition with the pretty board. The new edition also includes some sort of expansion character cards which I didn't get to see. I'll look them up on BGG. Everyone other than Binyamin scored under 50.

Puerto Rico

Amir 54, Nadine 49, Jon 48

First play for Amir, so we gave him corn and a lot of advice. Naturally, with my blocking Nadine from fully utilizing her Harbor, Amir won. Nadine had Harbor, I had Factory, and Amir had both. Amir could have more fully benefited from Wharf, but his taking Harbor prevented me from taking it, which would probably have given me the game. And Nadine scored two early coffee trades and blocked a coffee boat. Amir got a late tobacco monopoly, but he never got to trade it, he shipped it a few times, though.

Blue Moon City

Jon+, Binyamin, Hannah, Amir

First play for Amir, and second play for me. I had essentially forgotten how to play, but it's not a difficult game to pick up. I don't think it's terribly deep, although there are many different options to try and I haven't tried them all.

Still, it's enjoyable and fairly well-balanced, and I would play again. I'm usually a fan of area control. In the end, it came down to the difference of one crystal between Binyamin and me, which is essentially random.

El Grande

Saarya 95, Nadine 92, Dov/Amir 82, Rivka/Jon 82, Hillel 81

First plays for Dov, Hannah, and Hillel. Dov and Hannah had to leave early, so Amir and I took over for them after BMC.

We warned everyone to attack Nadine or she would run away with the game, and that's what they did. As a result, when we joined the game, Nadine was far behind. 6th round scores were: Amir 66, Hillel 65, Jon 61, Saarya 59, Nadine 43.

As you can see, however, she managed a fine catch up during the last third, nearly winning the game.

We flipped over every card that allows you to send other player's caballeros back to the provinces; I never knew so many of these cards existed in the game.