Games Played on Labor Day
Let's see -- we had dice through the Ages and in the middle ages, Uruk and Uruk-Hai, Masters of Venice, and some Ubongo. And pizza.Now that I've finally got the rules for Masters of Venice down (with a few pending clarifications) I'm happy with the purchase. I can see several ways to make money/VPs (and you'll probably wind up doing a bit of everything, but focusing on one or two ways). The turn order auction and selection mechanisms are brutal. It takes about a half game to get the mechanisms down, but it's certainly doable. Despite it being Scott's first game, I won on tie breaks ... after having taking the start player auction from Chris on tiebreaks (which gave me the extra VPs). There's a lot of mechanisms to learn in your first game, and while this lacks the elegance of other economic games, it's stealing ideas from the right kinds of games.
As for the other games, well, I'm sure they'll be showing up in future gaming sessions as well.
Labels: session report
posted by Brian @ 6:05 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Interesting in this game that we learned the value of manipulating shop orders, church favors, and selling stock, none of which were taken advantage of much in our first game. This game felt much more restricted, primarily because there weren't as many high bids for turn order, so there weren't as many blind "drive the available orders up" actions as there were in our first game. With available shop orders staying fixed, turn order, being majority shareholder, having a church favor or two, and rumormongering all became much more important. Neat interplay of mechanics.
There are so many different ways to manipulate the economy in Masters of Venice that it can be a lot of fun and frustrating at the same time. Which is most important to emphasize when planning ahead? Turn order? Action selection? Interrupt powers? Manipulating available orders? Buying stock? Selling stock?
Sometimes going early helps, but sometimes it hurts you as your liquidity fluctuates so much during this game. It can be quite frustrating when certain actions require cash on hand and you're not going to have that cash until one or two actions after it's too late. (Boo to being third in line to sell stock...boo, I say.) It's a bit tricky to leverage increased liquidity versus victory points when turning in guild orders.
Still, it's the kind of frustrating that makes me want to play again.
As a side note, I'm out for the next four weekends (and some weekdays as well), so plan weekend sessions accordingly.
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