Die Macher game happens!

Sounds good, it'll be interesting to hear what it's like.

I had my first chance to play Puerto Rico last tuesday and yeah, it rocked! I loved the way the turns kept changing constantly and you couldn't be sure what would happen next. Always checking where the governor-tab was going and having situations where you'd love to get your goods out AND sell them on the same turn.

At the end, I lost the three player game in about 10 points, I didn't manage to get any end-game giants such as fortress which proved victorious here, but before these large buildings, I was pretty close to the lead.

The game really comes to a drastic end since everyone of us woke up to the fact that it all needed one or two mayors among us and the game would end. I think we actually broke the rules a bit since the governor who chose mayor the last ended the game _right_ there and what I read after that is that the turns are still gone through and the game ends after everyone has had a turn.

I got very interested in games like this. I read your reviews on El Grande and Tigris & Euphrates and I'm pretty definite about buying either one. I like these kind of trading games with a little spice of war, but it seems either one of these is a good choice, but I'll probably be bent on T & E.

I've tried to recruit some friends of mine to the boardgaming convention you mentioned earlier and might have couple of volunteers. I just need to keep the heat up so they'll remember it when it's close.

I fixed your comment a bit, it sounded a lot like you talked about Puerto Rico... Unless you know something I don't.

Choosing if and when to take the Craftsman is probably one of the most complicated things in the game, especially if shipping is critical to your strategy. It takes some thinking and it's probably going to hurt you and help your opponents anyway.

Yes, you got it wrong there - no matter when the game end condition is met, the round is played to the end. That makes the end a slightly less tense, but it's still exciting when you notice you're running out of time.

Winning without the large bonus buildings is possible, but I think usually the winner has one of them (but, in the other hand, usually at least three out of four players in a game have one in the end). If you have two and can utilize them well, you're doing great.

Tigris & Euphrates is one of the very best German board games, I think. I've played about 20 games of it and while I don't keep on learning new things as with deeper games like Go, I still find it very interesting. The tactics aren't obvious, so it's not the easiest of games, but there's enough luck effect to make it possible for a clever newbie to win.

El Grande is, in the other hand, the best area influence game I know. The struggle for the Spanish provinces can be tough. I think it's a bit more intuitive than T&E (where the simple fact that you don't have your own colour is alone very counter-intuitive) and thus easier to learn. However, it too is in the deeper end of the spectrum.

Both are excellent games and you shouldn't regret buying either. T&E works best with 3-4 players and is fun with 2, El Grande is best with 5 and needs at least 4 to be really fun.

Good to hear that our con is attractive. Earlier we advertised the price to be 5 euros for members, 10 for others, now the price is down to 5/8 to make it even more friendly and attractive.

> I fixed your comment a bit, it sounded a lot like you talked about Puerto Rico... Unless you know something I don't.

I wonder what I wrote :-)

We'll play Puerto Rico again next tuesday so we'll see if anyone gets any bright ideas about it. I'm not sure if it's possible, but it would seem good to concentrate only on certain plantations and maximize the production of those with the appropriate buildings. In the end, my fields were full and there was stuff that I didn't really need (tobacco & Coffee) since I aimed to maximize the profits from other plantations that I already had running nicely (Indigo, Corn & Sugar). Then again, the pickings are a bit random so i'm not sure how valid it is to state that "ok, i'm going for indigo and coffee in this game".

Also the fact that the different trades get their share of dubloons if they weren't used that turn is pretty interesting. I think many of us was cashing in on that even though in the long term, it might not been the best option to select at that time.

I'll probably get Tigris & Euphrates tomrrow because of the smaller player number. Three players is easy and we can get four with some arrangements so games that fall into those player numbers are nice.

Concentration is nice. Corn shipper is one of the basic strategies - produce as much corn as possible and ship it all. Works nicely with indigo as well. Another main strategy is the "make lots of money, build lots of buildings" strategy.

Even though the plantation pickings might seem a bit random, you usually can get what you want. And you can always take another plantation type "on the side".

The mechanic of piling money on the roles is taken from Vinci (I think), and it definitely makes the things a bit more interesting and makes you think about what you choose. And especially as money is usually the most restricted resource.

