9/10/2021 11:02:31 AM
Larry L.
( Larry L. )
Posts: 199
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Time to celebrate, indeed. I'll be showing up at 1 PM and plan to stay until John kicks me out the door. I'll bring Faiyum, but I'm up for almost anything. Ed, if you plan to come, I noticed you mentioned Merv in an earlier post; I'd love to try that out. See everyone tomorrow!
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9/12/2021 6:11:31 PM
JohnKerr
( John Kerr)
Administrator
Posts: 1239
BggId: johnkerr
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Thanks everyone for coming out to the 9/11 ABG game day, it was fun.
Chris, Marvin and Larry learned Merv from Ed. It sounded like the game was received favorably. Marvin won with 115, Larry 109, Ed 107 and Chris 79.
While that was going on, Jeff, Molly and I played Lost Ruins of Arnak, which I like. With three players, we did pretty well on killing monsters, I think we killed 4 of 8 of the level one and 3 of 4 of the level 2 monsters. Two of us made the same mistake of stranding the notebook marker on the wrong bottom track and not being able to make use of the resources we had right away. I tend to focus on getting the assistants as quickly as possible, so that threw off my tempo a little, but it was a quick recovery. By the end, Jeff and I had maxed out or close to maxed out the tech tracks. Jeff had done a little better on killing monsters, but I had gotten more of the "1st to a space" markers, which I think contributed to getting one of the big point tablets and I was able to edge him out, 73 to 67 to 49.
As Merv was still going, we followed up with a game of Ra. It was a game of odd timing. The first round, Jeff and Molly were both out while I still had a couple suns, so I was able to get a couple very large scores, which gave me a huge lead in pharaohs. I also was able to steal away the 13 sun and kept it for the rest of the game, by way of never actually using it. Round two went in a flash as we drew many Ra tiles, finishing with a combined six unused sun tiles. All through the game, we seemed to have a knack for drawing the disaster tiles to drastically lower the values of groups, so the game as a whole felt underpowered. In the end, the early pharaoh majority led to a result 56 to 41 to 35, John, Jeff and Molly, respectively.
Everyone took off except Larry, Ed and I, a perfect chance to launch into a game of Faiyum, with a great run through the rules by Larry. It was my second play and I liked it. No one owning anything makes for some interesting development, as well as the random ordering of the cards. You really have to take advantage of what's happening and can't go in with some kind of set plan. In our case, it seemed like a lot of the cards intended for early game came out late, which I'm sure skewed the way things flowed. In an interesting way, I think it works. Larry developed into a good engine that included putting down and then selling off lots of farmers, then producing a lot of stone that he converted into stronghold tiles. As well as building towns along the way. Ed had more of a diversification of goods strategy, including roses, which fed well into building a lot of towns as well. I focused on money and trying to make it easy to get cards, which made play easy and fun, but didn't translate well into points at the end. Larry and Ed were neck and neck, with Larry coming in at 77 to Ed's 75 to my 60.
I had to rush the end of the game, unfortunately, but Larry and Ed were great about it and I think we got the end game pretty accurately done.
A good time!
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