This week we were the pillars of the earth. Or rather we played Pillars of the Earth, a game about building a cathedral. Ok, not some much about actually building the cathedral as much as the events the go on around building the cathedral. Events such as currying favor from those in power, mining of ore and gathering of timber, poking fun at Owen when he blurts out “I’m an idiot!†Things like that.
I like games of resource gathering that you then turn around and use the resources to garner victory points, although I do seem to have a problem with that latter part—the garnering of victory points.
Mike started out with a good solid lead, using the straightforward “Gain victory points–win the game†strategy. The rest of us struggled behind him. Poor Owen could barely muster a single VP in the early stages of the game. That soon changed. Mike continued to lead the pack but the rest of us were gaining on him. Owen picked up several great Craftsmen cards that complimented each other and enabled him to generate a goodly amount of Victory Points. He soon caught and passed Mike. Ben had plots inside of plans all bound by shadowy machinations. He worked very hard for his third place result. I had my plans thwarted at every turn–if not by the other players, then by me. I lost three Victory Points simply because I misunderstood the sequence of events on the board–the board where we had already gone through those events a few times and the board where Owen kept saying, “Steve, why don’t you take that card and get three Victory Points?â€Â (I think this is where I thought in my head, “I’m an idiot.â€) Three Victory Points doesn’t sound like much, but it would have been the difference between coming in last (as I did) and coming in second.
In the end Owen rocketed ahead and won with 51 Victory Points. Mike came in second with 39. Ben had 37 points and I had 36.
Chaos Steve