Helping out the Newbie? ...and a pleasant discovery

[likie]

We had my brother round for only his second game recently - he seems to be picking up the game pretty well, though farmer strategy is still something of a mystery to him.

In any case this particular game hinged on farmer strategy - one pretty large farm eventuated.  Both my wife and I were keen on gaining control of this - my brother had figured out what we were doing, but couldn't really get in on it and adopted the strategy of trying to take everything else he could get to establish some sort of lead.

Late in the game he played a tile, which didn't yet link with the main farm but had good possibilities for doing so.  Given it was only his second game, I suggested that a good play might be to play the big meeple and hopefully with a reasonable draw on his next tile or so he might link to the central farm and get parity with us (with one large and one normal meeple each). He didn't get the tile he required so it didn't work out.

In any case, just after advising him of this play I realised that I actually had one large and two normal meeples on the farm - not sure how this had slipped me by or if I had known and had forgotten (it was getting pretty late by this stage).  My wife hadn't figured this either for some reason (probably because my advice business had confused her and given that we are relative newbies anyway) - and in fact only found out when we went to score that farm (last) - at which point her and I were dead even - she was a little disappointed to say the least.  Scoring for that farm let me cruise past my brother to win the game.   

[mjharper]

Your brother would have been doubly miffed if he'd made it onto the farm following your advice, only to find that his big meeple still wasn't enough!
People do tend to get annoyed when you 'don't realise' that you've got enough meeples on the biggest farm to win. For some reaason, they always think that your 'shock' is feigned…