Trajan Tuesday

Traianus. 98-117 AD. :: AV Aureus (7.27 gm). Struck mid-Summer 116 AD. ::: IMP CAES NER TRAIAN OPTIM AVG GER DAC PARTHICO, laureate bust right, aegis on left shoulder globe at base of bust ::: P M TR P COS VI P P S P Q R, PARTHIA CAPTA in exergue, Parthia seated left, head facing, in attitude of mourning, and Parthian seated right in attitude of mourning below trophy. :: RIC II 325; cf. Strack 247 (no globe at base of bust); BMCRE 606; Calicó 1036; Cohen 186. :: Good VF, underlying luster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Two excellent Tuesday games this week, neither of which I thought to take photos of, unfortunately. Battlelore was temporarily abandoned for technical reasons (a huge number of cards accidentally mixed and needing sorting) so we played Fresco in preparation for a group play on Thursday and after lunch we finally got round to tackling Stefan Feld's Trajan.

I already liked Fresco and this play did nothing to change my opinion, although it isn't quite the same two-player and requires the use of a "Derk" third player (actually called Leonardo in this case). The two players take it in turns to decide the moves of Leonardo who doesn't get "paints" (coloured blocks) or income but does receive points for restoring bits of the fresco (normally done by paying the appropriate coloured "paints") and also, importantly, has a blocking role in the market. We had a very enjoyable and close game with me emerging on top after points for remaining cash were tallied but only by about two points.

Th

Fresco (Photo credit: Lutrus)

The situation was reversed in Trajan where Crabro made up massive ground on carefully amassed bonuses at the end of the game to win by 3 points out of 150-ish. Both very satisfying games, Trajan perhaps the more so with seemingly a lot of possible strategies. I managed to acquire a set of similar commodity cards towards the end, which had I been able to activate shipping again, and therefore also use them in conjunction with a bonus tile which I could have taken as I was ahead on senate votes, would have been worth a great many points. No doubt Crabro could also point to similar missed opportunities though and it actually felt very satisfying that both games were such close contests.

Stefan Feld remains my current hero amongst game designers.