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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.
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.
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Of all the games I own, I would put Ra (and perhaps one or two others) solidly in that list of "games I don't play nearly enough because, well, they rock".
I think probably Tahuantinsuyu also gets slotted in that list, although further down the list. I still need to find me a sheet of perspex or something that I can use to place over the board before playing it again. I don't think I'd really want to draw right on the map...
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I agree that Knizia did a good job on balancing play for 3, 4 or 5 players. It's also true that the different tiles are differently valued in the game depending on the number of players. Sunday night's game had at least 3, maybe 4, sets of 4 monuments of a kind. I can't remember ever seeing that in a 5 player game.
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I can't think of any other game that's quite so good with different numbers of players, Puerto Rico plays nicely with 3-5 players, but with more players is distinctly more sensitive to differences in experience between the players affecting the play.
All other things being equal, though, I'll purchase a 3-5 player game over a 3-4 player one, even if we don't always have 5 players on a game night. I suppose that given our groups less frequent plays and shorter hours, we should be picking games that are shorter (definitely less than 2 hours) and that give that feeling of everyone being involved right up to the end.
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::B::
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At least "Fearsome Floors" had a recent chance to breathe out of the box.
::B::
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