Jon Grantham
United States
University Park
Maryland
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Ben (discojew) and I got together Friday night for some gaming, since he was busy Saturday and Sunday. I asked him to bring his copy of Notre Dame in case Christina (salme) was up for some gaming; I thought it would be the type of game she would like. When Ben put down his pile of games, however, Christina was most interested in Cave Troll, so Ben opened that up and started explaining the rules.
Despite the fact that I took this moment to start playing with the timer settings on the camera (my theory is that if you set it to take 10 pictures, at least one should be usable) and then showing the results to Christina while she was trying to listen to Ben, we both got the gist of what he was trying to explain.
Christina and I jumped out ahead of Ben early by each drawing the "score a room" card and using it on 5-gold rooms. After scoring, my adventurer was killed by Ben's orc, but oh well...he had served his purpose. We didn't really know what we were doing, but on the other hand, it was Cave Troll...it wasn't the most confusing game in the world.
The game proceeded with fairly low conflict. Mostly it involved moving adventurers to rooms with gold. Other than knocking off Ben's orc, the other hostile technique was dropping the Cave Troll on somebody. I kicked Christina out of a 5-gold room. Ben Cave Trolled my treasure -- that seems like a good (the best?) use of the cave troll, when you can't steal the other guy's treasure.
At some point, I decided I was far enough ahead to make it worthwhile to end the game. After tallying things up, the score was:
Jon 60, Christina 53, Ben 42.
Christina really enjoyed the game, so we decided to have another go. At this point, my attention had wandered from the camera to the beer, so no more pictures are available. 
In the next game, I really concentrated on the timing of the scoring rounds. I would often keep a hourglass-laden card in my hand, so when my turn came around, I could determine (with pretty good probability) whether scoring would happen. This strategy paid off early, when I got about 18 gold, while Ben and Christina each ended up with around half that.
I also parked a knight with a treasure next to a staircase, and then hid my dwarf behind it. That worked for a while, until Ben used his wraith to chase away the dwarf. Ben's strategy involved a 3-gold space with his dwarf and a treasure (making it a 10-gold space). I used a wraith and several adventurers to kick him out of the space.
My early lead meant that my opponents (especially Ben) were trying to chip away at my holdings. There was a brief moment of controversy when Ben realized that I may have scored my cave troll one round. After a couple of beers, I thought that was entirely possible, but on the other hand, Ben didn't come up with this problem until a few rounds later, so there was no way to check. (Too bad I no longer had photographic documentation.)
Given my huge early lead, and the fact that it was slipping away, I once again focused on ending the game. Unfortunately, my last play triggered a scoring round, so the end of the game essentially counted double. While Ben and I had a wraith fight, Christina had caught up some, and came within 4 points of my total by the end of the game. Of course, that was exactly what the cave troll would have gained me. So I won again, but with an asterisk.
I have a rule of thumb of rating a game after 2 plays. Although it seems a little soon to rate this game, I gave it a 7. It was fun and a relatively quick play (once we got the rules down). There is a little down-time on other players' turns, but not much. The game seems tremendously luck-based -- drawing adventurers is generally worse than drawing other cards. I was able to mediate the luck somewhat by predicting when the scoring rounds would occur and playing to that, but that only goes so far.
I think it will have a place on our game table for a while as filler -- on the other hand, Liar's Dice or San Juan are probably better games. Cave Troll, though, has the advantage of plastic miniatures.
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Obviously, this should be in Sessions.
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Jon Grantham
United States
University Park
Maryland
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Yes. Sorry for the mis-click.
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Malvictis wrote: Obviously, this should be in Sessions.
Thank you, "Should-be" Police!
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tim Tim TIm TIM TIMMY!!
Costa Rica
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He has pictures, he rates it a 7, heck he was drinking beer - it is fine for the Review to me, it makes me want to drink beer and get Cave Troll! Great Review
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