-
Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
-
A bit of a contrast here: two games, one of which is just arrived in the house and another which is my most
played logged game.
After a while of trying to acquire a copy (partly due to my wife's love of sushi and the pretty box), we finally got a copy of Wasabi! via the Geek's marketplace. It arrived in double quick time and, although a used copy, in great shape - a well looked after game (as I'd expect of my fellow Geeks).
The game itself is fairly simple: place an ingredient tile, look to make a line of ingredients that make up one of your recipes (ranging from 2 to 5 ingredients), then claim it for points - with a bonus if it is done in the right order (known in the game as "with style"). Repeat until you have played all the recipes or the board is full. So we gave it a test drive.
Our first game, we were trying things out. My wife got her small recipes down early and did a lot of card-related manipulation of the board. I was less efficient early on but did get one of the 4s down, slowly catching up with the shorter ones. My wife did some finagling to get her longer recipes played. In the end, the board full, we had completed the exact same set of recipes and it came down to her extra wasabi cube. Would it always come down to that with 2? Her: 34 Me: 33
We found out in a rematch while the kids got ready for bed. There was an element of parallel play early on and both of us scored longer recipes - her 5 (with style) and my 4 (also stylish) and I also got down a couple of quick recipes along with setting up for my 5 as well. But somehow it all went wrong - no longer parallel but sharply interactive, she messed up my set-up and further disrupted my attempts to get it back on track. I even pulled a 2nd 5 recipe and that went awry as well. The winner here was never in doubt. While I fiddled around trying to complete something, my wife finished her final recipe. Her: 44 Me: 13 
One more game before bed was the cry, but it was rather late and my wife messed up her tile placement - her 4 and 5 were related and she played the 4 to set up for the 5 - but she got the ingredient order messed up. Fixing that ended her chances, as I had made no such errors and played out all my recipes in quick succession. She still scored better than my previous game though. Her: 26 Me: 41
We had a good time with it and we will play some more, both as a couple and (it being a nice short game) with our lunch group, although we are often 5 and this only goes to 4. It is not a deep game as such, but looking for your opportunities to make a good play is where the fun lies - plus the look on an opponent's face when you inadvertently mess up his big play. I don't think it is a game to play too meanly - any move you make might be helping the other guy or might just do nothing at all, but there is a strong interaction in the middle of the board and sorting through that chaos will hopefully be a fun rather than frustrating experience. Plus it is beautiful (as I hope you can see in Royalflush's picture) and gives my wife excuses to get sushi. Further updates pending.
The other game of the weekend was not quite so new to us - and one I doubt I need to give much introduction to any passing readers. During this series of plays, I passed 100 plays for Dominion, the first to reach that mile-stone since I started logging plays. This was the first time I had just taken the whole stack of kingdom cards and picked all 10 at random without regard to expansion: prior to this I had always either gone with a set from the book or some random method picking a set number from each expansion. As per usual, we picked our set and then played it several times. There was some from Prosperity and a strong showing from Seaside. Platinum and Colony were both in - do people really not put them in always?
The cards in ascending order of cost were: Embargo, Haven, Pearl Diver; Warehouse; Monument; Bazaar, Festival, Tactician; Grand Market; Bank.
In the first game, Monument points, pegged extra with either festival or Bazaar for a double monument, were the main actions played, while money was developed to buy gold and bank and platinum. Warehouse to cycle and my wife tried the Tactician, but it seemed to frustrate her as she'd draw it at bad times. My extra monument and better developed treasures meant I bought colonies to her provinces, but both of us scored high.
Her: 4E+1D+6P+2C+11VP=74
Me: 3E+4D+2P+4C+15VP=82
Officially my 100th logged game of Dominion. My wife played somewhat similar to last game, but I deliberately eschewed the extra action cards, grabbing a single monument, several warehouses for cycling and a tactician card. I have a habit of trying to make cards work that my wife finds lacking, not usually successfully though! Otherwise I built my money up to buy colonies later. I'd have to say it worked rather well, with a great moment when a tactician play netted me a huge hand and 2 colonies bought in a single turn! This seemed to demoralize my wife, whose multiple monuments had not scored her much more than mine (did she forget to take the VP?), but she was scoring points and in the final accounting (after she bought the last colony) it was closer than I expected.
Her: 4E+2D+1P+3C+8VP=54
Me: 3E+0D+0P+5C+6VP=59
We couldn't finish there, so one more, with my wife determined to triumph. I went back to a festival/monument approach while she - still not trusting tactician but adapting my way from the 2nd game - bought a couple of monuments and cycled her deck with a warehouse and 2 pearl divers, buying over time up to 3 Banks - and a lot of points. Perhaps karma was in force too, as I seemed to get clumps - one series of turns, I got both festival together, then next turn all 3 monuments, then all 3 estates in the next! Not to take away from her though, she played it well and got her revenge - and highest score of the day. She'd also like me to point out her aggregate score was higher than mine too...
Her: 3E+2D+1P+6C+12VP=87
Me: 3E+2D+3P+2C+11VP=58
Dominion is still a game we enjoy a lot, the large number of plays when we first got the expansions have dwindled, but it will see regular such mini-sessions as this throughout the year. I like our habit of a series of games, as it gives us a chance to look at cards we either overlooked or didn't like the look of in the first game. Though I note that no Embargoes were played and only one Haven was bought - just not the set-up for them to be useful. When there is a card like that, that neither of us want to try, we usually swap it for something, either by choice or a random pull, but didn't this time. I also like the picture I found (thanks Weezoh) as we often set up the game in non-table based areas - though in our case it is usually on the couch!
|
|
