World Cup final day and France are playing, so we visited
Val (French) and Chris for lunch. Val had received a few new games for her
birthday, so we started by playing ‘Ra’.
This is an auction game with the objective of collecting
various sets of tiles. It is played over 3 ‘epochs’, scoring at the conclusion
of each epoch, plus some end-game scores. The theme of ancient Egypt is irrelevant,
anything would do as well, but it does provide for some nice artwork and is OK.
Normally I’m not a fan of auction games but this one works quite well; each
player only has a limited range of bids and can only make 3 successful bids in
an epoch. There are some negative tiles which you want to avoid, but players
bid on the whole batch of tiles available so choosing when and whether to bid
is key. I tended to bid aggressively early in an epoch, getting tiles I wanted
but missing out on potential opportunities later on. This tactic seemed to work
because I won the game.
We planned to leave before the football kick-off, in time to
collect Snowy from doggy daycare and get back for the match. So rather than
play a new game, we decided to give Century Spice Road an outing. This is a
superb game; fast and simple, with just the right amount of thought required. I’m
sure this will become a classic go-to game for many years to come. I cannot
think of any faults or additions that could improve this game, but we’ve not
yet played the second game of the series, Eastern Wonders, so my views may
change. Anyway, Chris won by a good margin but time over-ran so I missed the
first 30 minutes of the cup final. Congrats to France and I’m sure Val will be
happy for a long time to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment