In the Shadow of the Emperor (1)

This game has been on the shelf since February 22 without being played. How do I know that it has been there since then? Because HL had it rush delivered to our home so that it would make it on time for HB's birthday. Anyway, HB and HL finally had a chance to give this game a go. Disclaimer: most game forums say this game gets kinda broken without atleast a 3rd player, but HB and HL added some variants to make it work. First, we gave the non emperor an additional thaler and a younger starting elector. Second, we made selling daughters to the convent 2 thalers instead of 1. We also made each county more crowded by taking away available spots. HB thought the game was fair, but HL thought the starting emperor was still more powerful. There's only one way to find out. Play a bunch more times.. Hopefully we'll be able to do that.

HL started as emperor and HB decided to become the elector with the ability to get another 15 year old noble. HB also gained control of the 2 emperor vote county while HL positioned herself to get the 2 thaler county. Up at the churches, both players kinda split influence. HL focused on making sure she could keep the emperor seat and +2 thaler seat and since HB is usually not very confrontational, he allowed her to do so by going for other things. HL made some very shrewd decisions from her position of power often attacking with the doctor. HB quickly realized that never being the emperor made things very difficult especially since imperial cities only increased as the game goes by, and the tie breaker advantage is huge. By the time he realized this it was too late and HL was able to easily overtake HB's early VP lead by the 4th round when HL controlled 4 out of the 5 counties and the emperor. By the end of the game, HB was able to take back one county, but HL built an insurmoutable lead and won 24 -19.

Board Game Packed Weekend

Lots of games for HL and HB this long memorial day weekend. I'm not going to recap most of the games we played, but we had two runs of one of our 1v1 faves. Jambo. HB won both.



One simple playthrough (no passengers) of Ticket to Ride Marklin  (HL and HB got rocked by a couple of our friends, one who just learned the game!)



2 games of 7 Wonders (no leaders) where HL and HB finished middle of the pack in both games. (one 6 player, and one 7 player)



1 game of citadels - 4 players - HL and HB finished 1st and 2nd respectively. We used the 9 character variant so we were able to still play 2 characters each.

Citadels (1)

Since it’s been a while, HB and HL decided to play a game that we haven’t played in a while, Citadels, our favorite psyke out game. Like most people, we bought the version that came with the expansion so we have both sets of characters and plenty of purple buildings. We normally shuffle about half of the purple buildings (chosen at random) into the regular deck of buildings while also choosing the characters at random. This game we used the Witch, Tax Collector, Magician, King, Abbot, Merchant, Architect, Diplomat, and Queen.

The game was pretty even throughout. HL jumped out to a small lead by picking the Queen correctly twice, and extended her lead with a nice Witch play in the middle of the game to steal the architect when HB psyked himself out by not choosing the King. HB used a decent 2 for 3 trade with the Magician once, and also had a nice late game Witch play to steal the King. Both players failed miserably at trying to steal gold with the Tax Collector and Abbot. The Diplomat’s power was never used although HL used the red building bonus a couple times, and as always the merchant and architect were strong. Neither player obtained any really useful purple buildings worth mentioning. In the end, HL was able to build her 8^th building first, but HB was able to finish as well later in the last round. That along with the all building types bonus proved to be the difference as HL topped HB 33(26+7) to 29(27+2).

Notre Dame (2)

Notre Dame fits perfectly into the time it takes to cook the rice for dinner. Onto the recap:

 HB was thinking Cubes and Coins early on. HL was thinking Coins and Rats. After the first round, HL looked to be in great position: She was low on the rat counter, had plenty of money, and controlled ND. HB was also in decent position with lots and lots of cubes that set him up for a late game push. HL continued to roll in the 2nd round, picking up 7 points for buying up the helper who gives points for being low on the rat counter. HB tried to fight the rats a little, but eventually went away from it, taking the penalty for the last 4 turns of the game. Both players moved the carts a little. HB ended with 4 messages, HL had 3. HB made a big push in round 3 with 8 cubes on the cloister house and also capitalizing when HL gave him her trusted friend in round 3. HL was safe from the rats, still controlled most of ND, but didn't really have good point engine for late game. In the end, HB came from behind and won 67 -  54.