Games Session
|
|
| Date: |
23rd July 2004 |
| Game Played: |
La Strada |
|
|
| Players |
Result |
Win |
Ratings |
| Mark K |
29 |
P |
6 |
| Garry |
24 |
|
6 |
| Nige |
22 |
|
5 |
| Mark G |
16 |
|
6 |
Next we decided to
try a new Martin Wallace design, published by Kosmos/Mayfair. This is a
game about Italian merchants trying to set up trading networks with
various sized settlements across northern Italy. Connecting to large
cities is good as there are more customers there than in the smallest
hamlet but, if your opposing merchants also move into the city, this
reduces your profits and you might have been better with a smaller
settlement that others avoided. On your turn you get 6 movement points and
you get to spend these on connecting from your existing network of
settlements to one you haven't yet reached. You can save points for later
rounds but only up to a maximum of 4, so you can only use 10 movement
points per turn at most. Every settlement you connect to, you place a
marker on it and play continues until someone can no longer make a legal
move. Then you count VPs for each settlement you're connected to, the more
in the settlement, the lower everyone scores. Most VPs wins.
This is a very quick game and is very easy to play. There
is an element of trying to block opponents, but this is quite difficult.
We all thought that there was a big advantage to the first player but that
player, me, didn't end up winning. Mark K played well and critically
blocked me from one of the cities I was aiming for and, deservedly, won.
We were all a bit luke-warm about this one. Turns come round very quickly
and it is easy to see what's going on but it didn't seem to be very
balanced, This may have been because the board set-up we played was
unbalanced but I'm not sure this is going to see too much repeat play with
us.
