Nick was in town and was able to join Kevin, Joe, Gina, and I for games on Saturday. Gina selected Terra Mystica for the first game of the evening.
Gina was the dwarves; Nick, the alchemists; Joe, the witches; Kevin, the nomads; and I had the chaos mages. I took the upper right corner of the board and had the +1 boat tile for the first round and was able to do some quick expansion. I was working on building temples and building my favor with the cults.
Joe and Kevin were spreading all over the place, while Nick and Gina were in the lower right building their towns. By the third round we all had at least one town, and Joe was working on his second. I had the upper right corner locked up and was working towards my second town, but I wasn’t able to get it completed before Kevin overtook me for the lead in the water cult. I ended up with first place in one cult, second in two, and third in the last. Joe’s three towns, though, launched him well into the lead early and he held it until the very end.
We followed that with Brass, with Gina heading to bed. I didn’t really have a strong plan for the game, simply starting with coal mines and going from there. Joe was trying to maximize his income early with lots of coal and a bunch of early cotton mills. Kevin was just setting up for the second phase, while Nick did a little of everything.
In the second phase, I was setup to build a boat in the northern-most city, so I directed my builds in that direction. Also, no one was building cotton mills, so I was able to drop a couple to take advantage of the external market for some income. Joe’s income wasn’t quite enough and he had too much coal on the board, so they weren’t emptying out causing him to struggle a bit. Kevin was building track like crazy, and that ended up being the difference in the game. Nick and I were both able to build our boats, but Kevin scored 60+ points from his links and my buildings weren’t able to overcome that difference.
Until next time, happy gaming!
