A long PBEM game of Britannia is finally over. The first Roman assault was launched 29.11.2001 and today, I finally published the last results on the game website.
Sure, it was insane. We had too long delays while we were playing; I participated in the 2001 World E-mail Championship and those games had GMs to keep up the pace and they were over in what, three months. But still, it was a good game. Our Green was literally metaphorically green and hadn’t played before. He scored 34 points. Rest of us were more experienced and thus the race was tight: 102.5 — 114.5 — 117. I played Red and came second. If I had killed William the Conqueror or held one more area in the end of the game, I would’ve won. Too bad. Well, each of us could’ve won in the beginning of turn 15. Purple had very little success with the Norwegians. Fortunately, Blue wasn’t able to kill Harold, so my final leader survived to tell the story.
Fun game, but tighter turns would’ve made it better…
One response to “Rule Britannia!”
We had a nice game of Britannia a while back during the christmas vacations. Our group isn’t an expert in it, but it still was a very tight game. I did pretty good with the Romans in the beginning, but still couldn’t reach the high point areas up in the north (and I think it wouldn’t be possible without a direct strike through the midlands and leaving all the other areas in the south intact).
Our green player was a tad bored most of the game and he really didn’t have many chances during the game to shine. There’s all kinds of interesting aspects of the early game that affect it in the later part.
Still, I somewhat like Britannia, but the hours versus actual playtime is a bit on the bad side. Especially in the end game it might take some time for each player to make his move.
Played our first game of Tikal on wednesday and it was fun and intense. It first seemed odd that everyone can score from the same temple during the scoring round, but the guy who goes first in the scoring sets the bar in amount of explorers and everyone scoring after that needs to top it. So it’s not that simple after all. I love the board and the way the score is marked.
Bought Alcatraz from a local store during the vacations too, we needed something that was good for two players as well as for more and it was definetly exciting. Still, as a two player game, it reminded me of light-version of chess since you can think about the moves for a long time. I think more players would bring it more chaos and fun (well, it’s fun with two players also, but our games at least were pretty silent and serious :D).
I’m waiting for the El Grande re-issue to come out sometime during this year. Not sure if I’ll get it, but I’m interested at least. The expansions seem nice.
Also, there’s been too many occasions already when there’s been me and some friend of mine and we needed something to kill time with. I’m definetly thinking about carrying LOTR: Confrontation with me everywhere I go now on. Our games have gone pretty 50/50 with no side being a clear winner in the total of games we’ve played.
Got War! Age of Imperialism back from a friend of mine and we’ll just have to see when we can play that again. It needs some rule clarifications and possible house rules, but I like it for some reason 🙂