The Analog Game Night (AGN) groupies met last night at Paul’s house. Thanks for hosting Paul!
We had six attendees to start with which broke us into two tables, one played four-player Ingenious and the other table played Hive until the seventh player arrived.
After Ingenious broke up, my table broke out Tigris and Euphrates while the other table played San Juan followed by Amazonas.
Acting like members of the Tourette’s Syndrome Gaming Club, most of the evening was punctuated by spurious cries of “Ingenious!” regardless of what we were playing.
I haven’t played T&E for over two years and it was like learning the game all over again. I don’t think I ever ‘got’ the game when I played before and I’m sure I don’t ‘get’ it now either. There is a lot to think about in the game and the ramifications of a move, in many cases, is difficult to predict until you’re halfway into it. We had situations where two large fully staffed kingdoms united with an external conflict and it was difficult to choose in what order the battles should occur.
Nobody played catastrophe tiles which really should have played on my kingdom (thankfully the weren’t). Had they been played, it would have severed my connection to two revenue generating monuments. Of course, I didn’t mention that fact but I think Mat was almost ready to play one. He didn’t get a chance to play them though when Ken ended the game in such a way that caused all of his leaders to become removed from the board during the battle resolution giving Tim the treasure that triggered the game end. Oh well, I can see it will take many more enjoyable plays to ‘get’ it.