Go West

I recently bought myself something every gamer needs - a sheet of perspex. The uses of a sheet of perspex are many and varied, as I discovered from the guys at work. Let's not go there. What I wanted it for was to cover game maps, such as the pathetic one from C&C Ancients, and the one you can draw on from Roads and Boats. I also managed to buy a sheet of non-slip material which will come in handy for slippery hex games such as Roads and Boats and Trias. I also needed to try out &cetera, the Roads and Boats expansion. With all of these factors converging, there was only one thing to do - solitaire &cetera.

While considering a solitaire game of &cetera I realised that in all of my solitaire games of Roads and Boats I hadn't even built wagons, let alone trucks, steam ships and so on. &cetera offers planes and power lines and trains, so I didn't see any hope of getting to those on the Lord of the Ring map. So I resolved to play a large long open-ended game, and see what happened.

I chose the "Go West" map from the expansion scenario suggestions. Apart from being big enough to take whatever I could build, "Go West" is the Buster Keaton movie where he plays the character Friendless. It seemed appropriate.

Of course my ambition was to exploit the riches in the mountains, and I decided to get to them by building some plans and flying out there. It wasn't so difficult to build an airport and I had one before the donkeys even had time for a bit of the old hee-haw.

After that I started flights out to the mountains to build mines. But first, I'll explain what planes do. They can take off from any hex they're in. They can carry 4 resources but not other transporters. They can airdrop resources to any hex. They can land on any space without a building or unsupervised geese, or at an airport. They can taxi one space along a road.

I found the very valuable way to use plains was to taxi into a hex full of resources, take off fully loaded, air drop the resources to where they were needed, then land and taxi back to another hex on the next turn. Of course by the time I realised that I'd put my airport in a not very useful place, but I did do an awful lot of air dropping. The tension was always trying to keep an empty hex next to the resource rich hexes for the planes to land in.

I knew I'd eventually need to get some donkeys out to the mines to help load metals onto the planes, so I built a road all the way across the map. At the same time I noticed I had too much to do and not enough resources to do it with, so I decided to electrify my primary production. The mines were producing iron anyway, and iron is needed to build power lines, so it seemed like a good idea.

I'll tell you what electricity does. If you have a power plant fuelled by either wood or boards, the power plant provides electricity to all primary producers connected by power lines. Power lines are denoted by dotted lines and cost one iron to build (like roads cost one brick). The electrification project worked well. I placed the generator midway between a source of wood and the places that needed to be electrified.

With the increased resource production I needed more transport so I set about upgrading my donkeys to wagons. They sufficed for a while, but as more mines came on-line even they became inadequate.

I had to upgrade to trucks and was sad to see there was nothing else to upgrade to. The map didn't have enough water to justify any ships at all, and I don't think I would have given up any of my planes or trucks anyway.

I noticed then that with the mines working well, primary production booming, and transport sorted, I was accumulating gold I couldn't process fast enough. Electrification doesn't help with primary producers, but managers do (it's only a game). Hence I needed to build a Management Bullshit Academy. In the picture you can see the MBA about to produce a manager who will be taxied to the mint where he's desperately needed. Managers double the production capacity of a secondary producer.

I then used the planes to air drop iron and fuel to all of the mine sites to build second mine shafts. These were specialised gold mines, as my intention was to score over 1000 points for the game (I had to plan to stop at some stage.)

I had the financial district absolutely plagued with managers - they were at the coal burners, paper factory, mint and stock exchange, so coins and stock bonds were being produced very efficiently.


At this point the gold mines were producing so much gold the only way I could get it to the mint was for the trucks to deliver it to the planes in the desert, and for the planes to air drop it to the mint and then return to the desert. That was very efficient. The iron which was hanging around was now useless and I managed to sacrifice some to build the wonder. I mostly ignored the wonder throughout the game but towards the end I was pumping huge resources into it just to get them off the board - piles of lumber and bricks were threatening to topple onto the managers.


Eventually everything progressed through the system. When I clearly had 1000+ points I loaded all of the loot onto the trucks and took it home. The two trucks in the back are carrying stock certificates.

