Navegador, 27 December

Navegador - Orhan's Xmas present to Adrian in 2010 - came out for post-Xmas games with Guest Gamers Fred and Felix. In this rondel-based game players take the role of Portuguese explorers trying to found colonies and exploit resources from Africa to Japan. There are various ways in which to acquire victory points, essentially optimising against the different categories of ships, buildings, colonies etc. Asymmetric play predominated from the start with Felix and Fred opting for early exploration and colony building, Adrian going for workers and factories and James and Orhan going for a balanced approach. Fred and Felix found themselves in very beneficial positions with nicely complementary colonies and factories - the one producing goods which the other could then process, playing the market very effectively. This led to the brothers generating vast amounts of cash which they could then use to buy more buildings and colonies. The game end for this game was initiated by all the buildings being built as the players specialised in the buildings that would lead to maximum victory points. The final scores were closer than we might have supposed, but still showed a commanding victory for Fred: Fred 98; James 89; Adrian 88; Orhan 70; Felix 67.