14th November - Leonardo Da Vinci

So tonight Garry chose Leonardo Da Vinci, published by Da Vinci/Mayfair Games. I had read the rules twice during the day and I must admit the first read it didn't make much sense, anyway it became clearer as Garry started to explain the rules and set up the board. It took us nearly an hour to go through the rulebook, we decided to go straight into the advanced player setup with equal apprentices, florins and 3 favours each.



Each of us took a different mix of favours to start and I took 4 components, my other lab and an extra apprentice. It started to go downhill after that really, for me that is. I started to research an invention and when I had the required weeks research I declared I had finished and turned over the required components only to find I had put wood under the lab when I needed bricks!!! Doh! That set me back quite a bit as I was cash strapped for my next few turns. Steve was going down the ‘get as many apprentices as quickly as possible’ route. The mechanical men were quite popular quickly being taken. To be perfectly honest I played a pretty awful game and would definitly like to play again just to try do better. Richard realised near the end of the game that florins were in fact VPs and had been using them quite liberally, Garry had invented a number of nice contraptions and Steve had all 9 apprentices and some good inventions too. I on the other hand had not invented a single thing, only getting the lower value because everybody was inventing faster than me and picking the same ones as me.



Obviously this was only a learning game (I kept telling myself)), it seems to me that you have to be aware that the two research turns approach quite quickly and you need to prepare your components to take advantage of that, I of course did not do that...... Together with the rules explanation our game took nearly 3 hours, but I am sure that will come down a lot with the next play. The game does have some Caylus like mechanics and Steve did say he preferred it to Caylus.

Final Scores (bonuses for different inventions)
Garry 54 (8), Steve 47 (0), Richard 32 (8), Colin 20 (0)