In conclusion, although this was an interesting exercise, it took quite a long time - at least 5 hours spread over a week. I can't imagine playing &cetera against other people unless I was 17 again. For that reason, although the &cetera additions fit the game well, I have a low desire to play it again. I would like to do a scenario with more water so I can get steam ships, and maybe with polders, cities, art and railways. However that won't be happening any time soon - I need my table for other games.

Yes, Agricola Really Is That Good

I spent this evening at CyberKev's house playing the print'n'play version of Agricola. This version is a combination of Melissa's translation and (someone I forget)'s paste-up art, all printed on cyberkev's printer. In case you think that's illegal or immoral or something, cyberkev and I both have preordered it - Zev is getting money out of us anyway! So, onto the game.

Agricola combines the good bits of Puerto Rico, Caylus and Roads and Boats, which is pretty clever because I didn't even realise Caylus HAD any good bits. The good bits of Caylus were that you could put a token on a building to do stuff. In Agricola that bit is translated to "you have a person who goes and does some work". The bad bits of Caylus were building ownership, bailiff / provost backstabbery bullshit and stupid theme about building a cathedral or castle or something that only served to interfere with the rest of your plans. Agricola has none of that crap.

I found the selection of actions to be much more like Puerto Rico (and hence San Juan) where you're just hoping that the other player won't take the action (role) you want to take. Even better, if the scum does take it, there's often a second-best alternative. In our 5 player game the number of available actions seemed to be just enough so that even if you got an action you didn't really want you didn't feel like you were completely doomed, you just had to change plan. That way I remained engaged with the game instead of wishing I was somewhere else.

The similarity with Roads and Boats is in the extremely simple yet effective economic system. In Agricola it's simple - two animals produce a baby, a field produces a fixed amount of produce like a Roads and Boats mine, more family members can do more work. The costs of things were such that I managed to usually buy the things I wanted without wasting turns saving up. The balance of the economic system was pretty sweet in the way that Puerto Rico and Power Grid's fuel system have done before.

We played the family game. As I was first player I started with some wood but was left at the mercy of the other players to show me a strategy to implement with it. I started sheep farming, built some pens and stables, got some more sheep, branched out into boars, had a baby. I felt like I hadn't achieved much but then I built a huge pen which took up most of my land. As the game closed down I tried to maximise points and put in a vege patch and a wheat field. I ended on 29 points due to having no unused fields, and the two winners only had 31. I felt like that was a creditable performance. Furthermore, the game only took 3 hours in a group where even Klunker seems to take an hour.

I'm so excited about this game that when my copy arrives I'll probably play with myself for days... My prediction is that Agricola will reach at least #2 on BGG.

A Road Runs Through It

The day after my recent not very good attempt at "A River Runs Through It", I attempted the same scenario again. I decided this time to build a good road system and ignore the raft factory so I could build a second mine. In addition I wanted to irrigate the deserts so I'd have room for a mint and a coal burner. Let's just say the plan was better than my ability to deliver it.

The plan to build a good road network required lots of rock, so I needed to build a clay pit and a stone factory. The stone factory wasn't built until Turn 7 because it clashed with donkey mating season. However the road system arrived quickly when the numerous donkeys got to the overproducing stone factory and took control.

I sacrificed my geese for a research (gold mines, as usual) managed to build two of those. With gold being produced, I needed to irrigate the two desert spaces so I could do something useful with it. However, with the expenses associated with building the wonder quickly, I couldn't irrigate until round 18. That didn't give me time to build the mint and the coal burner and use both, so I ended the game with 8 gold, no coins, and 5 wonder rows for a score of 130 points.

Since I played this game there has been a report on BGG from MarcoGreen of a score of 440 using rafts. As he also had a stock market I guess he built an oil rig for the fuel (which I guess is easy if you have rafts), and must have researched gold mines AND multiple shafts, so he had to have bred geese. Wow, that's a lot of stuff achieved in such a small space. With rafts moving 3 and carrying 3 it *sounds* like you can achieve a lot, but I never found it so easy.

