Harrowed Halls

 

This week was all about Kachina. Yes, I know we’ve played this game a lot recently, but we like it! And Owen hadn’t gotten to play it yet. As we will see, it didn’t take Owen long to catch on—one of the great things about this game.

In our first game, Mike was on fire; great strategy, all the right tiles when he needed them, and he was playing against two blind guys and a newbie. At least that’s how it seemed to me. Only Owen, the newbie, showed any sign of being on Mike’s level.  So while those two titans battled it out, Ben and I struggled to stay in the game. Mike eventual won. Yeah. Go Mike.

In our second game, some things changed and some things remained the same. I was still blind, but Ben was beginning to see the light. Mike was still playing very well, but Owen was warming up to the game and teaching us some new tricks. (He taught us some new ones in the first game too.) In the end it was apparent that the game hated me. I was so far in last place I couldn’t even see the tail lights from the guy ahead of me. Owen on the other hand won the game from Mike. Mike can tell me if I have this wrong (and he will) but I think Ben did much better in this second game, even being a contender for first a few times.

A couple of things we noticed going from a 3-player game to a 4-player game. One is that you get a lot less turns. Sure, that should be obvious, but it changes the dynamics of the game so players (Mike, Ben, & Owen) spend hours contemplating their turns. (Seeing how poorly I did, maybe I should have done a little more contemplating.) Secondly, the tiles we laid out seemed more condensed than in previous games. This may also be because we are more astute at taking advantage of those places where the rows or columns are close to each other.  Yeah, that’s it—we’re more astute.

No matter how you slice it, we really like this game.

Chaos Steve