Getting Medieval

Last week, we had three players for a new game and an old favourite while Easy was up North w/ the family.

First up was Castle, a card game co-designed by Bruno Faidutti of Citadels fame. Put very simply, it is a game where all players race play all cards out of their hands and draw piles onto the table. Each card has it's own rules regarding where it can be placed, and getting previously played cards returned to your hand is a common occurance.

We played three hands, and I enjoyed each more than the last - it's a good little game, where SYN type gameplay is necessary to win, and momentum seems to shift often and quite rapidly. I think that things would get really wild and woolly with more than 3 players, and I think that would be a good thing, too. Nothing fancy, but very enjoyable. For the record, I think that I won two hands of this, and Kozure one. That's not necessarily indicitave of the play, though. I felt that all of the hands were close to the end, and would play this one again in a second. I'd rank this just slightly higher than however I ranked Bang!, so, give it a 7.

Next, we had a three-player game of Princes of Florence. I always enjoy Princes, but find it to be more fun with four or five players than with three. With more players the bidding process is more competitive, and more profession cards get out into play. I'm not sure I can put my fingers on the reasons why, but the game just seems more interesting with more players, to me anyway. And this is despite the fact that it seems (based on our limited data) that 3 player games tend to be closer.

Anyhow, during this session it came into the last round a three way tie - I had gotten greedy and spent 2 bonus cards in the second last round, which meant I couldn't complete a work in the last round, which meant that I lost. Damn, I shouldn't be such a greedy duck. ????? was slightly ahead at the end of the last round, but Kozure used his Prestige cards (2 of 'em) to secure the win.

I think that I am going to downgrade PoF slightly - it's still a great game, but I haven't been quite as jazzed about it the last few times. Call it an 8.

Edit: I mistakenly thought that Faidutti designed Bang! That's just not true. Emiliano Sciarra designed Bang! Tripped up by a foreign language web site, I was - and I shall be more careful next time, you betcha.