Second Place Two Times

Two more games of PR with Nadine and Rachel - today was Shavuot (Pentecost to you English bible readers), which is a main Jewish holiday (along with Passover and Sukkot (otherwise known as Tabernacles)).

We played with some different variant buildings the first game:

Farmer's House (1/1 take one of the remaining unselected plantations, like a poor man's Hacienda. Actually, if there are no plantations left, because two people have the building, it functions like Hacienda after the plantation pick.)

Bazaar (2/1, during mayor, exchange gp/vp/barrel for colonist; during craftsman, exchange gp/vp/colonist for barrel; during trader, exchange vp/colonist/barrel for gp)

Exchange House (5/2, end of trader phase, swap one of your barrels for one in trading house.)

Specialty Factory (7/3, +1 GP for each barrel of one type that you produce - can't be corn.)

And others that have mostly been mentioned before.

Rachel took Farmer's House and did quite well with it. She didn't only get indigos and junk, but several times corn, which showed up in bushels. She was producing 5 or 6 corn by game end.

I took an early Specialty Factory, which gave me 3 GP most of the game for indigo, and I didn't have to produce four goods to get it, only three indigo. (I strengthened this building because I never play with Aqueduct anymore.)

Then I realized something cool with Bazaar and Specialty Factory - I could exchange a gp to get an extra good, and then get the gp back for producing an extra good. Rachel and Nadine both nixed it, unfairly in my opinion, simply because I thought of it midgame. Instead I took Exchange House, which Rachel and I both knew was fairly powerful, but I used it to its full extent. Nadine also claimed that the building is unfair. My intent was to make a more powerful Office, which is how it functions, but what it does is give you an unlimited supply of high priced trading goods, which I agree is a bit much. (It also helps with shipping in late game)

Still, Rachel ended up winning with her vast shipping. 57 - 53 - 49 (Nadine).

Nadine then insisted we play another game with regular buildings (I asked to play another game, she insisted on regular buildings.)

In this one, I took the early Small Market as second position, but then ended up with several indigos, so I bought a Lg indigo building. I couldn't get my hands on a trade good, so I got Lg Market. LM and corn and indigo is great, but not when you have to wait a long time for the TH to empty, so I got coffee, too, and ended up with a coffee monopoly when Rachel and Nadine both got Harbors. At one point I took Trader with 2 gold and traded coffee, for a net gain of 10 GP. Nadine had tobacco monopoly, factory, guild hall, and ended in first place on the tie (*sigh* boring usual strategy with boring buildings). I had second place on the tie with three large buildings. Rachel had some timing problems during the game, and couldn't get a big building.

Yehuda