Games Played: Princes of Florence, Entdecker
Gamers: Chip, Vitas, Paul, Evan, Dave
Thanks to Dave at Scholars for hosting, and thanks for Vitas for providing transportation.
After spending about an hour and a half on the road (Maps? Who needs them?), we arrived at Cole's Hall to find . . . nobody. Actually, that's not entirely true. There were many Magic players upstairs, and Dave (I think) arrived shortly after we did. While Vitas and I got food and Magic commons from Scholars, Dave, Evan and Paul played a round of Space Beans. When they finished playing (and we finished eating), we started a five-player game of Princes of Florence.
PRINCES OF FLORENCE (2:11 + 0:29 rules)
Vitas: 60
Evan: 53
Dave: 39
Chip: 39
Paul: 32
I think this game moved much slower then it would normally, mostly because we were all (except for Evan) new to the game. We probably wasted at least half an hour to "work points to cash or victory points" confusion. As Evan put it, "You can convert two points to one point, or one point to 100 cash, so each point is worth 200 cash." - what could be simpler? (:
I made a rather silly error in the penultimate round. Instead of purchasing a building that matched one of my personality cards, I decided to try to get the recruit card, and picked a building based on the card that I would most likely recruit. The competition for the final recruit card was fierce (as I should have anticipated), and I didn't have enough money left to compete. As a result, I did not publish any works in the last round and tied for the "most works" bonus. I would have done better, but I still wouldn't have won.
That confusion and the interminable length aside, this is a great game. It's entirely possible to plan your ideal move ahead of time and, presuming that no one took the last of the freedoms that you wanted, make your moves quickly. Otherwise, the downtime can get a bit tedious. I like this game a lot, and I'd want to play it again.
ENTDECKER (1:45 + 0:05 rules and setup)
Dave: 74
Chip: 73
Vitas: 65
Evan: 44
Dave was new to the game, but he had read the rules before, so we quickly got into the meat of the game. There were two large islands in the game, and I managed to take the lion's share of both. On my last turn, I had 4 coins left to finish off the last island. Instead of taking 3 mystery tiles and placing a settler, I selected the known tile which left me without any money. At that point, Evan had a one point lead on me, but he had no stake on the island, and Vitas and Dave were far behind, so it seemed safe.
Had I been able to place that settler, I would have been able to defend my 15 point villager token and I would have won. Instead, Dave took quite a few of the village bonuses and inched ahead by one point!
I made the mistake of underestimating the value of the villages. I took the majority of the two biggest scoring islands and rarely, if ever, rolled for money. Dave, on the other hand, rolled for money almost every turn (Pirates came for him at least four times, and went away empty handed as he had only a single coin), and did not take the majority of any island. I'll have to try the "all settlers" approach the next time I play.
After the two-handed game last week, I wasn't so excited about playing Entdecker again. After this close and exciting game, I'm looking forward to playing it again.
posted by FlyingSheep @ 10:25 AM
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