Game(s) Played:
And welcome back to another edition of our monthly meet-ups to teach, learn & play boardgames for the niche group of us who are strangely only free on Saturday mornings. One of the featured games for the month is … …
Session – Troyes
Game: Troyes
Designer: Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban
Players: 2 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 90 minutes (This Play: 120 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Dice Placement, Area Influence
Player(s):
I have loved all my plays of Troyes but Moses (my brother) absolutely hates this game so we can only bring this out when he's not around because he won't touch Troyes with a ten foot pole. His primary complaint with the game is that Players who go later in the round don't get many choices if all their dice are bought up and there is no way to prevent other Players from buying your dice. He has this same problem with similar games like Castles of Mad King Ludwig or Yokohama that don't have built-in mechanics to change the first player and reduced choices for players that go later.
According to boardgamegeek.com, Troyes is best played with 3 Players so I decided to let Jimmy, Louanna & Henry pick up this play. Unfortunately, I didn't do justice to teaching the game as it was only very late in the game that everyone realized that they could use Influence to re-roll or adjust the face of their dice.
They also misplayed that you get the Influence from placing cubes on the Event Cards only when the Event is resolved
Your winner – Jimmy Lee!
Results Of Game(s)
WINNER – Jimmy (40 VPs)
2nd – Louanna (32 VPs)
LAST – Henry (25 VPs)
Session #92 – Clans of Caledonia
Game: Clans of Caledonia
Designer: Juma Al-JouJou
Players: 1 – 4 Players
Playing Time: 120 minutes (This Play: 90 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Network Building, Commodity Speculation, Variable Player Powers
Player(s):
Edward, if you're reading this, I think you really need to stop requesting games. This is the second month running where Edward has requested to play a game and unfortunately, through no fault of his own, he has not been able to come and play his requested game. I'm not saying you're jinxed but we really want you to come and play boardgames with us.
Well with that out of the way, we had a brilliant game of Clans of Caledonia and the guys were really kind as I was dragging the game play doing rules clarifying on the other side of the table, taking photos and playing Clans of Caledonia all at the same time. Still, I was involved enough that I think I can give out a few tips for playing Clans of Caledonia in a mini "Play Better" segment.
So…
TIP #1 – Money Is A HUGE Deal
Each Player starts with a significant amount of start-up capital, usually 50 Coins or more. You are meant to spend this, not hoard it. Clans of Caledonia is a game about expansion, building your farms and your production facilities to either (a) fulfil contracts to get a butt load of VPs or (b) sell the goods produced to make even more $$$. Having insufficient $$$ will likely be a normal occurrence in the game, there are cheap hexes on the board for Woodcutters & Miners for you to earn regular income each turn but personally I recommend earning $$$ from goods as you can kill three birds with one stone: (1) fulfilling contracts (2) earning $$$ (3) getting points from Round Scoring Tiles.TIP #2 – Don't Waste Your Clan Ability
We randomly dealt out clans to everyone this play but I removed Clan Cunningham (too imbalanced), Clan MacDonald (too weird) & Clan MacEwen (a Kickstarter Clan) from the choices. But it's important to abuse your clan ability because everyone has a unique ability so not only do you not have any competition in your area of expertise, the other Players are not going to hold back in using theirs to its maximum potential.
Admittedly I should have done more with Clan Campbell, only constructing 3 factories at game end
TIP #3 – The Lake / The Fringe / Both
By the powers of dropping meeples from the sky, Players are given this special power of choosing their starting location anywhere on the rolling hills of Scotland. So where should you start? Some clans do really well around the lake area as they get free Shipping levels to start or cheaper expansion costs. Naturally this gives them a head start in planning their Settlements for Settlement Scoring at game end. There is also an argument for choosing one of the four sides of the board and settling on the fringes to be able to reach 2 Port Bonus Tiles in the corners. However I would highly recommend doing both, put one worker near a Port Bonus Tile and another one at the corner of the lake nearest to your Port Bonus Tile of choice. This drastically reduces the chances of you being landlocked, which is exactly what happened to Moses this time.
As you can see here, Moses (in red) chose... poorly
And Moses (in red) was frozen out from the bounty of the loch as you can see in this photo
Results Of Game(s)
WINNER – Gideon (109 VPs)
2nd – Moses (71 VPs)
3rd – Justin (68 VPs)
LAST – Sean (67 VPs)
After Moses left:
WINNER – Gideon (147 VPs)
2nd – Justin (77 VPs)
LAST – Sean (72 VPs)
So there are two scores here, because Moses who came late, had to also leave early, thereby revoking his Saturday morning reminder call privileges. Gideon, Sean & myself decided to finish out the last round of the game and count that score as well. Guess who won?
Your winner – Gideon!
I live in Malaysia, a country whose boardgaming scene has come a super long way since Dominion hit the scene. Nevertheless, as a hobby it is not mainstream enough that our table drew looks from other patrons at McDonald's and a brave little kid who wandered up to investigate and reported to his mother that he didn't recognize the game we were playing. So we did a little boardgaming evangelism today for which I am proud to have done my part.
Euros make us think! Thanks for coming out everyone!
Until next time, keep calm and play better.
No comments:
Post a Comment