Drop a note here, what you think of T&E when you get to play it.

Yep, got T&E. I have some mixup with the names Marco Polo and Puerto Rico (and I think I wrote Marco Polo in my earlier post) which caused me to blabber everything about Marco Polo to the Safe Haven salesman and he seemed excited that there was a game he didn't know about. Yeah. Right.

I started reading the rules and experimenting the moment I got home and we'll probably get a game together on sunday or tuesday. I played for a while against myself and ran through the rules alot. It definetly seems that with three or four players, there's loads to think of.

I have some questions.

Do I get it correctly that when you have two different kingdoms and a tile is placed between them (and the unification tile on top of that) the pieces that share the same color fight by the rules of External Conflict. When all the colors have fought, only one color remains and the unification tile is removed. So now, unless anything drastic happened to alot of tiles, this kingdom is basically one big kingdom due to the tile played that unified the kingdoms? Right?

Why I'm asking is that on my game the Lions had a huge amount of temples on their kingdom until it was joined via an external conflict concerning traders (and the Lions had no traders and thus, not really any defence) and so now, the other player could play his own red piece and it'd be an internal conflict which would depend on the amount of temples adjacent to these two pieces. It's probably correct, but i was depressed to realize that my big temple jehova-army amounted to nothing after the kingdoms had joined :-)

Also, what's the reason for unification tile? Does it serve any other purpose than to show the tile that caused the unification?

Uhh, basically I think that's it. I think I got all the other rules (everyone gains from monuments and both colors on them count / treasures are taken with trader and if there are more than one in the kingdom / winner is the one with the least amount of points in one category, but still beating everyone else.)

All in all, seemed very interesting and I can imagine this game being very serious since those two actions are definetly not enough :-)

Any common mistakes that n00bie players make with T&E?

Marco Polo is a real game, actually. From the 80s, Lasse Märsy has a review of it on his website: http://www.student.oulu.fi/~lma/marco.html

If there are two leaders of the same colour in the newly formed kingdom, they must fight. I don't quite understand what you mean by "only one color remains". There can be all the four colours present in the new kingdom, but only one leader of each colour may remain. Or, as usual, the kingdom breaks in two after the first battle.

If I understand your example correctly, there was two kingdoms, which were united by an external conflict. After the conflict, your opponent played a red leader on the new kingdom, challenging yours in an internal conflict. And yes, in that case, the huge amount of temples won't matter much - except it gives you hopefully lots of potential to strike back.

There's really only need for one unification tile. I don't think it has any other purpose to remind people that the tile under it doesn't belong to either kingdom when counting tiles.

Go see the ReinerSpiel web site for erratas and clarifications:
http://freespace.virgin.net/chris.lawson/rk/e-t/index.htm

Hmmm? "[W]inner is the one with the least amount of points in one category, but still beating everyone else." Sounds weird. Let me rephrase the score in a very easy to understand way: winner is the player with most points - to score one point, you need four cubes, one of each colour.

Also note that you have to remove the four corner treasures first, then you can choose freely. Make sure you distinguish external and internal conflict well enough when teaching the game. External comes from tiles, internal from leaders. That's a good mantra to repeat. One thing I played wrong was the removal of red tiles after external conflict: red tiles that support leaders are *not* removed.

It's a really serious game and it will usually take at least one game to figure out the tactics. Most people are very lost during their first game, but towards the end of it they start to figure it out. One tip: I saw you write "their kingdom" there - don't do that! Don't think that this is my kingdom here and that is your kingdom there - players do *not* have their own kingdoms in T&E. You must place your leaders to the kingdom that is best for them, no matter whose leaders there are.

Have fun! You've just bought yourself a very, very good game!

> Hmmm? "[W]inner is the one with the least amount of points in one category, but still beating everyone else." Sounds weird. Let me rephrase the score in a very easy to understand way: winner is the player with most points - to score one point, you need four cubes, one of each colour.

Ummm... for one victory point you need four cubes, one of each category? I thought one cube counted as one VP and a bigger one as five VP.

