When headaches are FUN

This week, at dictator Luch's request, we played Tigris and Euphrates and Blokus. It was an odd evening, because Kozure came home to find that his computer was so infested with virii and spyware that he was forced to spend the entire evening fixing it. Luckily, Tilli stepped in and took T&E head on.

She hadn't played before, so we explained the rules and got going. Disaster tiles were put to better use than they normally are by our group. Kingdoms were effectively sliced and diced this way with some pretty interesting results (fortunes were swinging wildly). The game was very different for another reason: Since we paid much more attention to moving our leaders around to maximize our points, rather than independently building kingdoms and scrambling for the treasures, the game actually ended due to lack of tiles (with 5 treasures remaining on the board!). Highly unusual! We also stumbled across a new strategy: placing tiles adjacent to leaders specifically to prevent them from playing red temples, keeping them vulnerable to inner conflict. I'm actually the one who did it, but it's not until Shemp pointed it out that it was apparent that this was a good strategy in many circumstances.

Unfortuantely, T&E can be daunting to learn. The difference between internal and external conflict, and particularly the consequences of each, are abstract and therefore often hard to remember. I would say that Tilli did better than most (her score certainly reflected that), despite the headache it was giving her. In the end, she said she had fun but felt somewhat dazed by the experience, and was going to sit out for the rest of the evening. We immediately tried to get her back with Blokus.

At first it didn't work. Kozure joined us for one round, but then he discovered that his computer disinfecting wasn't going as well as he'd hoped, so Tilli joined us for a second game. Blokus continues to be a fast paced, light and fun abstract strategy game. Whereas the first few games seem to revolve around finding opportunities to simply place your pieces, our most recent games have seen players much more on the attack. Blocking, carving out future growth paths, making pretty patterns... all valid strategies.

To finish things off, we had another game of T&E. For whatever reason, this three player game led to very high scores. Luch seemed in command for most of the game, with a stranglehold on two monuments and an on-again off-again relationship with a third giving him an enormous stream of points in three of four colours. his strategy was interesting: he frequently dumped tiles in order to have the ones he needed to win battles. This is how he succeeded in securing so many temples for so long. Amazingly, he actually finished last... All the tile changing and fortifying didn't leave him enough opportunity to beef up his one weak sphere. Still, it was a tight race, 3 points separating the first and last place.

Footnote: Every game, I build temples, and every game, they are quickly stolen from me. Note to self: Gretzky!!!