Session - Ora Et Labora

15th of April 2012 (Sunday)

Game(s) Played:
Ora Et Labora



Session – Ora Et Labora

Player(s):
Da Panda (Neutral)
Milo/Divad (Green)
Mo (Red)
Nitsuj (Blue)

We finally had a chance to try out Ora Et Labora but sadly Milo and Divad had to pair up because it only caters for 4 Players. This geek was pretty desperate though because, well, we nearly were unable to get Ora Et Labora on the table because of production errors by Lookout Games. This copy came with approximately 300 game tiles missing. Thankfully, the FLGS was there to save the day! They heard my predicament and very graciously offered to provide me a working replacement copy and in the process discovered another copy with the same defect as mine. So here's a big K-U-D-O-S to my FLGS! And a tsk tsk for Z-Man and Lookout Games, wondering where quality has gone in the production of good games. So, as I said, we're going to need another session to make it up to Divad. So let's jump right in:

Typical of anything that is fresh from the press machines of Germany, it took some time for all of us to take each of our turns, particularly when a fresh batch of building cards are revealed in the Settlement Phase. This is when a bunch of heads would congregate in the almighty huddle over the cards and quickly determine which would suit our needs best or flick our tongue in annoyance when nothing interesting turns up and sit down with a huff.

Da Panda was really into collecting Coins and was quick to grab a hold of the Fuel Merchant early in the game as well as the Peat Coal Kiln (although the -2 Dwelling Value caused her to hesitate a few turns). The sheer richness of her Coins enabled her to grab the Palace later on in the game which is a decent gain of 20 points (25 Coins = 5 Points > Palace = 25 Points). She also had enough foresight to grab an early Coastal Plot to build her Fishing Village early although in the end she only managed to build 3 Settlements as her efforts to utilise the Slaughterhouse to generate enough food to cater for the Settlements Building Cost didn't exactly pan out. Probably another card of note for her was the Cloister Chapter House which although enabled her to grab 1 Wonder through the Chamber of Wonders, was probably instrumental in Mo being able to trade a whopping 39 different goods over the course of the game to snag 3 Wonders.

The Milo/Divad combo seemed very keen on acquiring Stone for some reason and very quickly snapped up the Stone Merchant. Sadly apart from that I don't really recall what else this whispery combo was up to. They were certainly planning something huge towards game end but still lacked one more turn to complete their strategy and ended up... second, I can't believe it.

About halfway through the game

We need a bigger table

Mo acts decisively

So let's talk about the winner of the game and what he did to win it. To put it simply, he went for variety which gave him an advantage in using the Chamber of Wonders to grab 3 Wonders which is pretty much an unassailable lead. I tried to pull back with a Wonder but like Milo/Divad, was short one turn in pulling it off. At game end, you will notice that Mo had very few buildings and only 2 Settlements. You can see how the placement worked out for him in the picture below. He puts the Cloister Garden next to the Winery, Builder's Market and Priory. By entering the Cloister Garden, he gets a free Grape which he can use the Winery to turn into Coins which he can subsequently use in the Builder's Market to turn into a variety of goods and then the Priory to either take advantage of his Builder's Market again or use Da Panda's Cloister Chapter House. With a little bit from here and there it gives him enough to pull a Chamber of Wonders to net him the 30 Point Wonder 3 times! That deserves a four syllable D-A-M-N.

This is Mo's sparse but efficient monastery

I decided to run the bread making route without realizing that it takes a lot of actions to make bread. I've got the Grain Storage to make Grain then the Windmill to turn Grain into Flour and then the Bakery to turn Flour into Bread. All that food did net me the maximum 5 Settlements although it did little to win me the game. A mistake I made was to hold out on buy plots until I ran out of Empty Landscapes which totally cost an arm and a leg once I decided to buy them. My attempts to net more Coins through the Stone Quarry were futile since the others had other means of acquiring Stone causing me to waste an entire Mountain Plot to build it in the corner and forget about it.

Me having waited too late to get extra plots of land

Time Taken: 180 minutes

Results Of Game
Winna – Mo (183 Points)
2nd – Milo/Divad (162 Points)
3rd – Nitsuj (159 Points)
4th – Da Panda (146 Points)

It's a bit blur but that's our score sheet. Scoring is rather complicated that you sometimes can't tell who's going to win the game except in our case I suppose

The winner insists on a victory pose

Memorable In-Game Comments:
Looking suspiciously Da Panda's horde of Coins
Milo: "I know for sure that you're going to build the Palace."
Da Panda: "Haa??? How you know???"

Rating: 9/10