Game Day 04/19/2007

Game #1

Taluva

John brought out Taluva. This a game with really thick tiles. And which should be a fast playing and lightly meaty game. Depending upon how your group plays, of course. Your turn is simple, draw a tile and then place it on the board (following a few, light restrictions). Then, you can place your pieces somewhere. Either place a hut on a level 1 spot, a temple next to a settlement of three or more huts and no other temple, a tower on a level 3 spot next to your hut, or huts on all adjacent, unoccupied, locations that are the same terrain type. The game ends when someone places all of two types of their pieces or when the last tile is placed.

This is a game where everyone needs to be aware of opportunities that another player can take in order to get ahead. If everyone picks on each other equally, then no one can get ahead. However, in our game, Mike jumped out in the lead and John was in second. I continued playing the game trying to win, of course. But when John (the 2nd place person) picks on me (the third), then I have no motivation to stop Mike from winning. I am not going to stop Mike from winning only to let John win instead.

Game #2

Alhambra

It has been a long time since I have played this game. Too long. But there are so many games out there that you really have to start picking and choosing which ones you will spend time with. I started out this game behind the pack at the first scoring round with a score of zero. I didn’t build anything because the things that I could build were of colors that people were already fighting over. So I bided my time and collected currency. The game was also weird in that red and green did not show up until late in the game. In the second scoring round, I caught up and in the third, I pulled ahead. It helped that I secured majorities in the two most expensive colors (purple and green).