Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 20, 2007 8:12:30 GMT -5
The other day went over to Talon's house to play a couple games. Unfortunatley got there late so only managed to get one in.
Players:
Pandoragreen, Talon, Talon's Wife (not a member), Talon's Friend Brian (not a memeber that I know of, but should be), and myself.
We used the dogbone side of the board.
Of the players only Pandora and I had played before. We explained the rules and offered to play until the first scoring and then restart. Once we got to the first scoring everyone got it, and was enjoying the game and doing well enough so we just kept going.
Each player pretty much started in an area of the map closest to themselves. Only three of the players really branched out from these starting postions. The main reason for wanting to write this up was due to Brian and Talon's rather unique strategies.
Both Brian and Talon stuck to mainly one large group of land and animals.
Talon had the largest group of land taking up an entire corner of the board. I think by the end it had 13 pieces of connected land, worth a whopping 26 points just for land chains, and another 13 for having a hacienda on it by the end. Talon was also able to near completely surround two of the Markets, one being totally cut off from the other players. This all worked out rather well giving him a solid third place. Playing a hacienda or two before the first scoring and hitting at least one more market would have greatly improved his score.
Brian did something I have never seen before. He was able to hit 5 markets with one Herd! By the end of the game his heard of Bulls earned him the Nickname The Beef Baron. This heard was I think 17 bulls long and had a Hacienda on it. It make Brian so many Pesos that even after building 3 haciendas and water twice he had over 60 pesos left. These 6 points are actually what had him win the game, just passing Pandora. The amazing part was the fact that he was adding bulls to this massive chain so quickly that the other players couldn't even cut him off. I started next to him and just couldn't get enough of 1 type of animal to even attempt to block his path. If he had spaced his heard out a bit more he could have probably tossed a bit more water down for even more points. He also made the new player mistake of not buiding a hacienda until after the first Scoring.
Overally Sundays game confirmed something I found early with Hacienda, it plays completely differently depending on who you play with, but is always fun. I had gotten used to playing this game with a group that pretty much stayed to themselves, with only a minor amount of screw your neighbor. Sunday's game was the complete opposite with people purposely surrounding and cutting off markets from other players. It was a very different game, but still a ton of fun. Plus I now have a goal to make a heard larger then 16
Players:
Pandoragreen, Talon, Talon's Wife (not a member), Talon's Friend Brian (not a memeber that I know of, but should be), and myself.
We used the dogbone side of the board.
Of the players only Pandora and I had played before. We explained the rules and offered to play until the first scoring and then restart. Once we got to the first scoring everyone got it, and was enjoying the game and doing well enough so we just kept going.
Each player pretty much started in an area of the map closest to themselves. Only three of the players really branched out from these starting postions. The main reason for wanting to write this up was due to Brian and Talon's rather unique strategies.
Both Brian and Talon stuck to mainly one large group of land and animals.
Talon had the largest group of land taking up an entire corner of the board. I think by the end it had 13 pieces of connected land, worth a whopping 26 points just for land chains, and another 13 for having a hacienda on it by the end. Talon was also able to near completely surround two of the Markets, one being totally cut off from the other players. This all worked out rather well giving him a solid third place. Playing a hacienda or two before the first scoring and hitting at least one more market would have greatly improved his score.
Brian did something I have never seen before. He was able to hit 5 markets with one Herd! By the end of the game his heard of Bulls earned him the Nickname The Beef Baron. This heard was I think 17 bulls long and had a Hacienda on it. It make Brian so many Pesos that even after building 3 haciendas and water twice he had over 60 pesos left. These 6 points are actually what had him win the game, just passing Pandora. The amazing part was the fact that he was adding bulls to this massive chain so quickly that the other players couldn't even cut him off. I started next to him and just couldn't get enough of 1 type of animal to even attempt to block his path. If he had spaced his heard out a bit more he could have probably tossed a bit more water down for even more points. He also made the new player mistake of not buiding a hacienda until after the first Scoring.
Overally Sundays game confirmed something I found early with Hacienda, it plays completely differently depending on who you play with, but is always fun. I had gotten used to playing this game with a group that pretty much stayed to themselves, with only a minor amount of screw your neighbor. Sunday's game was the complete opposite with people purposely surrounding and cutting off markets from other players. It was a very different game, but still a ton of fun. Plus I now have a goal to make a heard larger then 16