Bank Holiday Empires

2 games of The Rivals For Catan at the weekend, using the Princes of Catan variant at the end of the rulebook. In this all 3 expansions are in play (with selected cards removed) and just 1 each of University, Hedge Tavern and Merchant's Guild. Initial setup was a little fiddly, removing expansion cards with crescent moons on them, but retaining event cards with crescent moons. A bit odd. Anyway it played out well, plenty of options for pathway to victory. The first game was rather one sided, as I suddenly accelerated away, but the second was extremely close. Raphael won 13-12 with me set to win on my next turn. I do like the refinements in this version, it all is a lot smoother and just seems to hang together well. Since I had rated the previous version a 10 I guess that means I would have to give this an 11.

In between these 2 I exhumed my copy of Through the Ages, which I got in a Maths Trade a long while ago. Raphael and I had a long and muddlesome game when I first obtained it and it was then confined to the game shelf along with a memory of considerable confusion and catastrophic failure (on both our parts) to get our economy working. This time it didn't seem anywhere as intimidating or fiddly and although we only played the Simple game, we really enjoyed it, I look forward to trying the Advanced game soon, while the memory is clear!