Canoes and Comuni

Four gamers turned up this week and brought with them Comuni again. I was seething with rage about something entirely unrelated and didn't give it my full attention for a while but it is a game I like and I settled down to play.

This time I did not intend to repeat my acquisition of loads of penalty points and changed strategy entirely, building little and trailing behind in the points. I found it easy to deal with the battles, and indeed "overpaid" the black cubes each time, even picking up a couple of the early bonuses.


 As far as the overall score was concerned though, this stategy kept me in such a distant last that I remained there. On the plus side I had no penalties at all, on the minus side I was a distant last in by far my worst ever playing of the game. I definitely played it better when I didn't know it well, the more I think about what I'm doing the worse I get. To turn last week's conclusion on its head, I think perhaps I should never play this game again!

As we finished in good time we had time for a filler and,  after another round of teas etc., my opponents emerged from my games collection with Niagara. This is very light but can be a lot of fun..as it proved to be on this occasion. I managed to get a good collection of the easier to reach gems quite quickly and was on the verge of a seven gem win but Crabro had been more selective and pipped me to the post with his collection of one each of the five colours. I finished, or would have, on the same move but Crabro was before me in the playing order that turn. Very kindly he said that he regarded it as a draw for the two old men. I say he won fair and square...but I'll happily take the draw offered to take the taste of defeat away after the Comuni disaster.