Yea, dumping 2 cubes per turn can just be brutal.

Yspahan is a fun game, but I think I almost burned out on it by playing the pc version too much.

Even though it can be fun to do something screwy like always buy 3 dice in a game to see what happens.

Oh I'll still play it. I'll just suggest other things first

And maybe I'll just actively try to stop ross next time. That might make it more fair for the remaining players.

Alas, this shall be a GenCon game for me I suppose. If I can find a spare copy sitting around anywhere.

It did at least sound unique. Not too much coming out that looks like that.

I want to try this at Gencon, too, Shea, maybe we can get in a game together.

(PS, congrats on your Games on the Table interview, Shea!)

Yes, Ross won. It was my first game,and Chris and Zoe's, too. I made the mistake of spending WAYYYYYYY too much effort trying to get the tribune. Zoe made a mistake too, some rule she misunderstood, but I can't remember what, something to do with the Vestal Virgins. I also thought for some reason that the laurels looked like they would be really hard to get 8 of, but apprently not so much.

An interesting game - Ross had 4 victory conditions and I think the rest of us had either 1 or none. There's more conflict in this than in most worker placement games. Not sure if I'd like it for the long term, themed set collection games seem to turn me off somewhat (so sick of Shadows over Camelot, for instance), but I want to give it another try or two before I make up my mind.

The "scribble" I believe is that Ross won with "4" conditions met.
In this game, the first person to meet a certain number of conditions before the rest of the table wins.
Unless of course, more than one person meets the same number of conditions on a turn, then you would go to a tiebreaker based on VPs for accomplishing certain things in the game.

Still not sure about this game.
I love most worker placement mechanic games, but this one has yet to really grab me deep down.

Will try a few more times, but unless something really starts to click for me, this one is headed for the trade pile.

Yup - if the bank doesn't have enough money to fill all the cards, you are supposed to NOT fill them with poker chips, like we did! Changed the game a little, but the base of the game is still player psychology, so not horribly much. Would have been better if we'd played the correct rules.

Fun filler, great artwork.

They look about normal to me. I've only played 2-player though, and it goes even higher with only 2.

If Shea brings it along, I wouldn't mind getting in a game of this at Gencon or the next weekly meeting.

I'd be happy to Jeff. It really doesn't take too long to knock off a scenario.

The game with Mike was definitely a learning game. Shawn watched that one, so the follow up match was pretty evenly matched. It came down to our last activations on the last turn, so you can't ask for much more than that.

Was it fun?

Jury's Out.

Classic!
Just a great game.
Along with El Grande the absolute pinnacle of "area control" games.
Too bad this took so long to hit the table after I got it in a trade.
Have to play this one a lot more.

On the eternal question of should this only be played 3 player or does it work with 4 ..... my opinion is that San Marco is best when played with 3, but 4 was not as bad as I expected it to be.

Still fun, but I'm probably only going to play it with 3 if I can help it at all.

Along with Union Pacific this is one of the best games that Alan Moon has ever created.
It's a real shame that both are OOP with no real chance of being reprinted.

Has secured a permanent place in my collection.

I gues thatt woul be mee who can't spel.

In all seriousness, I enjoyed this game. There is definitely a luck factor, and it possible for a player to get very unlucky and get smaller oil fields, but they auctions can be quite tense. Definitely worth some more play.

A very good game, lots going on, but it all interacts very nicely. I'd be willing to play this again, probably several times. There is some luck, but the auctions are more important than the draw.

Jeff, bring this one to GenCon.
I'd really like to try it if we get the chance.

I'll believe it when I here Dave explain consume to someone :P

How dare you doubt me.... Consume means when you have a soup made of a clear broth.... Right....?

No, no, no - a consume is what kids wear on Halloween when they go trick or treating, right?

How did that work with counting the building points only at the end? Did it speed up gameplay or not, would you do it that way again?

I have no idea if it sped game play up or not. We were pretty lax on turn structure taking resources and buying building nearly simultaneously.

It was nice not having to worry about building points. Had a bad habit of forgetting them in the last game. The down side is that it gave a false sense of who was winning and by how much. Some of that is the result of Ross's and mine differing strategies. Most of my points came from the town hall and embassy. Ross's mostly came from buildings. It looked like I had a huge lead of 30 to 10, but I barely had 10 pts in buildings while Ross had close to 40.

I think it was easier this way, but not necessarily better. I haven't decided yet whether to keep doing things that way or not.