Thursday gaming report--and a surprise!
Last Thursday, we had a pleasant surprise. Aliza showed up again! This was pleasant because she had some very significant health issues come up suddenly a month or so ago. She was there with her roommie K, and Chien was there as well.
We played Troyes, which is a game about the noble families of Troyes competing for fame and influence.
In this game, you roll dice and take actions with your pawns. The dice you roll are determined by the number of pawns you have in three buildings, coded white (church), red (military), and yellow (farmers). There are a limited number of places in each building, so there are a limited number of dice that can be rolled. There is always an automatic player that the game controls.
The next thing you do after that is turn up two Invader cards. Those call out specific effects (such as putting an NPC in a building, or costing everyone some money) and have one or more black dice on them. The total number of black dice get rolled, and the players must "defeat" (match or beat) the largest-value black die and one or more others. Bad Things happen if you cannot defeat the largest black die...
During the main part of your turn, you use one of your dice (and can pay money to your opponents to use theirs) to move a pawn into a building, bumping out one pawn that was already there. You can use money to buy a Special Powers card; one of each of three colors (white, red, yellow) is available every turn--and you have to use the card right away with one or more dice if you buy it. The cards usually let you affect the dice in some way. You can also use red dice to attack the Invaders, potentially removing an Invaders card, the white ones to build a part of the Cathedral, or the yellow ones to get money. You can spend Prestige points (gained from building part of the Cathedral, or defending against the black dice, or attacking and beating the Invasion cards) to affect the dice that you rolled, but nobody else's.
At the end of each turn, you get 10 "deniers" (money) minus one or two for each pawn in the white or red buildings. There are special actions that can give you money as well.
A mechanic that is similar to Kingdom Builder, which I reported on a while ago. That mechanic bening, everyone draws one card that specifies conditions for bonus victory points. At the end of the game, all of the conditions apply to all players.
VPs are gained from those, and from attacking and beating Invasions, from purchasing Special Power cards, and from building pieces of the Cathedral.
I started out strongly, buying the Archers Special Effect card (on red) which let me do a lot of attacking the Invaders with red dice. From then on, I wound up spending too much money trying to get red dice so I could keep using the Archers. I concentrated too much on that, and other areas suffered. K managed to buy a lot of Special Effect cards late in the game, and that was enough to give him the victory. I believe Chien was next, then Aliza, and I was DFL again.
We played Troyes, which is a game about the noble families of Troyes competing for fame and influence.
In this game, you roll dice and take actions with your pawns. The dice you roll are determined by the number of pawns you have in three buildings, coded white (church), red (military), and yellow (farmers). There are a limited number of places in each building, so there are a limited number of dice that can be rolled. There is always an automatic player that the game controls.
The next thing you do after that is turn up two Invader cards. Those call out specific effects (such as putting an NPC in a building, or costing everyone some money) and have one or more black dice on them. The total number of black dice get rolled, and the players must "defeat" (match or beat) the largest-value black die and one or more others. Bad Things happen if you cannot defeat the largest black die...
During the main part of your turn, you use one of your dice (and can pay money to your opponents to use theirs) to move a pawn into a building, bumping out one pawn that was already there. You can use money to buy a Special Powers card; one of each of three colors (white, red, yellow) is available every turn--and you have to use the card right away with one or more dice if you buy it. The cards usually let you affect the dice in some way. You can also use red dice to attack the Invaders, potentially removing an Invaders card, the white ones to build a part of the Cathedral, or the yellow ones to get money. You can spend Prestige points (gained from building part of the Cathedral, or defending against the black dice, or attacking and beating the Invasion cards) to affect the dice that you rolled, but nobody else's.
At the end of each turn, you get 10 "deniers" (money) minus one or two for each pawn in the white or red buildings. There are special actions that can give you money as well.
A mechanic that is similar to Kingdom Builder, which I reported on a while ago. That mechanic bening, everyone draws one card that specifies conditions for bonus victory points. At the end of the game, all of the conditions apply to all players.
VPs are gained from those, and from attacking and beating Invasions, from purchasing Special Power cards, and from building pieces of the Cathedral.
I started out strongly, buying the Archers Special Effect card (on red) which let me do a lot of attacking the Invaders with red dice. From then on, I wound up spending too much money trying to get red dice so I could keep using the Archers. I concentrated too much on that, and other areas suffered. K managed to buy a lot of Special Effect cards late in the game, and that was enough to give him the victory. I believe Chien was next, then Aliza, and I was DFL again.