Fed to the Crocodiles

We had a good session at BookRealm last night - Shingo visited all the way from Israel, and we played 3 different games that I really like. We started with China which I have owned for about a week. After my disastrous attempt to win using advisors at ConVic, I decided to try to win using houses. Of course, I was soundly beaten by CyberKev who used the advisor strategy. One day I will figure that game out.

Then Walter arrived and RealmKeeper sat out while the rest of us played Cleopatra. We played this last week and had a good time, so this week we knew what we were doing a bit better. There wasn't a lot of corruption being taken - people seemed to be more cautious about the number of cards they took into their hands. I had a plan to spend up big and get enough talents to be contending for the win, then try to minimise my corruption intake towards the end of the game. However once I had 40-something talents the game ended very quickly anyway. I had 11 corruption and 54 talents (including unused merchants). Sadly I had the most corruption, being even nastier than Walter who had 10. I was fed to the crocodiles, and CyberKev won the game with 41 talents. If I hadn't had 2 tainted wood cards in my hand at the end of the game, I would have won by a long way. Bugger.

We closed up with Bazaar. I was tired and couldn't focus, I don't know what other people's excuses were. Somehow I managed to win despite being unable to formulate the devious plans I remember making last time I played.

Overall, an excellent night's gaming. I'd happily play all of those games again tonight.