Obviously I'm way off the pace. Maybe I should flog the donkeys harder. Here's my time line:

Turn 1: build woodcutter and saw mill
Turn 3: build clay pit
... built a lot of roads and bridges in here...
Turn 7: build stone factory
Turn 10: build paper mill
Turn 11: research, build gold mine
Turn 12: build gold mine
Turn 13: 2 bricks in Wonder
Turn 18: irrigation
Turn 19: build mint and coal burner

A River Runs Through It

After a break of a couple of months I pulled down Roads and Boats again for a bash. I haven't played for a couple of months and was afraid I might be out of form so I didn't attempt Lord of the Ring which I was previously studying. I decided to play a just-for-fun game, so set up "A River Runs Through It".

Of course, no solitaire session of Roads and Boats can be started without a plan, and as I started to decide what needed to go where I wondered whether maybe I wasn't taking this just-for-fun game a bit too seriously. Well, as I don't ever recall my mum saying, if a thing's worth doing it's worth doing well.



The obvious feature of the map is that there's not very much space - just seven places to build until you can get irrigation. I figured I didn't have enough room for a stock market, and didn't think too hard about a mint, so I planned to build one gold mine and score 40 for the gold, and to see what else I could achieve. I thought it might have been a better idea to only go for Wonder points, but afterwards I realised that the Wonder only has 11 rows to score from in solitaire, so my maximum possible score would be 110.

Upon starting I recognised another feature - a river runs through it! The river almost cuts the map into two parts. So bridges needed to be made. This uses a lot more rock than just roads would. For donkey-breeding reasons the first bridge had to be built in the home space. (What happened was the donkey was on his way to a hot date but had to build a bridge, so he took the rock with him and built the bridge while his date was in the powder room. True story.) Throughout the game there were never quite enough roads, but conversely everything was close so there wasn't often a need for more roads.

The other feature of the river is that it supports water transporters, i.e. rafts. I thought they'd be useful, but on reflection I'm not sure that they were. It took a lot of resources to build them, they used spaces for the (second) woodchopper and the raft factory, and I don't think I got value for money from them. It seems strange to have a river without any water transporters, but I think I would like to try again with a better road network and no rafts.

For the connoisseurs, here's my time-line:

Turn 1: build quarry and woodcutter
Turn 2: build saw mill
Turn 3: build donkey
Turn 4: build donkey
Turn 6: build second woodcutter
Turn 7: build raft factory and paper mill
Turn 8: research specialised mines
Turn 10: build mine and raft
Turn 12: build raft
Turn 14: build raft, 2 bricks in Wonder
Turn 16: build 2 bricks in Wonder
Turn 18: build clay pit and stone factory
Turn 20: build 4 bricks in Wonder

As you can see, on Turn 17 I reached the irrigation space in the Wonder and built a clay pit and a stone factory on the newly irrigated spaces. Obviously to do really well one of those spaces will need to be a mint, and so the other will need to be a coal burner. I also have a feeling that I need to produce a clay pit and a stone factory instead of a quarry so that over the course of the game I can produce enough stone to build a proper road network and to feed the Wonder so as to get to the irrigation level soon enough to build the mint in time to make a coin. I'm not sure how I'll fare with initial resources, so I'll need a better plan next time. Maybe I'll also be able to put a second gold mine in where the raft factory was.

Hmm... back to the current session. My score was 40 points for 4 gold nuggets plus 70 points for 7 rows of the Wonder, which is 110. I think I'm obsessed again!

My Geese, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

I'm still suffering the effects of a cough which deafens all mortals within 10 cubits and makes dogs howl for blocks around. It's a pain, literally. So today I tested out another Roads and Boats plan for the Lord of the Ring scenario. Here was my plan:

As you can see, I planned to not build an oil rig and build a ... oh FUCK, where's the coal burner? You'll understand my dismay on about turn 5 when I realised that I didn't have a place for the coal burner, so in my haste I placed it in the top right corner where it says wood cutter next to mine. That was a disastrous decision which cost me untold problems during the game.

This is how the game turned out. Three wonder layers for 30 points, 6 gold nuggets for 60 points, no coins and no stock bonds for 0 points - score 90. One mint in mint condition, and one stock exchange still in shrink.

