Session Summary – 3 September 2008

This evening we were joined by Steve Perkins and Paul. Steve had again brought along Tribune, which Mike had expressed great interest in giving a try, but on the (at least) 2 earlier occasions the game had put in an appearance, he hadn't been available so I had suggested we waited until he was. This time Mike was here so 5 of us sat down to play it.
The game is essentially a set collection card game, with a worker placement mechanism to both collect the cards and use them once collected. The cards represent members of various different factions in Republican Rome (Senators, Gladiators, etc) and the idea is to use them to take control of these factions. Controlling a faction gives you an immediate benefit when you take control, followed by a continuing benefit received each turn.
The game is won by achieving a number of objectives out of a set of requirements that can be varied from game to game. We played to get 4 out of the 6 available, which included the collection of Laurels, Legions, gaining a permanent favour of the gods, a tribune and 25 money; I don't recall what the 6^th was. These are achieved through the use of the powers of the factions, sometimes in combination with board effects.
In this game, it was clear from a turn out that Gordon would win as he only needed to gather an extra legion from the Gladiators (I think) and he was able to guarantee this by spending big money on the chariot to protect his position, he also needed to gain some laurels, which were available at the Field of Mars. It was possible that he could have been stopped (by outbidding him for the chariot) or combining to deny him the place in the field, but it seemed to me that a player would be simply be handing an advantage to someone else, by damaging their own positions and everyone went ahead and played to maximise their own score. Another factor from my point of view was that by that time (despite it not being a long game) I was desperate to get to the end.
In conclusion I found that this was a nice looking game, but in terms of play, tedious. You are very dependent on the right cards coming up and in turns when you are late in the order you are at a severe disadvantage. In all the other worker placement games I have played, there is some kind of mechanism to change the turn order, or at least the start player and I think this mechanism is definitely lacking here.

Tribune: Primus Inter Pares 75 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	4
Mike	2	3
Steve H	3	2++
Steve Pe	4	2+
Dave D	5	2

After that Paul joined us and there was time to have a game of Nottingham, which is a game I quite enjoy, although it perhaps goes on a bit. I thought I was doing well in this one, but Gordon was in there again for the win. He seems to be in good form at the moment. Mike was beset with ambushes from every direction.

Nottingham 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Gordon	1	78
Dave D	2	62
Steve H	3	51
Paul	4	45
Steve Pe	5	35
Mike	6	33

 
There was other action going on as well as Dave C, Paul, Daniel and Ben first played Tinner's Trail followed by a game of Gheos after Paul joined us for Nottingham. They rounded out the evening with Ben and Daniel playing games of Quinamid, I've scored that as the number of games won by each.

Tinners' Trail 60 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Paul	1	107
Dave C	2	59
Daniel	3	56+
Ben	4	56
Gheos 20 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Daniel	1	73
Ben	2	60
Dave C	3	36
Quinamid 45 mins
Player	Posn.	Points
Daniel	1	6
Ben	2	3