Circle the game camels

This past Thursday I was joined by Jim, Colin and John and we played two games of Through the Desert followed by our constant closer, Carcassonne.

Colin hadn't played Through the Desert before and was still figuring it out. I ended up striking early and collecting a lot of high point water holes and making many oases connections. John and Jim both cordoned off a 10+ space area with one of their caravans. Fortunately I was able to get a couple small areas and longest in two of the colors and ended up with 84 points, just edging out John and Jim who tied at 81. Colin ended with 40 something.

The second game Colin had obviously learned what he had to and made a couple plays that blocked Jim and my caravans from getting to some oases. He also did a better job at ensuring he got to his own oasis and carving out a little area for himself. This time I was relying more on blocking of territory than connecting to oases. This worked well except that I realized too late that John was challenging me for the longest caravan in one of the two that I could actually do something with. When the dust settled we had each marked off a good sized area and each had at least one longest caravan. Jim got the extra one which proved the difference as he won with 82. Colin and John tied at 81 and I ended up with 79.

Carcassonne was an odd game. We generally have a much better farming area in the games we play, but because of an early profusion of roads, creation of larger cities and a mean play by Jim the meadow stayed fractured. John had started a city that I thought I'd try a quick take over of and put my large meeple (Gurn) into. John made it so he could tie a second one of his meeples in. Jim then played a tile that made it impossible for us to connect the two parts of the city and ever close them so Gurn and two of John's pieces were done for the game and we hadn't even played a third of the tiles. John and I went on a partnering frenzy after that completing a cathedral-ified city plus some other smaller ones a couple roads (including one we took over from Jim that had an inn on it). Jim was still doing well for him self throughout this. Colin unfortunately drew all but one or two of the monasteries and they came at a time when he would've preferred to try horning in on the cities being built. In the end Colin did manage to get 40 points from farming, but the rest of us had already made our points and I succeeded in edging out Jim with John just ahead of Colin.