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Sort of quiet week of gaming except for Sunday when we met with our Europe Masters team. Tournament is held next Saturday in Essen, Germany at the Spiel fair and as Touko is heading to Germany today this was out last chance to practice.
First game of the night was Olympos which I rather like and have done quite well earlier in. I started the game from the 4th position which definitely is not the best in the game but I was lucky because the double sword tile was in the non-specific resource column. The other columns would have meant that I would have had to find some other path to begin the game than grabbing the double sword early on, which I did.
It was steady down hill from there on while I didn’t quite get a hold on any strategy and as a military leader I got to play rather seldom (without the time class tokens one doesn’t het too many turns during the game). Touko and Saku went for discount tiles and murdered me and Janne. Fortunately Janne did even worse than I giving me the 3rd position.
Olympos is a solid game which offers quite a variety of strategies from the get go. Path to victory is heavily dependent on other players’ decisions and your ability to grab the right tiles. Olympos might not be the perfect tournament game but certainly a fun game for casual gaming.
Second game of the training night was Troyes which I have played quite a lot and I’m comfortable playing the game. Troyes is a game, in my opinion, which demands an eye for opportunity and tactics and not so much strategical skills. Different set of cards create unique combination for each game and long term planning is very hard. I’ve done well in the game in previous meetings and did well this time also.
I went for the broad strategy to fight as many events as possible and ended having 6-7 cards. Obviously I took care of the cubes in the Cathedral as well and since I had the money card as a secret scoring card, I also secured 6 points with 18 money. In the end it was a very close game for others except Saku. Me, Touko and Janne had all 40 points and shared victory and left Saku 4th with 30 points. We had also couple good laughs watching Saku reroll ones to ones to ones. Good times!
The last game of the session was Navegador which is a solid eurogame with some very interesting mechanics but unfortunately it’s also lifeless and dull and I just can’t find the fun playing the game. I didn’t quite get the engine build up and running and didn’t hit the privileges often enough as I should have thus missing the big points in the end scoring. I felt that I always came behind somebody everywhere and in this game it’s definitely not a good position to be in. But hopefully I learned my lesson and will improve my game and the last place i got when I play Navegador at the tournament.
As said I’ll be off to Germany on Thursday morning and spending time walking, talking and most importantly playing games during the 4 days visit. I try to keep you informed of what’s going on and which games you really should keep you eyes on after the fair. But until then – Hyviä pelejä!
Originally published in the Boardgaming Finland blog
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