Imperial, 3 February 2010

The second outing for Imperial, this time with 5 players - which meant that for pretty much all of the game one player controlled two of the Great Powers. The players' strategies varied: Stu lost no opportunity to bankrupt whichever countries he could, casting Germany into a deep depression from which it didn't recover; James played Britain and France at various times but didn't branch out further East; Adrian built up Austria-Hungary into the pre-eminent power but didn't get much of a stake in anywhere else; Kieron and Deej were more balanced taking stakes in a couple of nations each which put them on top at the end.

The game saw a good mix of conflict and financial dealings with war in Germany and the Low Countries, Scandinavia and in various sea zones.

We think that we probably made a couple of mistakes in terms of providing extra cash to players who had no nations in the bidding stage - plus we weren't sure whether the bidding could bounce back and forth for players who then found themselves with no nation. This meant that it was a positive advantage for someone to have their nation taken off them since they accrued more money. Will have to look that up.

At any rate a good game. The final scores: Deej 142; Kieron 125; Adrian 111; James 75; Stu 70.