Game Day 04/09/2009

Game #1

Princes of the Renaissance

We started with an older Wallace game. After a short rules refresher, we dived into the game. Or, at least tried to. While the rules are simple (they are only a couple of pages long). The initial game play was not. There are a bunch of tiles in this game. And they each have attributes to them. So we were a little perplexed as to what long term strategy to pursue. I started off with a heavy military force. This game is definitely biased towards offense. Eventually, my army had a rating of 13 offense and 7 defense. I also won the Swiss Mercenaries tile which gave me +1 attack, +1 defense and -1 bid on Condottieres. In a three player game, there are four wars. If you win an attack (or win a defense and then win a counter-attack), then you get a victory chit. These chits are summed via triangle points. So, if you win a lot of wars, then, in the end, you will score a lot of victory points. But it is not so one-sided. If the pope is purchased, then one player can side with another. Mike and Jon used this ability once over each of the three eras to stop my aggression. Also, there are treachery tiles that you can purchase which may have abilities to lessen my attack strength or even stop the war.

Victory points are not only gained from wars. Many of the tiles are worth victory points. The city specific tiles are worth victory points based on their prestige (which goes up when wars are won and goes down if they are lost). Most money and most influence will also gain you victory points. So it seems balanced. Although I did win because I had won six wars.

Game #2

Pillars of the Earth

Next up was a lunch-time length game: Pillars of the Earth. In this game I was lucky to grab Prior Philip in the first round. This gave me an extra victory point whenever I placed master builders in the Priory. Which, of course, I did every round. This alone scored me at least nine victory points. With this advantage, I leapt into first and stayed that way for the entire game.