The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Pat’s place
Present: Alex, Craig, Pat, Paul.
Played: Revolution: The Dutch Revolt 1568 - 1648, Corsari.

Revolution: The Dutch Revolt 1568 - 1648: An unusual set of availability circumstances saw four of us turn up to Pat’s place for this epic - The rules explan time may in fact be a new record. Completely new for me, and as good as new for Craig, who had played once before maybe a year ago. Alex and Pat had retained a good sense of the rules but had to occasionally consult on minor details. We were all helped by Pat’s excellent rules explanation and turn summary sheet. Factions, families, or ‘player roles’, whatever you call them, are non-symmetrical, not simply because each has slightly different powers, but also because each has slightly different victory point counts. We drew factions randomly, with Pat taking the extreme Catholics, me the extreme Reformists, Alex the less Catholic Hapsburgs, and Craig the less Reformist Burghers. I don’t know if there were any historic alliances, or even sympathies, between the more closely-aligned factions, but there didn’t seem to be any in-game. Within a few turns my Reformists were all but driven out of Holland by the Burghers, and my campaign against the Catholics in Utrecht failed once Pat had moved in two armies on the first possible opportunity. I managed to scramble up north to claim Friesland and eventually the others up there, but I gather this is a common, predictable and wholly uninteresting play by the Reformists.
So with the home strength whittled down to ineffectuality, I made a play instead for my remaining bastion of presence: Flanders. Unfortunately it turns out that my success here was illegal in game terms, because I had landed in a collection units from my off-board Calvanists, and these are supposed to go only in regions with a future university. Alex pointed out the error a few turns after it was made, and it being too late and too hard to unravel, we simply considered it a warped alternative history in which the Calvanists attempted to establish the University of Antwerp in about 1590…
Anyhoo, the game progressed and although my Reformists gained a few points each turn, they were not enough to make major gains against the Catholics. In hindsight I ought to have played the teleporting Calvanists differently - given the opportunity again I certainly will.
73 mins rules & setup; 234 mins game time.
Results: Pat (Catholics; yellow): 13.3. Alex (Hapsburgs; red): 12.4. Paul (Reformists; orange): 10.45. Craig (Burghers; blue): 7.5.

Corsari: A little bit of setting sail with pirates to end the evening.
6 hands; about 45 mins game time.
Results (lower is better): Alex: 9. Paul: 83. Pat: 128.