Feld and Friese

It was a day of effs and not all of them uttered by me, although I lost three games in a row.

We first played Stefan Feld's "In the Year of the Dragon" again. In fact we can now play it sufficiently well that we managed to fit two games in before lunch.

In the first Crabro locked me out of what I needed so efficiently that the winning margin was huge, but in the second I managed to narrow the gap to a mere two points and it was a lot more easy to see where these could have been found. Despite the losses I very much enjoyed playing this game again, there is something very satisfying about the neatness of the design and the way the mechanisms are nicely in balance.

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After lunch it was the return of an old favourite by another designer beginning with eff: Friedmann Friese's Power Grid, but this time the two player game was enhanced by the new "Robots" expansion. This allows the creation of a robot third player whose game is varied by his being made up of randomly chosen pieces, each controlling the robot player's behaviour in a particular phase.

Our robot was not very successful at expanding but he was always last in player order and so bought raw materials first every time, increasing the rarity and price of various fuels.

Although we struggled a bit to remember the new rules and perhaps gave "Robbie" a harder time than we should have, it certainly added something to the two-player game and it would be interesting to try other robot combinations and see how they affect the game.

Once again I lost, and although the final winning margin would not have been vast, it was clear without playing the final turn that there was no action available to me that would alter the fact that Crabro had it wrapped up. This was a little frustrating as, unlike the first ITYOTD from which I could clearly see and learn by my obvious errors (corrected in the second very competitive game), I was not so sure where I had gone wrong. One thing was obvious and that was that at a crucial turning point in the game, Crabro had a substantial amount more money than me despite my larger income. Since there were (unusually) no major bidding battles in this game, I have to think that I overspent a lot on resources at a key point of the game.

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I was playing an unusual strategy for me in that I expanded fast early on. Normally I try to hang back, not wanting to buy and build last, but in this case my first city was allowed to appear in an area rich in cheap building opportunities and I succumbed to the temptation to forge ahead, despite foreseeing a sharp drop-off point in the future. Crabro built steadily within his means, expanding cities and plants in tandem until, in classic PG style he was ready to make the final push across the line in one protracted build.

Two excellent games, very satisfying to play. Power Grid is, for my money, the chap with the green hair's best design by a considerable margin and both would be in my current top ten I think. ...if only I could win them once in a while.