Game(s) Played:
Eminent Domain
Belfort
Player(s):
Milo
Nitsuj
Session – Eminent Domain
I had recently picked up Eminent Domain & Belfort (like exactly one night before) and just couldn't wait to give it a go. The only person available was Milo who surprisingly had no plans for a Thursday night, whereas the usual suspects Da Panda had gone out for a movie and Mo was on a back to the jungle berbonding exercise with our father. She was more than game so I brought over both my latest acquisitions and we began with Eminent Domain.
I started with an Advanced Planet whilst Milo began with a Metallic Planet. I decided to favour a strategy prone more to Warfare before branching into Technology & Production/Trading. Milo preferred to Colonize & abuse the Improve Trade Technology (+1 Influence) which was to my surprise, not available to me because I ONLY had Advanced Planets for a long time.
Thankfully two of my Advanced Planets gave +1 to my hand limit, enabling me to hold 7 cards in hand and abuse my bulk of Warfare Cards. I was getting 6 Fighters a turn, attacking Planets every which way & then had enough Technology to pull in Improved Warfare (+2 Fighters / Conquer a Planet) then Specialization (Gain Influence per number of one type of resource traded) & Hyperefficiency (Discard any number of cards per turn). I set myself up for the big kill with Specialization by trading 3 similar purple resources & 1 blue resource for a 7 Influence Token swoop.
You can see my straight set of Advanced Planets in the far right corner
Apart from colonizing a different variety of Planets, Milo kept drawing Influence Tokens via Improve Trade & trading resources, although she didn't have an efficient enough hand to be able to produce and trade more than 1 resource a turn.
Our game slowed down a fair bit towards the end, I had far too many Warfare cards in my hand to be able to pull off trading 4 resources at one go. In hindsight, I had forgotten my Hyperefficiency power and should have gotten rid of more of my Warfare cards to pull ahead quicker. Still the Technologies are diverse enough that you can pursue multiple paths of victory although changing strategies midway becomes difficult if your deck is heavily skewed in favour of one particular type of role card.
Results Of Game
Winna – Nitsuj (36 Points)
2nd – Milo (28 Points)
Comments:
Milo
"This game takes a little getting used to; game play picks up once you get the flow of things.
Doesn't feel incredibly interactive as there are no inter-player battles or cause-effect chains amongst players. Shopping for tech cards proves fun. Cute resources meeples & various sized battleships contributes to fun factor."
Rating: 6/10
Nitsuj
"I think in a 2 Player game strategies need to be more forced and planned as opposed to a 3 or 4 Player game where you will be trying to take advantage of other Players' strategies to pull ahead of the pack. Think this game will shine with more Players. The art really is very, very good though. Big thumbs up from me."
Rating: 8/10
Session – Belfort
We then moved on to Belfort and boy does the setup time take a while. To move things along accordingly we proceeded to play the game normally with 2 Players instead of using the special 2 Player rules (having to control a Non Player 3 & 4 seemed too much trouble).
Milo started as Player 1 and we had a bit of trouble moving forward in the first few turns as there were not many options for actions to be taken apart from getting more Workers or using Guilds. Milo utilised the Sawyers' & Miners' Guild (+4 Wood / +4 Stone) to good effect.
I worked on increasing my workforce & used the Blacksmith (Discount to building) to buy up the Sawyers' Guild because Milo was running riot with it. She quickly got up her Pub, Gardens & Bank and was using her newfound wealth to hire Gnomes each turn which I never caught up to.
Milo didn't actually understand scoring at first and was caught out in Round 1 where she was steadily fortifying the 1st District thinking 1st Scoring Round = 1st District Scoring only whilst I had spread myself out to the other pieces of the Pentagon to build a major lead in the 1st Scoring Round. (Although no 3 Player & 4 Player means a gap of only 2 points per District & Scoring Category)
I still had no buildings with income, having built the Inn next and with a stupendously high tax bracket, most of my workers were inefficiently spent mining gold each turn just to keep afloat. Having unlocked the Gardens & Pub, Milo had more leeway in allocating Workers, who knew that Master Elves & Dwarves were THAT powerful. We call them the Super Saiya Workers now.
In the end I had to snatch 1st Turn Order from Milo as she kept occupying the Hire Workers spot to steadily build her workforce and yet I couldn't block the spot from her due to tight financial constraints once we had passed the Second Scoring Round. I only had the Tower to supply income whereas Milo had 5 income buildings including the Bank. Towards the end I usually had only 1-2 Workers that weren't sitting in the gold mine to be placed around the board which was a rather big pain.
This was right before I got my ass handed to me
In the end, I lost right at the death. We were drawn at scoring for majority Elves and Milo beat me when we scored for Gnomes. Drat!
Results Of Game
Winna – Milo (78 Points)
2nd – Nitsuj (75 Points)
Comments:
Milo
"Great interactive design, the concept of the game isn't hard to grasp. Love the 3 season timeline. So many different things to do on each round that you don't get bored easy.
Down side of having only 2 players is not being able to fully utilize all functions on the board (switching houses with two of the same places etc.)"
Rating: 9/10
Nitsuj
"I think Belfort has great potential, particularly with 3 or 4 Players. I do foresee some downtime with 5 Players although I am to understand that the board of Belfort hosts a complete variety of easter eggs that you can spend time to look for during your downtime although this is understandably a stop-gap measure before going back to staring daggers at the sap who's taking forever to take his turn. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to a 3 or 4 Player game with much enthusiasm and hope to get some plays in the next week or so."
Rating: 8/10
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