Tuesday 13th July - Alhambra

Todays game is Alhambra, the theme is building a palace around your central fountain. The game is deck driven and the scoring cards are shuffled into the deck and appear at random intervals during game. This gives you three scoring phases, the two cards and end game. Seating arrangement tonight is Neil/Steve/Colin/Richard/Natalie. Not sure if this has any significance like Puerto Rico but I thought I would mention it. We managed to get 2 games in, playing time just over 60 mins each. Anyway on to the games.

GAME 1
1st Scoring - Neil ?, *Steve ?, Colin 0, Richard 0, Natalie ?. (*Starting player)
Unfortunately I forgot to note the scores. Doh! All I know is that Richard and I scored zero points in this phase.
The scoring card came out really early on and both Richard and I had’nt built any buildings at all.

2nd Scoring - Neil 25, Steve 25, Colin 19, Richard 23, *Natalie 43.
Wow, Natalie with a huge advantage at this point. Richard had a handful of cards and complained that Natalie was able, with only 2 or 3 cards to buy her buildings for the exact amount. The large wall Natalie was able to score was evidence of this lucky, er, sorry skilful play.

Final Scoring - Neil 64, Steve 83, Colin 58, Richard 77, Natalie 92.
After the second scoring buildings were steadily bought by all players, well except by me, couldn’t seem to get the colours/shapes I needed. This may have been because after the game Steve informed me that he was noting what colour of cards I was taking and endeavouring to take the same so he could buy the tiles before me. Sneaky I say. A convincing win for Natalie. The longest wall/road longest anything tactic pays off for Natalie yet again.

GAME 2
1st Scoring - Neil 11, Steve 10, Colin 5, Richard 0, *Natalie 12. (*Starting player)
As you can see Richard and I still got off to a shaky start. I at least had a couple of buildings. Natalie again had a good wall. With some excellent exact purchases again.

2nd Scoring - Neil 30, Steve 46, Colin 30, Richard 29, Natalie 30.
Scores fairly even here except for Steve who has pulled out a healthy lead. Richard made a large leap from 0 to hero, no sorry, 29 points actually.

Final Scoring - Neil 76, Steve 93, Colin 76, Richard 78, Natalie 82.
Well, as you can see Steve made exactly 10 more points than he did in the first game for the win and Natalie made exactly 10 points less than the first game to come second. Steve had the good fortune to be holding most money in the right colour to get the last purple building putting him in first in that colour garnering him a large 21 points and putting me into second place in that colour. Doh!

Ratings for Alhambra
Colin 6, Steve 6, Neil pass, Natalie 8.5, Richard ?
Neil is not fond of numerical rating systems and declined to rate.