El Capitan - 23rd November

Looks like it's been over 2 years since we played this little gem, so we made up for things by playing it twice in one night.

Our first game featured Orhan and James fighting for the big scoring ports while David and Kieron went for diversity and attempted to get their markers on every port. Loans featured heavily - judging how many, what value and when to pay back is very important. Each time you take a load you effectively miss a turn, something that Kieron used to his advantage in the later parts of the game as he was able to control when the game finished.

Final scores were Kieron 182, James 168, David 157, Orhan 137.

For the second game we seemed to switch to opposing strategies. Kieron and David started fighting for control of the heavyweight ports while this time James and Orhan went for the diversity approach. However the big difference was that James and especially Orhan started a bit early resulting in an entertaining last phase where their vulnerable warehouses (placed first) started being closed down.

Final scores were Kieron 213, James 205, David 192, Orhan 175

Notice anything?

El Capitan - 18th March 2009

Deej finally had the chance to let us play his Christmas present from Kieron, El Capitan. Why did we leave it so long and why is it languishing in position 358 on Board Game Geek?

We played the basic version with 9 cities and soon realised that the loan cards are an essential part of the game after quickly spending the paltry 20 notes given to players at the start of the game before even half way through the first phase. The key point was when to decide to get a loan, how much do you get and do you pay it off early (therefore leaving yourself vunerable to coming in for a loan again and wasting a turn). Andy and Kieron came in for an early small loan and James helpfully pointed out this was daft as it cost half the value of the loan just to sail in to get it! He duly came in for a massive loan.

After pay day, we were left with the tricky decision of how much of the loan to pay back. James and Kieron opted for the safe middle ground of paying half the loan back and Deej was just canny with his spending so only had a small loan. Deej and Kieron started a race to gain 9 cities first, with Deej pipping Kieron but both cashed in on having lots of fingers in pies when the second pay day came around. Meanwhile Andy was collecting travel cards like they were going out of fashion! In the final phase of the game Andy and Deej enjoyed knocking James' early placement of warehouses out of cities to reduce his final income. At the same time Deej was his usual optimising self and came out on top. I'd like to play this again soon and see what it's like with the expansion and a 5th player. Deej 230, Kieron 218, James 172, Andy 112