July 26, 2011

Participants: Jon, Nadine, Ben, Gili

My brother showed up, mostly to collect things I'm giving away. :-)

Carson City

Nadine 56, Ben 50, Jon 50, Gili 43

Scores approximate. First play for Ben. This game, like Endeavor, is deceptively slow in the first round or two only to explode in the last rounds. This must be the first game in a really, really long time that I had to think for an extended period of time before deciding on a move - not once, but twice. Both times were for role selection.

Like all but the first two times we've played, I reduced the gun bonus from three to two (though it still counts for three when calculating gun spaces) on both the role and the "three gun" board space. I found that three guns was just too many; it essentially meant automatic victory on all future gun battles. That meant that, if you were fighting someone in several spaces, this battle determined all other spaces, which was too much to decide with a single die roll.

Ben points out that reducing the "three guns" space to two guns only nets you a single gun gain, since you have to give up a guy to take it, and the guy counts as a gun, anyway. Not to mention that, if you fight someone for the gun, they get their guy back, netting them a one gun gain. Yeah, yeah, I know. Trust me. It still works much better this way. In fact, there was no lack of people fighting for the "three gun" spot, which proves my point. On the other hand, no one took the gun role this game, but he has been chosen many times in previous games, so there.

Anyhoo, I took a strong start, while Ben made a small error in understanding one of the buildings, so he gained a little less income than he was anticipating. Nadine and Ben were hot on my heels by round two, however, and Nadine passed me by round three. I still had more building points than she did.

In round four, however, I chose roles last. Ben took the sheriff gaining him a 5/1 trade, while Gili and Nadine both took the roles that let them store $60, giving them a lot of 6/1 trade. That left me with roles letting me store a maximum of $30. Advantage Nadine.

Then Ben and Nadine fought over one of the scoring spaces, Ben lost the die roll even though he was up on the tie, and Nadine took the five points that Ben would have taken. If the single die roll had gone the other way, Bwn would have won instead of Nadine. And that's why we all hate dice.