As far as I can tell, my mistake was to put the paper mill and the coal burners in the wrong places. I needed to make paper before I made the mine so my donkeys were toiling in the west. When the research for a specialised mine was done they had to go all the way around the ring to get to the site for the second mine, mint, etc, which took about 5 turns. A complete disaster! The coal burner needs to be near the mint and logs, so OBVIOUSLY it should have been in the west.

There aren't many good things I can say about this experiment. I think the raft factory should be between the quarries so that the stone needed in the west starts one step closer to where it will be needed. Placing the saw mill on the home space had the benefit of turning logs into boards before I spend them to build the wonder, but I seemed to spend a great portion of the game carting boards around to no real effect. Much thinking needs to be done.

Kill the Geese and Let God Sort Them Out

I'm still sick. It's getting annoying. I just want to be healthy, or near death so people fuss over me. As it is my throat hurts and I want to rip it out but other than that I'm fine. Today's Roads and Boats project was to investigate the tip that WerBaer posted on the 'geek that "there are places where you haven't built anything". I decided to build more primary producers to see what happened. I wasn't particularly concerned if I didn't produce a stock bond as in yesterday's success - I just wanted to see what the production capacity gave me so I could formulate a better plan to use what I had.

I started with the opening that worked for me yesterday - a quarry and a wood cutter to either side of the pasture in the bottom right corner, followed by a raft factory and a saw mill outside those. I was then able to build a wood cutter next to the second quarry, and needed to start mines in the mountains. At about Turn 8 I realised I wasn't far behind yesterday's schedule.

Turn 1: build quarry and woodcutter
Turn 3: produce donkey
Turn 4: produce donkey, build saw mill
Turn 7: produce geese, build second quarry
Turn 8: produce geese, build raft factory and paper mill
Turn 9: produce raft, build second woodcutter
Turn 11: produce research, build specialised gold mine
Turn 12: produce research and raft
Turn 14: produce raft, build second specialised gold mine
Turn 15: build stock exchange and oil rig
Turn 16: build mint
Turn 17: produce coins, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder
Turn 18: produce coins, contribute 1 brick to the wonder
Turn 19: produce coins, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder
Turn 20: produce stock bond, contribute 2 bricks to the wonder

Aargh, again! One turn short of a second stock bond! But my score was 2 wonder rows, 1 stock bond, 2 coins, 0 gold for 220 points. Another PB!

Notice that opening up the extra territory didn't cost me anything. The extra donkey I was muttering about yesterday was out to good use building roads with the output of the second quarry. The output of the second wood cutter produced two of the rafts (and I only got 2 completed yesterday). I would say that the aggressive expansion was successful.

I have some more ideas. Firstly, there's one space I forgot to build anything on! By the time I realised I know I wouldn't get anything out of it. Secondly, it's a very long way from where the paper is produced to the stock exchange. If I produce the paper in that empty space I can feed the paper mill with logs from the second woodcutter. But I'll have to move the geese all the way around there. Thirdly, if I produce a charcoal burner instead of an oil well I can produce one less research and not have to breed geese at all. The charcoal burner can go on the pasture where I was formerly breeding the geese. Hmm... I need the paper before the charcoal... maybe put the charcoal burner on the left and the paper mill where I had it, but a turn or so earlier. It took a lot of mucking with rafts to get the oil rig produced and I wouldn't mind seeing it go away.

It's a shame about the geese though. I like the geese.

Money Can't Buy Donkeys Love But The Other Way Around Works Fine

I'm sick again today, so in between being hassled by real-estate agents I played another game of Roads and Boats. I've been posting my previous blog articles as session reports on boardgamegeek.com and have received some advice and had some inspiration.


Most of the errors I noted after my last playing were to do with the breeding of the geese - too many, too far away. This time I decided to use the pasture for donkey breeding, then geese breeding, and depending on the time, build a paper mill there. If the geese took too long the plan was to build the paper mill in the top right mountain hex.

