So for the second night in a row, Natasha & I played a couple of games. This time we played:
- River I
- River II
- The Tower
- Inns & Cathedrals
- Traders & Builders
For us, this is a mega-game! We're used to playing mostly River I + one other expansion.
Game 1Not very exciting (seems as though our first game is always a little mundane as we warm up!), but I went a little nuts with my farmers and by 3/4ths of the way through the game I had *cough* 5 farmers deployed (hey, I grew up on a farm so back off!). Natasha is the type to keep a few meeples in reserve and rarely plays more than 2 farmers, so I thought I had the game in the bag. Unfortunately the bag had a hole in it because I lost
287 - 236.
Also, we're not big fans of The Tower, and as usual we only each deployed 2 towers out of the 10.
Game 2This game I decided I was going to win without using any farmers at all (this is the second time I've attempted this) but by midway it was clear that playing without farmers is a lost cause. We did some negotiating and only ended up each deploying 1 tower piece each, but in the end I didn't finish building the tower so Nat had one of my meeples prisoner for most of the game (which I had forgotten about as usual). It was really an unusual layout so I took a snapshot:
I resized it down a lot so you can't see all the details perfectly, but you can tell that Nat had her red territory on the left and I had my yellow territory on the right, and basically we stuck to those areas for the entire game.
I deployed my double-meeple in her zone but she countered with a double and regular meeple to pull out a 15-city farm - with a pig no less - for 60 points! She also took the beer & toilet paper trades (or barrel & cloth? ... anyhow that's what we call 'em!) for an additional 20 points. Final score: Gantry 265 points, Nat
279 for her 2nd win of the night!
