First up was Phoenicia — a game I have been waiting on for a while now. Thankfully, the publisher allowed people to play an online version for free while the game was being published. This allowed me to try it to see if it was different from Zepter which I already own. And it is. It is much more condensed and quicker. The only problem with it is how to explain the “technology tree” to new people. There is something on the board that shows what cards give discounts or abilities to other cards. But it shows farming (which does neither) and doesn’t show the granary (which gives improved storage) or five of the other cards in the game.
I took the dyer and dye house, but I was limited by the number of workers since I missed out on both forts. Doug was doing advanced mining, but he was limited by storehouses (and had to discard money). I was eventually able to end it by buying a city wall.
Next up was UR which I bought during Boulder Game’s Saturday night sale. With a FAQ, we had another go at the game. Everyone pretty much left each other alone during the beginning of the game. I had a sweet setup in the corner with Culture and Agriculture rapidly growing my civilization.
After John nixed To Court the King, we surprisingly settled on Railroad Dice 2! I was glad to get this game back on my radar. After a quick rules refresher (these are perhaps the most poorly translated rules that I own — and after the game was over, I noticed that we got two things wrong.), we played the game. The game bogged down towards the end as all of the simple dice were gone and we could not replace them with complex dice quickly enough. But I still like this game and consider it a fun and innovative game.