Once again, Gravitt seemed to be hosing me. I wanted to play a new (to me) Knizia game. But John had described it in a negative manner. So people were bowing out. Jon went to play another game. Fortunately, Doug was willing to give it one try.
This is an area control game. But the areas are created by placing one of four colored tiles of your tribe (man, tigers, reptiles, dinosaurs) on the board. The board is a simple 14×10 grid with some of the spots being unplayable. On your turn, you either roll two dice and play the colors that were shown (2 of the six sides are wild). Or you can place one tile of any color on the board. When three or more of the same colored tiles are connected orthogonally, then it will be scored at the end of the game: 4 points for who ever owns the majority of the tiles in the group and 2 for the second place player. It is possible to score both 1st and 2nd place if you are the only person in the area. And the single largest group will score triple.
Pretty simple. Perhaps people don’t like the fact that dice are used in this game. But there are a couple of mitigating factors. Two of the pips are wild. So, if you really need to be able to place at least one tile of a color, then you have a 22% chance of not being able to place it because that color, or one of the wild faces, was not rolled. If you do not want to take that risk, then just place one of that color instead.
Next up was Goldbräu. Fortunately, no one had a complaint about playing this game. It has been a while since I have played it last. So I was wanting to play this game again. And I am glad that we played it again. We only got one thing wrong. I had read in the rules about needing two or more tokens in a spot to continue staying in the spot when all six tokens are played there. Well, that was for a four player game and we had three. We removed a share of each spot but forgot to adjust to remove single tokens when the fifth token came out. Oh well…
John had to leave and the other were still playing a game. So Doug and I played this new Knizia game. It is essentially a modified Medici game. Instead of one set of goods that you are trying to get majority in, there are three sets. And instead of one ship used to store those goods, you have three of different sizes. When you reveal goods to the auction, that part remains the same. However, since there are only two players in this game, you need to name a price. The other person either takes it for that price or you do.
I kept the bidding close to the value of the goods unless there was a set that I needed to take. On the other hand, Doug seemed to overbid on goods. We only played two of the three rounds. There was some major Grimming going on in this game. But I was ahead by 41 points after the 2nd round. So I have no doubt of my eventual win.
I think that this is a good two player variant of the great classic game of Medici.