Saturday in the Quad Cities

Saturday morning came with the promise of a cruise West on I80 to Kristin's wedding shower, held by my sisters. While they were playing assorted games and piling awesome gifts around her, several of the male members of the family and myself enjoyed the fruits of the steak grilling talents of my father. Post-parties, Kristin and I made arrangements to head down to Dave B's, in Moline, for an evening of fun.

I had brought along Arkham Horror, as well as a variety of other games. By the time we could get going, it was a little late for AH, and Dave and Kris were anxious to play Puerto Rico, which I had shown them how to play last visit. We went over the rules with Grahm and got the plantations going.

I was in seat two, behind Kris. He settled for quarry and I took coffee (no corn in the mix, either). On my turn I built for Indigo plant. Dave mayored, and Grahm dug for gold. Things went pretty smoothly from there. Dave had some early success with sugar, and ramped up into a factory. In the mid game, Grahm had a hard time working out what to build. I picked up coffee roaster, warf, and harbor. I also grabbed 3 corn plantations. I sold some coffee, then got a good captain phase and started a coffee boat, which I took advantage of for 3 phases, being the only one in coffee.

I built, I think, about half as much as I normally do. I did end up with the vp chips big building, which paid off well. It is the first time I've ever been really successful with a serious focus on shipping. It's also the first time I've managed to get both the harbor and warf. I definitely benifited from good luck regarding the available plantations, as well as the timing of the captain's phases. I won with 54 points, and Dave finished in second, with a respectable 44 points. A couple different decisions for him, and it would have been at least 4 or 5 points closer. Kris took the middle slot, and Grahm finished with 35, a decent play his first time out. Everyone liked the game, and I'm sure we'll get to it again. This session of PR was really a breath of fresh air for me, as everyone was friendly, relaxed, and chatting the whole time. Certainly one of the better plays of this game for me.

We sat around a little and chatted about game strategy, and whether or not to play another game. We had a little time, and Dave and Grahm were game, so we opened up Through the Desert. TtD is a lot shorter and easy to play/explain. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the late hour, and/or the mead, Dave misunderstood the largest caravan rule, thinking there was just one 10 point award for the single largest, not one for each color. Had he understood this correctly, the game probably would have gone another 2 turns and ended up a little different. As it was, we certainly had fun, and finished in 45 minutes, including setup and explanation.

The opening camel placement went smoothly, and I thought everyone made good choices. We all started off gathering the watering hole vp chips, and transitioned into building areas. I ended up working hard to get three small areas, while Dave got one big one, and Grahm got a couple at medium size. I think I probably ended up fighting slightly the wrong battles, as I lost out on a few vp chips to build small areas. Part of this, though, was at the expense of one of the plays Dave made due to his misunderstanding of the rules, which only came up later. There was a lot of quick play, with it being far too late to overanalyze. In the end, Grahm had the biggest for two caravans, as did I, and Dave had one. Dave ended the game thinking he was the only one who would get a bonus. Once the scoring started, none of us wanted to go back, though. Grahm ended up in first with 85, and I got second with 84. Dave was a little behind that, in the mid 70s.

This was another enjoyable play of this game. Dave said he preferred several of the other games I'd brought over, noting that he particularly enjoyed Ingenious a little better and felt it filled about the same niche. Grahm pointed out that TtD is a great, somewhat light game, that served perfectly as a closer for an evening game session.

With that, it was around 1 AM, so we hopped in the car and headed off to bed.

GG, GL