When Kelly decided to join Nate, Don, Lisa, and me in some designer game action, that limited our options somewhat. Samurai and TTD only handle 4. Nexus Ops only handles 4 and would likely take too long anyway. Tichu was out, Loot too light. It was Ark of the Covenant or China, and we went for China.

I brought out the components, and they checked out the differences in the two sides of the board. When they were doing this, I decided to bust out with the Shogun board (since I had it there) and show them how it was similar to the China board. This teased a little interest out of them. There was a query about what the cube tower looked like. "Mmmmmmmm, cube tower /drool/."

I explained the rules, Don clarified and Lisa asked questions.

Lisa made a single placement in purple, so I placed a house there as well and put an emissary besides (iirc - maybe it was just an emmisary). I went with an emissary stragegy - locking in majorities in a number of places. Not everywhere that leveraged my strength in Chu, but 3 of the 4 adjacent territories.

Kelly had this massive blue train, and Nate had a big red one. Lisa and Don were establishing house majorities, with Don pulling in a surprising number of "second place" scorings as well - some of which he got a great bang for the buck out of.

At the end, it was a close game all around. Don edged me out by 2 or 3 points, I edged Lisa out by a couple points, and she was only a few ahead of Kelly and Nate (I think Nate was bringing up the rear on this one).

I would have done better to pursue a more balanced strategy, leveraging majority in Chu less...intently. I was too focused on emissary majority. I also need to learn how to share emissary majority with others, instead of taking it all for myself. If I'd have done so, a couple of my opponents would have scored more, but so would I. That usually translates to a net gain for me against all of my other opponents. Share with the weak, overcome the strong?

Near the end of the game, I was concerned that Lisa was going to place a 5th man in Chu and then squeeze me out of majority there, unraveling my plans. It was only me in there, with 2 emissaries. But then I saw the draw deck (which had already been replenished once). Something like 5 cards left - not enough for her to steal majority from me, since it was my turn and she was to my right. I let it lie and played elsewhere.

I would have done better to have placed more emissaries at the locus of my power. I would have reaped the benefit more than once. Instead of establishing a majority with two of my emissaries up in the hinter-regions of the board to work with my majority in the center, I should have placed more emissaries in Chu, and let them work with my 3. If I'd have done that, it might have meant the game going in my favor.

Focus your power for emissary scoring?

The opposite is true for house scoring, of course. There, you want to do "just enough" to ensure a majority. The same goes true for emissaries in a contested region, but there is an extra incentive to boost those before end-game scoring, due to the multiple alliances each has available.

I enjoy China. I'm still learning =)

(geeklist context)