Rowan Tree and Red Thread

I'm trying out the e-mail gateway for LJ posts. If this works I can post
from my Blackberry and the whole world can benefit from my real-time
blogging. Oh yeah.

Last night we had alaimacerc over last night and played a three hander of Ra. I don't remember playing it with only three before, but it seemed to work fine for the minimum number of players. In the absence of our friend Marie, who seems to win Ra whenever she plays it, I manfully stepped into the breach and won handily with a final spread of scores 65, 60, 43. Scoring 33 points in the final round certainly helped. I'm increasingly of the view that waiting for the other players to spend their suns and trying to hold on for big wins late in each epoch is a bad strategy. alaimacerc does tend to hang onto his suns for as long as possible and I can't remember him winning the game in our circle ever.

It's more than just that one point, obviously, and I do enjoy the hard choices that Knizia has built into the game, and without also increasing the handling time or producing too much analysis paralysis. A good game that pays replays and is quick enough to get through in under an hour.