We started off the night (well, day really) with the new Ragnar Brothers game about monks working in a Monastery to complete their prayer. The background was never explained to me, so I have no idea why three different factions of monks are competing to write their special prayer. This game is almost at the other end of the spectrum of rules cohesiveness as Antiquity. The special cases and different phases did not mesh at all.
It is hard to tell after one playing, but, with three players, it seems easy to get hosed. Initially, Ed was start player. He would move onto a spot needing four monks to complete and put two monks there. I would then fill it up leaving Susan all alone with not much to do. This happened a number of times. There is also a feedback mechanism to this game where you can buy more monks to bring in more money. Well, if you didn’t get enough money in the beginning of the game, you are now behind the curve to others who were able to afford those monks.
Another aspect to denying players is to not help them complete a tile. There were situations when Ed places some monks on a tile, I could help him complete it, but I see that if I choose not to, then there is no way that Susan can work with Ed (even if she wanted to). I can get as much money elsewhere and deny Ed money.
And, just to pour salt on the loser’s wounds, once someone completes their prayer, they can now penalize other people’s prayers for a cheaper value than it would cost that person to place it themselves.
We drove to Chuy’s for some Tichu and Tex-Mex thinking that it would not be that crowded yet. Boy, were we wrong. I should have known better since it was a holiday tomorrow and that tonight would be a virtual Friday. But we were seated quickly.
| GT/T | Team #1 | GT/T | GT/T | Team #2 | GT/T |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MarkH & Ed | DougG & Susan | ||||
| 45 |
-45
|
T- | |||
| T- |
10
|
-10 | |||
| T+ |
170
|
30 | |||
|
260
|
40 | ||||
| 460 | GT- | -160 |
We finished out the night with another Ragnar Brothers game. It is a lighter Age of Steam — although not quicker than AoS. We played with the second revision of the board (I don’t really recall the first version being that broken). I was able to jump out to a huge lead in the beginning of the game and stay there. There were a lot of delivery cubes on my tracks and not that many on other people’s tracks.