I wrote down a plan of what order I wanted to build buildings in. I needed that plan so that I could remember what I was going to do next (and hence know where to start carrying stuff). The plan was: WOOD CUTTER, QUARRY, SAW MILL, RAFT FACTORY, PAPER MILL, MINE, OIL RIG, MINT, STOCK EXCHANGE. It occurred to me after contemplating Solamar's advice that primary producers are important to build as early as possible to maximise their output over the whole game. The saw mill will be able to catch up with the backlog of logs.

So here's the quick summary:
Turn 1: built wood cutter and stone factory
Turn 3: produced donkey
Turn 4: produced donkey
Turn 5: built saw mill
Turn 6: produced geese
Turn 7: built raft factory
Turn 8: produced geese and raft, built paper mill
Turn 9: produced research and raft
Turn 10: produced research
Turn 11: built (specialised gold) mine
Turn 12: built oil rig
Turn 14: built mint
Turn 15: produced coins
Turn 16: produced coins, built (specialised gold) mine
Turn 17: built stock exchange
Turn 19: produced coins
Turn 20: produced stock bond

At the end of the game I had scored: 0 wonder rows, 1 stock bond, 1 coin, 2 gold for a score of 180 points. Woohoo! In two more turns I could have turned the coin and 2 gold into another stock bond.

The problem was that it was only about turn 14 that I realised I could potentially build another mine and so get enough gold for another stock bond. I ended up building the mine in the top left when I think top centre would have been a better place.

What next? I wonder about the rafts. They're mostly only useful for building the oil rig, but without the oil rig I need a charcoal burner. But also one less research, so two fewer geese. And the burner would go in the space where the raft factory is. Hmm.

I wonder what would happen if I planned to build the second mine sooner? Would that get me the two turns I needed? I expect not. At the moment I feel that my arrangement of buildings is almost optimal. I wonder what would happen if I had one donkey less?

With the current arrangement I have one donkey permanently occupied on the wood cutter - saw mill loop, one or two transporting rock, and the rest working on the new buildings. I sometimes feel like I'm over-supplied with transporters, so maybe one donkey less would be more effective? So many options! I wonder if I'll still be sick tomorrow?

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.

Playing Roads and Boats With Myself

Well, it has been a busy couple of weeks! I've had three all-day gaming sessions, a birthday (41) and bought a house. Tonight I finally got a chance to sit down and ... did I mention Scrabblette bought me Roads and Boats for my birthday? well she did ... and play Roads and Boats. Unlike my solo Runebound escapades I decided to use the official scoring rules etc for this game, so I sat down with the "Lord of the Ring" solitaire scenario to try to beat Werner Baer's score of 360. Given my poor showing last time I played Roads and Boats I didn't expect too much.

I soon realised that I'd need to approach the game strategically - I'd have to plan ahead to get the resources I'd think I'd need. I decided to build lots of rafts as there was a lot of water in the game. Indeed, I built a raft factory on Turn 5. However, due to poor planning I didn't build a raft until Turn 10. Then another on Turn 13, andother on Turn 15, and the game finished after Turn 20. Again, I think I should have encouraged some wild donkey sex early in the game so I had more land transporters, as the rafts came too late to help very much.

I figured out (at least, according to my understanding of the rules) that I only needed to build one brick in each layer of the Wonder to get all the Wonder points, so I set that as my target. I realised towards the end of the game that if I built more bricks in the wonder then I would score for more layers, so I'll be a bit more aggressive in that respect next time.

Anyway, as the game went on I decided my goal would be to produce a coin, as a stock bond was too much to ask for. So I built a mine and a charcoal burner to get the fuel and gold to make the coin. I produced the coin on Turn 20. Woohoo! My final score was 40 for the coin, 70 for the Wonder, for a grand total of 110 points! Not as good as 360 :-(. Stupidly, I also had a gold nugget lying on the ground that I hadn't realised I needed to pick up for another 10 points. Aargh!

Once I finished my head was full of ideas on what I'd done wrong so I wrote them all down for next time. Donkey sex, as mentioned above. Contributions to the Wonder, as mentioned above - another 4 contributions would have got me another 10 points. To get a second coin (and hence maybe a stock bond) I would have needed a specialised gold mine which required research which required a paper mill. I then went through and analysed what natural resources I would need to produce a stock bond, and I think it can be done. Maybe even by me. I need to use an oil rig instead of a charcoal burner to make fuel. I definitely need to optimise my transport routes, so I drew a map of where I currently think everything should go.

