The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Alex, Jeff, Nick, Pat, Euhan, Brian, Paul.
Played: Jenseits von Theben, Vinci, Escalation!, Honor of the Samurai, Ra, Tier auf Tier, Yspahan, Modern Art, Corsari.

Good to see a return to the gaming table from Jeff this week, having just come back from a sojourn overseas.
With Brad away, the pics are all mine for this session. Disappointed with the blurriness of most (esp. Ra); happy with some (Yspahan#2, Corsari).

Jenseits von Theben: Subtitled simply Thebes for the non-German speakers, this was a fairly new title brought over by Nick. It looked quite interesting - don’t know the players’ impressions, but if they’re generally good I wouldn’t mind having a crack at this next time it appears.
About 20 mins rules; 65mins game time.
Results: Brian (red): 50. Jeff (green:) 40. Nick (blue): 31.

Vinci: Diplomacy and “diplomacy”
With Euhan the relative newbie, we gave him the honour of selecting the next game from my vast(!) selection. After thumbing over Taj Mahal, Roads and Boats, and El Grande, he finally settled on Vinci. Good choice, we assured him, although this copy didn’t have the special markings to accommodate the rules variant used recently by others in this group (new civilizations must appear at a pre-determined board edge).
As fourth chooser at the start of the game, I got to pick up six bonus points for a civ combo that everyone else passed over, but I thought wasn’t too bad. Messages and Medicine gave me a starting force of 13 and a recurring +1 each turn, with the privilege of being able to disperse my tokens.
As the game got underway a nicely humorous stoush erupted between Alex and Pat when the latter targetted and attacked the former (or was it the other way around?) “in retaliation” for a counter-attack that was yet to come! This kept two opponents occupied, although my perception was that Euhan stood to gain an emerging edge from this ahead of me. The natural choice was therefore to bring my civ into conflict with his and pare back some of his enormous points gains in the north-east. This went tit-for-tat for two turns or thereabouts, until I managed to split his empire in three and at this point he went into decline.
There was much table-top “diplomacy” - read table-talk - with threats and hit-the-leader urging. With turn scores of 13, and at one point, 17, Pat clearly rose to be the Caesar of his time. He cleaned up my long-successful empire forcing me to decline and start afresh. But as I set forth with my lone hit-the-leader strategy, he used his Diplomacy privilege to prevent attacks from me. This was made effective for the final two turns of the game, and I was forced simply to maximize points at the expense of the others, mainly Euhan again. If I were playing for place, this was the right choice anyway…
Total empires played this game: Paul & Euhan: 2 each. Pat & Al: 3 each.
15 mins rules; 73 mins game time.
Results: Pat (blue): 107. Paul (green): 99. Euhan (red): 95. Alex (yellow): 94.

Escalation! was played as a filler by the Thebens as they waited for Vinci to finish. They may have got in a single hand only.
2 mins rules, 12 mins game time.
Jeff: 23. Nick: 17. Brian: 12.

Honor of the Samurai: There is nothin’ like a Daimyo
Having played once before some time ago, Pat declined to play this card game offering brought by Nick, but couldn’t remember his reason for not being rapt. Players control up to two houses each, one headed by a Daimyo and the other by a supporting Samurai. The object is to collect Honor points through the people and possessions accumulated in each house, and to prevent your opponents from doing likewise through attacks and special card actions (eg., Ninja assassins). By attaining the Shogun status, you can massively accelerate your points gains, but also paint a whopping target on your forehead. Alex was the first to discover this when selected the Shogun card on his second turn, prompting me to attack him and claim the title for myself. I actually managed to hold it for a complete turn and claim the points, but on the next Brian attacked me with some kind of Ninja assassin card, with harsh consequences: My Daimyo, his wife, castle, armies and other possessions were wiped out in one fell swoop. This made me think immediately of Warrior Knights, played last week, in that you can prepare yourself (somewhat) against typical attacks, but unpredictable events for which you can have no protection against can hurt you hard. We relayed this to Pat, who was reminded of the main reason for his lack of enthusiasm for HotS.
The rest of the game played out quite funny, with Alex down a Daimyo, allying himself to others and yet sticking the knife in their backs at every reasonable opportunity. But Nick was the one who eventually fell over the line first, putting the rest of us out of our misery.
8 mins rules; 61 mins game time.
Results: Nick: 310. Alex: 165. Paul: 145. Brian: 105.

Ra: The alternative to Honor of the Samurai, played at the other end of the table. These guys seemed to be packing this up within minutes after starting, although the whole thing ran for about half an hour. Obviously Euhan was the one who made best use of the tiles, almost making the combined scores of his opponents.
8 mins rules; 25 mins game time.
Euhan: 63. Pat: 38. Jeff: 29.

Tier auf Tier: A quick novelty game while Honor continued at the other end of the table.
9 mins. Euhan won (again) over Pat and Jeff.

Yspahan: These guys had to break open another half-hour game while the Samurais battled on. The end result for Pat was a bit of a surprise. Apparently he’d gone for the caravan strategy again, which is about getting as many cubes as possible on the caravan and the lucrative points haul this can bring. All good, but if you don’t get good camel rolls when it comes to your turn, your hams can be strung with this approach.
6 mins rules; 39 mins game time.
Results: Jeff (green): 88. Euhan (yellow): 83. Pat (blue): 65.

Modern Art: Painting into a corner
Pulling out this game was almost a blast from the past - I don’t how long it’s been since I’ve played this, but it must be way more than two years as the only other entry in the ‘gap that mentions this game is way back in Jan 2006, when it was played by guys other than me (Richard, Pat, Brian and Matthew, to be precise).
I used to think I was able to play this quite well, and even have distant memories of winning at least once - which I concede may be completely false memories. In fact, for the the first three rounds or so of this game I thought I was actually well-placed in this game too. But Modern Art is a funny game of risk and reward. We all thought Brian was crazy when he shelled out for that Krypto and those two Yokos, thinking one won’t pay out at all and those others were over-payed for. But that round ended quicker than expected, and Brian cleaned up big time in that round. In fact, in the final round, the reverse scenario kind of happened to me. I wanted to see Christin P’s come out and thrive and the remaining Gitters to go down. To bring on the latter, I actually offered a Lite Metal, the first seen all game, fully expecting to get at least one more turn before game end. Although I knew there must have been a bunch more out there, I just wasn’t expecting them all to fall so soon. My Christin P therefore scored an amazing $10 - just a few dollars shy of what I paid for it, resulting in the second last in a series of poor decisions I’d made throughout the game (the last was floating that stupid Lite Metal). At least I was spared the indignity of finishing with less cash than I started with.
9 mins rules; 70 mins game time.
Pat: 489. Jeff: 431. Brian: 337. Alex: 290. Paul: 260.

Corsari: Some pirate action to finish off the night, arrr. This game is a lot harder with 4 players than with three, but I continue to find more depth in this with every playing. If only the luck of the deal aspect could be reduced somehow…
4 mins rules (for Jeff); 78 mins game time.
Results (lower is better): Alex: 58. Jeff: 79. Paul: 99. Pat: 132.