Rowan Tree and Red Thread

My good lady sammywol humoured me last night and we played Race for the Galaxy. She chose the Separatist Colony as her homeworld, I plumped for Old Earth.I was dealt Galactic Federation and the Merchant League in my opening hand, and had to make the hard choice of which 6-point development to chuck in order to make some progress. I stuck with the Merchant League, thinking that Old Earth would work better with a pile of production worlds than with a stack of developments.

It was a fast game for us, over in about half an hour I think, with sammywol finishing out the 12 cards in her tableau before me. I could only manage 11 cards down. It was still close, and I scrape a win 40-38, despite New Galactic Order paying out more for sammywol than the Merchant League netted me. A last turn Consume x2 for 10 VPs for me was the decider. Good game, and one where I felt we both got our engines working even in the short time allowed.

Then we played Roll Through the Ages. It was another fast one, with sammywol knocking up 5 developments in 5 (maybe 6) turns but no monuments. I managed to grab the Great Wall, but was screwed with disasters again, and had to push my cities into famine on the last round just to get the Great Wall finished. Final score 21-16.