Saturday, 22 May 2010
Mare Nostrum - May 19th
It felt like a reunion once again this week with 5 making it to Adrian's (Deej lurgified again and Stuart lost in space). Mare Nostrum, a game we hadn't dusted down for a long time was the choice this evening, even though we had some recollections slight failings in the game from a couple of years back. The trading round in this game is clever and rapid with no option for James to squeeze out a good deal ;-) Kieron and Andy were nicely positioned in the wings with plenty of resources. James occupied Egpyt , Adrian Italy and Orhan was in Greece. James and Kieron decided upon a truce from the first round allowing Kieron to have an early dig at Orhan in a fight for one of the only two gold resource regions. However, they soon realised that fighting is for losers in this game and concentrated on expansion. Adrian was quietly building a Roman empire with nobody prepared to take him on and Andy and James decided to spend the evening flexing their muscles and posturing along the north African coast. James enjoyed playing a Kieron/Stuart game style with no hope of a victory. So, it was left to Adrian, Orhan and Kieron to fight it out for the first to gain the pyramids. In the punultimate round, Orhan played a blinder and attacked Alexandria to gain a temporary rise in income allowing him to gain a hero. In the final round, he moved his target to Andy and was bout to claim victory when Kieron launched an attack on the heart of the Greek empire to gain an income of 12 and the pyramids. A fun game, but we've really outgrown these now. Another lucky win for Kieron ;-)
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3 comments:
Andy wrote: A really great evening, the game was most enjoyable for those who decided to play the game with all its facets, Kieron and Orhan had a handbags at dawn posture. Both decided that if they kept their handbags on their shoulders the rest of the game, then it would be to their advantage. So basically they had a treaty from about round 2. so did nothing for the rest of the game bar gather resources and play storemen.
Adrian did a rather un Roman tactic of not attacking anything what so ever, very and played the Pact member. This three some in away played a chess game where they refused to take any of each others chess pieces.
i was just working on some slight changes to the game.
So when Adrian, Orhan & Kieron play again, just make the adjustment that you take the army figures off and obviously keep the fighting dice in the box.
Still fun though.
This is a really nice looking game with some good mechanisms but as indicated it's not a deep Rivals game. I'm somewhat boggled by the reference to twenty years of development on BoardGameGeek. I had a daft old time fighting with Andy in North Africa - completely obvious that none of us could win that way. Military moves only come into their own as in Kieron's surgical strike that won him the game right at the end.
Also worked out (not early enough to try it!) that Egpyt can win the game in six turns (unless attacked) without doing anything other than sitting on its original starting points collecting taxes each turn.
So I agree with Kieron - we've outgrown games like this now!
That said... here's an interesting post called A Definitive Guide to the Official and Essential Game-Balancing Rule Modifications.
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