Wednesday night at Critical Hit

We didn't have a soccer game tonight, so I had a little extra time. Jerod had advertised that Chris would be teaching Hacienda tonight, and I jumped on the chance to play a boardgame that I liked a lot for the second time.

The game ended up being Andy Mills, Chris Shaffer, Subway Guy (don't remember his name), Gare, and myself. Me, Gare, and Chris had played before. Chris taught. We played the basic dogbone map again.

I had a decent opening draw, and was able to work my way to two of the plantations that are by water. I pursued a strategy of trying to connect to multiple markets, but others were going very hard on developing individual areas. Moving along in the game, I couldn't seem to get a big land area or a chain of animals going, so I kept working on just finding new markets.

I was doing all right, hanging out in 2nd after the first scoring round. I kept picking up new markets, others kept developing, in some cases branching out a little bit. Andy triggered the endgame, and we had a thrilling final scoring round with ups and downs. I ended up being connected to seven markets, the next biggest being four, and that gave me quite a few points. Myself and Chris were very close in this game, and he might have been able to triumph with one more turn. Probably the most important move I made was one that cut him off from reaching a new market, and gave me better access to another, all in one stroke. So, with all the markets and the timely place of a few water pieces,I took the win, over Chris, by just a handfull of points, with the others languishing somewere behind. I really liked it, and look forward to playing again.

Well, I'm fading badly now, and should go.

GG, GL