2 player mini mega carc

[Dave]

We (me black and my girlfriend red) took 2 hours to play

we used
Basic game, Abbey & mayor, Traders & builders(using the tables of trading token values rather than the majority 10 points), Families, Barbarian Horde (with slightly beefed up barbarians), Toll Booth & Trading Post, Court Magician, And bridges out of its expansion.

The barbarians came on at just the right time (after we had deployed nearly all our meeples) so raising a defence took a while and they tromped all over the place and captured half of reds meeples she never bought them back, I got lucky and they only took one of mine, I didnt buy it back either.

fun with families
We had a good scrap over a pennant rich city with our mayors and i cought her mayor muscleing in with a families tile, so I got that city, Later, we were both short of meeple and I got a string of families tiles and was merrily building a city hoping I'd get a meeple in time to claim it first but she got her mayor in there and stranded my mayor as I was trying to muscle in and I didn't manage to get it back till she had completed the city,

A point for the court magician
the barbarians were occupying a 24 point city (having captured its occupying meeple, Red found the right tile to finish and cast it with her court magician, and sat on it till the barbarian moved out of ownership then swooped in and landed a nice 24 points.

we both scored over 250 points despite variouse setbacks, she got a barn for 48 over my barn of 12, but I did better on trade and pipped her at the post by 20+.

It was a good close game.