We played games this month. Here's what we got up to...
Saturday, 5 March 2022
Saturday I picked up Five Tribes: Whims of the Sultan - so we can play Five Tribes with... well... FIVE. I guess I picked it up FOR Finnnegan, as Five Tribes is HIS game.
I also picked up the new Aeldari Codex.
In the late afternoon Amanda and I PLAYED Five Tribes... but it was just the two of us (as Finnegan was still running his D&D game), so we just played with the base game
We played one game and I eked out a narrow victory, despite Amanda's protestations that I was abosloutely "destroying her" (219-209)
She had some time before she was going out to hang out with some friends, so we played again.
Again, she was quite certain that I had won by "a lot", but it turned out that she had won - and by a much wider margin than I had in the previous game! (215-186)!!
Saturday, 12 March 2022
The following Saturday we played...
you guessed it MORE Five Tribes!
Once again, we played TWO games...
Math is hard. I did each of these a few times because I kept not getting the same totals!? (I was pretty tired). eventually I busted out the calculator on the phone and added them up - and even THEN I was getting different answers!? so I kept doing them until I got the same answer three times in a row... then I figured it was safe enough to post withont someone with too much time on their hands adding it up and realizing I'd made a mistake and pointing it out in the comments... (please don't. I'll probably cry...)
STILL hadn't tried out Whims of the Sultan, at this point, though... And, now that we'd played it five times, I kind of wanted to focus on playing a few other games to get THOSE to five plays for the 5x5 Challenge (Azul, Wingspan, and Carcassonne seemed most likely, at this point..).
Friday, 18 March 2022
Friday evening Finnegan agreed to play Five Tribes with me and Amanda.
It was a long, tiring week for Amanda.
Once we got going, she livened up a bit.
We were trying out the Whims of the Sultan expansion with it. I picked it up because Finnegan had said he was interested in playing this a lot more... and Amanda suggested this would be fun to play with Kurtis and Tanya... but that would be five if we ALL played together, and the base game only plays four. Whims of the Sultan, in addition to new, different tiles and the Whims of the Sultan cards (yet ANOTHER way to gain points!?), it adds components for a fifth player.
I thought we'd try it out with just us before trying to play with FIVE!?
These goofballs...
This ONE TILE netted me fifty points. With this one Djinn, I was able to add palm trees to the oasis, pretty much every turn... and the Oasis was adjacent to The Great Lake - a new tile, which is impassable (no meeples start on it or can be placed on it during the game) that DOUBLES the value of trees and palaces in adjacent tiles... so EACH of those palm trees were worth SIX points?!
Yeah, I totally won that one... but not by much. We had a lot of laughs along the way...
Saturday, 19 March 2022
The next evening Kurtis and Tanya came over to play... but then Finnegan decided NOT to play!? We played with Whims of the Sultan, anyway.
Four player games (and, presumably five) are a whole different kettle of fish!? Because there are more players snapping up tiles and making use of meeples, you get a LOT FEWER turns at doing things before it's all over! So you really need to focus on... something.. in two player - and even three player games, I usually end up with a bit of everything. This game I ended without a single Djinn or ANY market goods card - which usually accounts for a large part of my total points... I still won the game. Amanda only controlled three tiles (out of potentially eight one can control!?) and had a single Djinn and not market goods... but she DID have the most Viziers, and in a four player game, that's a LOT or points (points + number of viziers you have + 10x the number of players you have MORE viziers than! so 30+ if you have the most in a four-player game!
Wednesday, 23 March 2022
Amanda took a few days off this week and we actually played a game on Wednesday evening.
Hadn't played Wingspan in a while so we busted that out.
Amanda rocked the round end goals... In most cases she beat me out by ONE!?
Mostly because I was too busy trying to fill my Forests and Grasslands with birds of ascending wingspans... The two bonus goal cards I had. That and the eggs and the Nectar just edged me ahead in the final tally!
Thursday, 24 March 2022
Thursday, I somehow convinced Amanda to not only play ONE game of Carcassonne...
but TWO games of Carcassonne!?
She has admitted it's "not [her]favourite game"... But was "willing" to play...
Friday, 25 March 2022
One more game of Carcassonne...
Saturday, 26 March 2022
Saturday Amanda suggested we play Wingspan in the afternoon... and then the games went SO FAST, we ended up playing THREE games!?
Game One. At this point we were planning to just play ONE game - just to kill some time in the afternoon...
pretty even spread on teh round end goals
I got a BUNCH of points from bonus point cards... but Amanda eked out a win (I think from having a few more higher point birds)
The first game went so fast, Amanda suggested we play again!
This time I dominated the round end goads... and, well I DID win... by two points... but initially Amanda was suggesting that I was going to win by a LOT and when we initially tallied the points, SHE'D actually won - but then I remembered Id had a bit with a END GAME ability that would have put out more eggs on a all the birds in the wetlands, which pushed me past her.
By the end of game two it was clear we were NOT going to get out and do any errands or projects about the house (it was really cold out. We were tired) and decided to play a THIRD
Again, I rocked the turn end goals, somehow!?
But Amanda won this one, in the end, as well...
It was a fun way to spend a cold lazy Saturday afternoon.
I have a feeling Wingspan is going to be our most-played game again this year. We'll probably hit 50 plays by the end of the year (we are at 38 now!?)
Monday, 28 March 2022
Keiran joined Amanda and myself for a quick game of Azul.
Amanda just ROCKED the game - Yeah, that's her fillingalmost the ENTIRE BOARD with tiles - there is ONE SPACE left... she scored almost as much as me and Keiran together.. !?
I didn't do TOO badly... probably one of my best games ever - I scored 118 points! Keiran did really good too, scoring 90-something... Amanda has 190-something, though!? it was CrAzY!?
Thursday, 31 March 2022
On Thursday, Tanya, stopped by to exchange some stuff with Amanda and stuck around to play Azul...
As with the last game (or so..?), Amanda and I were trying out the unprinted side - where you get to make up your own pattern. I tried to get fancy and not just do them on a diagonal (just like on the printed side, but in a different order) because my brain finds patterns amusing...
This did not help me win.
First game went so quick, Tanya stuck around for a second game!
Still trying "funny" patterns. I did much better in the second game. But then so did everyone else...
And that's IT for March!? AND the first quarter of 2022!? WTF!?
Stay tuned, I should soon be posting my Q2 Game Plan... if it can even be called a "plan".
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