Wild Donkey Sex

I started coughing last night, and felt worse this morning, so I took the day off work sick. Of course being sick yet still able to sit up means one thing - solitaire games. So I set up Roads and Boats on the bed, fortified myself with lemon-flavoured paracetamol, and had 3 turns finished before Scrabblette even got her shoes on (she was going to work). My ambition was to execute my plan formulated after last night's playing of "Lord of the Ring". In short, I was going to build an oil rig, a specialised gold mine, and get myself a stock certificate.

The start of the plan involved cleaning all those boards and rocks out of the home pasture to make a love nest for the donkeys. I started in the pasture in the northwest corner. All the donkeys took a load into an adjacent hex then a couple of them snuck back for a bit of hee-haw. The busy worker donkey built a saw mill and a woodcutter. In turns 3 and 4 baby donkeys were born, and it was all over for the donkeys' reproductive careers.

I then built a quarry. In last night's game I built a quarry on turn 1, but I didn't get it until turn 5 this game. I think that's a problem. On turn 8 I built a raft factory (turn 5 last night), and a paper mill on turn 11 (none last night). At this point I was wondering if I'd made a mistake. The donkeys' love nest had been turned into a paper mill, so I had to lead the geese all the way to the other side of the world to find somewhere quiet for them to cluck. I tried using a raft as a baby-sitter, i.e. to lead away the goslings while they clucked some more, but the raft just didn't have the charisma of Julie Andrews, or even a donkey for that matter. It took a very long time to produce four geese for research, and to get them all the way to the other side of the world to the paper factory.

I built an oil rig on turn 16, a gold mine on turn 19, and produced my first gold nugget on turn 20. At that point my score was 50 - 4 wonder rows and a gold nugget. (BTW, last night I did the wonder wrong - I should have filled in the first 4 rows, so my score was not completely valid.)

I decided to soldier on until I produced the stock certificate, just to see how badly my plan had failed. On turn 23 I built a mint, on turn 26 I built a stock exchange, and the stock bond was produced at the beginning of turn 27.

Disappointing. I definitely think sending the geese to pasture on the other side of the world was a bad idea, as was waiting for them to come all the way back. I also realised I only needed to produce 2 geese - I could have then used up all of those that I had to do the two pieces of research I needed. I probably shouldn't have put the paper mill on the pasture - the geese needed to be there. I also wonder whether I should have built a clay pit so I'd have a stronger supply of rocks? So many ideas! I guess I'll just have to play again.