What I meant by the point calculations and checking for winner is that you look for your lowest VPs in one category and compare that score to other players lowest and if your score is the highest here, you win. So if my score with farms is the lowest (let's say 7) and the other players lowest is temples (8) and settlements (8) then I win the game with my farm score and the two players who tied with the score need to check their second lowest tiles for score etc.

BTW. After the game ends, you reveal your score. Does this mean that you apply your treasures when everyone sees your score or do you do this before you reveal them?

With the "only one color remains" I meant that after the conflict only one player's specific piece is left there be it any color that just participated in the conflict.

Hmm yep, the point about not having "own kingdoms" is a good one. I realized later in the evening that in 3-4 player enviroment it really is kind of devilish to initiate conflicts between other players too.

I think I got the rules. I read the page you mentioned and there were couple of good pointers and I think if I screw any rules up it just comes down to small things (Like when you move a leader who's presence unifies two kingdoms to another place that would have the same effect - Just that this wouldn't work since the leader is actually placed out of the board and then into the board and you can't unite kingdoms with leaders.)

>Ummm... for one victory point you need four cubes, one of each category? I thought one >cube counted as one VP and a bigger one as five VP.

Think different. Forget that cubes are worth 1 or 5 VP as you said, they are, but this is a different, easier way to think about it. Now, instead of explaining that "each cube is worth 1 VP, but your total is the amount of the cubes in your weakest colour", you say "to get 1 VP, you need one cube of each colour".

>score is the highest here, you win. So if my score with farms is the lowest (let's say >7) and the other players lowest is temples (8) and settlements (8) then I win the game >with my farm score and the two players who tied with the score need to check their >second lowest tiles for score etc.

In this example, you would have 7 "victory points", as you have seven cubes of each colour (the rest don't matter). Your opponent would have 8 "victory points", again the extra cubes won't count. You take your weakest colour and compare it with the others and who has the most of their weakest colour wins.

You can apply your treasures whenever you want, it doesn't matter as there's usually pretty much one way to do it, to get the most points. It doesn't depend on other people's scores at all.

"Let's you and him fight" is a very good principle to keep in mind.

Ahh yes, very true with "to get 1 VP, you need one cube of each colour". With all the other games, it's always up to the highest score, but in this game it doesn't matter. Well, we'll see tomorrow probably (not sure if we get three players, but at least I'll teach it to one).

Whee, played my first game of T&E today + another of Puerto Rico. Both went exceedingly well and I think we didn't do any big screwups with the rules. I'll have to run through them to check. All in all, the games were alot faster than expected and I think we covered both games definetly in around three hours.

T&E was definetly hard to grasp for the ones unfamiliar with it and I explained the rules pretty fast in order to get gaming. But I think in overrall the game seemed pretty easy to learn to the ones playing it and everyone had a sort of "let's see what this does" attitude towards it and we really didn't do much risk assesment when attacking.

I won the game with 16 points, the second came in with 11 and the last with 8. I had the luck of getting a hold of green/red monument pretty early and hanging on to it + conquering blue/black one after some battles so I scored every color each turn which definetly helped.

On Puerto Rico I didn't really think much, I was getting a bit tired, but managed to win the game with 53 points with a gap of about 10 to the second one. My tactic was simple. I had harbor + pretty good corn production (about three or four) and everyone else was bent on capitalism and cashing in on trades. I supported the old world and pretty much shipped corn for about three to six VPs per turn depending on how production went. I never had any cash for large buildings, but then again, I never really traded. I was a bit puzzled at the beginning since I haven't really gotten any clear indications on how to actually proceed in the early turns of the game. What to buy etc. All I really produced in this game was sugar and corn and in this game it seemed to work.

Corn (or indigo) shipper is a good tactic. It might be a bit too slow with three players, but you can still rack up tons of points. However, it means you often have to choose Craftsman yourself. That's not nice... However, if you have Wharf, it's not going to be a huge problem, even if someone tried to screw you in the Captain phase.

If other players are not in for shipping, go ahead! Then you'll win for certain ;-) You should adjust your tactics to not match your opponents, I think, especially if multiple opponents are doing the same thing. If all your opponents are heavy shippers, trading might be an option.