I've even got a nice little love nest for the donkeys.

Roads and Boats

Good news for modern man! CyberKev has completed his project to play every game in the BGG Top 50. He's even played Pillars of the Earth which snuck in a few days ago.

The project was completed yesterday when we played Roads and Boats. To tell the truth I was a bit worried about it. With a listed playing time of four hours I was fully expecting it to take 10 or more hours like Twilight Imperium 3 did, and I was fully expecting to really really hate it. But I didn't.

The game started ingratiating itself by looking very very nice - there are lots of chits which aren't so attractive, but the transporters are nice wooden pieces and the board hexes are colourful and functional. The rules are also quite simple, and you feel straight away that you're able to make progress developing your economy. It was a good positive initial experience.

We played a 4 player game with 3 islands - Hans and I on one side of the map, a river, an island containing mountains and desert, a river, then Andrew and CyberKev on the other side. We figured before we even started that temporary alliances were the order of the day, so it was basically a case of our side of the map against their side of the map, and once we knew what we were doing it would be fair enough to do what it took to win. I was a little worried because Hans was talking about how his favourite game was Diplomacy... but I knew he was smart enough to stick with me for at least the start of the game.

So we were happy little Vegemites building our roads and factories and so on. Hans specialised in clay and bricks and I specialised in wood and research. I had some research happening so we decided to skip rafts and go straight to rowboats. In the same turn we built the rowboat factory we also built a wagon factory. We had the technology to power our soon-to-be massive economy!

What a mistake that was! I spent a few turns getting my donkeys into the wagon factory to upgrade them, during which time we were getting no wood made and no rowboats made. Hans had to build his road network before he could even get his donkeys to the factory. Meanwhile the other side of the board had a couple of dodgy rafts they were using to ferry mining equipment over to the central island.

I looked at Hans' massive clay and brick resources and realised that he could make two things - roads or walls. I didn't want walls near me, so I suggested we use our rowboats to transfer bricks over to the central island and build walls to steal the mines the other guys had built. That would have been a decent plan except the rowboats weren't ready. Furthermore, I only had 3 wagons and without any donkeys there would be no wild donkey sex happening and no more land transporters for me unless I built trucks. I decided I really needed to build rowboats fast!

I tried to get into a rhythm of transferring planks to the rowboat factory and building rowboats, but by this time the other side had transferred their gold back to their base and were minting coins. Hans and I finally got some rowboats built and sent some bricks over to the island. Hans sent a donkey as well, and we started colonising the island. However we were nearly at the end of the game, as the wonder was almost built.

Hans put on his wargamer hat and his donkey portaged his rowboat over to the far river and started rowing around picking up gold that had been carelessly left lying around. I decided that any plans I had of winning the game (and there never were particularly many) were dead and buried and that I needed to finish the game as soon as I could. Hans was particularly scared that the bad guys would start producing stocks, so we poured our efforts into the wonder to minimise the amount we lost by. Hans may have harboured some hope that he could pull out a victory by claiming lost gold, but it seemed unlikely.

In the end it was a matter of luck whether Andrew or CyberKev won. They shared the coins they'd minted and the gold they'd mined without counting very closely, and CyberKev ended up on top. Andrew second, Hans third, me dismal last. Hans and I agreed that the rowboat factory was a strategic mistake - it took too long to make the planks and get them to the factory, compared to the rafts which only required two logs. I tend to think that lack of wild donkey sex was a bad thing as well - CyberKev seemed to be able to achieve far more with his army of donkeys than my carts could.

Although I lost, I still really liked the game. I'd much prefer to play it solitaire or completely cooperatively, and with that in mind I'm thinking about the $US90 price tag. I can imagine testing myself to see how quickly I could build the wonder my myself, or build 1 stock, or whatever. It's the sort of system I like where I can see how it all works and I imagine I'd be able to pick out the inefficiencies in the system and avoid them on my next play.

It's a very good game. You should try it.