Tuesday 6th July - Santiago

Attendees at last nights session were, Natalie, Neil, Steve, Garry and myself. The game on the table, Santiago. I had played only once before and I think Steve had played a couple of times. First play for Garry, Nat and Neil. I had read through the rules on the train heading home to refresh my memory. This gave me an idea of the mechanisms of the game but no idea what the best strategy to pursue was. Anyway, after Steve had run through the rules and we had established that Neil was to be the first Water Carrier off we went. Steve grabbed the overseer on the first turn but after that he changed hands fairly regularly. A fairly large sugar cane field developed which unfortunately I did not have a presence on. I did get on a reasonable pea field with Nat though. As the game developed the bidding became fairly high for the best tiles, and quite a decent chilli field appeared which I managed to get 7 men on. The only time I had the Water Carrier was on the last turn which ensured that I could get the last tile in chilli field irrigated, worth 7 points to me. In the end the scores were quite close. Steve had a theory about this game and after a couple of ‘that wasn’t supposed to happen’ comments I think perhaps his theory needs a rethink.

Final Scores
Neil* 54
Natalie 65
Garry 64
Colin 73
Steve 65
*denotes starting player

Game Ratings (0-10)
Colin 7.5 Steve 9 Natalie 6 Neil pass Richard 7.5
Neil declined to rate and Richard who didn’t play this time but has played it several times before chipped in his rating.