On Thursday I went to Paradise Perks again for their
Thursday Night Gaming event. There were
around 30 of us in attendance with 6 games being played at any one time.
I was able to play two games one of which I played twice.
The first game I played was Alhambra. In Alhambra players are trying to build the
best palace complex by acquiring buildings that enhance increase its
value. The more expensive the building
the more versatility it has in the way of being able to build more additions to
the complex.
At the beginning of the game the players start with a single
fountain tile that all buildings that are build must have a path to or they may
not be placed, and 20 – 28 coins to be able to purchase buildings with. Coins come in denominations of 1 – 9 in one
of four different currencies. There are
four different buildings that will be up for sale during each players turn, the
currency that is used to purchase the building is dependent on where it is
placed in the market.
The player may perform one of three actions during their
turn. They can purchase a building, take
more coins, or take a tile from their reserve / redesign their palace
complex. If they purchase a building for
the exact amount during their turn they may take an additional action during
their turn.
There are three scoring rounds during the game. During each scoring round the player with the
most of one of the types of building scores they points for that type of
building. In the first scoring round,
only the player with the most buildings of a type gets the points. In the second round the players that have the
most and second most score points for the type of building. In the third round the top three players get
points. In addition each player scores a
point per segment for their longest wall.
I was playing in a teaching game again as half of the players
were new to the game. I kept to my
strategy of buying tiles when I could as often as I could. Unfortunately most of the tiles I was getting
were from the low scoring tile colors.
This did not seem to hurt me too much in the first round as I was able
to keep in a solid second place which had more to do with the six points I got
for my wall than that I had great tiles.
Before the second scoring I was able to pick up a number of green tiles
which helped my score so much that I ended the scoring round in first
place. During the last phase of the game
I was not able to make much in the way of improvements on my Alhambra since we
went into it with only eight tiles left in the bag. I was low on money and the tiles got taken
before I could replenish my funds. I
ended the game in third place. Granted
it was only five points behind the winner but it was still third place.
I then tried my luck at Trans Europa again and actually
ended up playing it twice. Trans Europa
is a game that is deceptively easy to learn but is very difficult to
master. In Trans Europa, the players are
required to connect up five different cities in different regions of
Europe. The players start building track
from their starting post. If they
connect up to another player’s track, they can build off of that player’s track
as well as their own. In this way
players wind up helping each other out while trying to achieve their own
goals. A round ends after the first
player reaches their cities. All of the
other players reduce their scores, which start at 13 points, by the number of
spaces they missed hitting their cities by.
The game ends when one of the players loses all 13 of their points. The winner is the person who has the most
points remaining.
In the first game I fought my urge to start on the eastern
side of the board and focused my efforts on starting close to where most of my
cards were figuring I would worry about the outlaying cities after I got my
core cities in hopes that one of the other players in the game would build
close to them. In the first round it did
not work out so well. I started on the
western side of the board but still managed to lose four points. During the second and third rounds I started
in southeastern Europe and in both rounds I managed to get to my cities first
and as a result won the game.
The second game was different for me and as a result a
treat. I played head to head against a
player with which I was evenly matched.
Instead of the normal two or three round the game normally takes our
game took seven rounds. In the first two
rounds we each lost a point. The other
player won the first round which put me on the defensive. During the second round I stumbled on to a
building strategy that I used during the rest of the game. Instead of building my east – west track as a
priority, I found that building the north – south track first was providing me
with a higher probability of a win. This
was based on my experience from the previous game as well as what I did up to
that point during his game. I made an
effort during the rest of the game to connect vertically first then go after
the cities on either side of the map.
This strategy turned out to be successful because during the next three rounds
I was able to win the round and make my opponent lose a total of 11
points. In the sixth round I managed to
lose three points but ended the game in victory during the seventh round by
taking the other players last point.
My stats for the event:
|
Game
|
No. of Plays
|
1st
|
2nd
|
3rd
|
4th
|
5th
|
6th
|
7th
|
8th
|
Avg.
|
|
Alhambra
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
3.00
|
|
Trans Europa
|
2
|
2
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
|
1.00
|
|
Totals
|
3
|
2
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
|
-
|
1.67
|
As many of you know we are headed into our busy convention
season with Origins and Gen Con Indy right around the corner. And
these shows wouldn't be possible without dedicated volunteers to help
run demos in the sales booth and helping to facilitate scheduled events
with game set up, rules questions and event ticket collection in the
event room.
SUPER SORCERY GOES GALACTIC
