Last weekend I went down to London to play some games. Some new, some old and one a different variation of a favourite. Of the new ones I enjoyed Amen Re the best, and although I didn't win, it was a very enjoyable game. One of the other new ones caused much hilarity after I'd won.
Princes of the Renaissance is about warring factions during the renaissance period in Italy. As most of us hadn't played before, the owner proceeded to explain the rules. By reading them aloud. Very little examples and such, so was a bit of a dry read. The military stuff, which is a major part of the game, started confusing me, and I ended up drifting off and missed all the explanation. Others apparently suffered the same. One thing I did pick up on was there were Merchants from Venice. I thought that to be amusing and set my game plan to acquire as many as I could. As the game progressed I spent all my money on merchants and artists, while everyone else built up their armies and equipment for attack and defense ratings. Battles were fought as I watched from the sidelines and bought another merchant and artist. After the first round it was obvious I had taken a commanding lead in the points, just by being the peace loving faction. In the last round, dispite their efforts no-one could stop me. The rally cry fast became 'War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing'. At the final count it was figured I'd won on starting the last round. Bit of a poor show for a game built on the idea of battles.
Yet again, I tried to explain the tactics of playing 6 Nimmt. Dispite the others thinking I was making it up, a first and second placing helped proved my game plan works. I got bored during the Trojan War version of Die Siedler as my numbers rarely came up for about 3 rounds (with 6 of us playing, that's 18 rolls of the dice, thus a pretty poor average considering I had 5 numbers covered from 2 to 12). And opted for the longest road. It was slow going to begin with, and one player took an early lead. Towards the end he was winning and so in order to stop him, my potential longest road was worth going for. Then another player (the owner of Princes of the Renaissance) decided to plonk a settlement in the middle of my road, cutting off the last 3 pieces. The other players (apart from the leader, who was sitting smugly) couldn't believe it, especially seeing as 3 of them had a chance at winning if I took the longest road. Needless to say the leader won. Mind you it was his only victory of the weekend, so it was better than him claiming a moral victory when he feels he's been targetted :)
All in all though, a good weekend. Now I need to plan the Midland bout in the summer now. I've got to make sure it doesn't coincide with ManorCon as I'm hoping to go along to that this year.
