‘Canaletto’ by Gunther Cornett and 'Carcassonne' by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede - 03/01/01
Chez Spiller is the venue for tonight's post-christmas jamboree. Dicken has driven Kendall over and the topic under discussion has been the new Pokemon movie that Dicken has today taken his daughter to see along with her friend, Luke. Kendall is extremely disparaging over what he considers to be cheap and shoddy animation, waxing lyrical over the three dimensional qualities present in Disney films. Dicken reports to Kendall's dismay that the children rated it as a 9 out of 10 and that they didn't so much as mention the two dimensional animation or obvious plot line.
Spiller is modest in response to the news that he has stormed forward with a last week score of 103 in the Fantasy Football league, to take Manager of the Month for December. In addition, he has come from so far behind to overhaul Steve Slade, who had seemed a sure fire Half-Season Winner, that Steve must be creating a Spiller voodoo doll at this very moment.
Tonight's games begin with 'Canaletto', produced by Hans Im Gluck. Amidst the quick fire percussive sounds of opening beer cans the first impression is that the board is a little 'fussy', in that it is not a large board and there are a lot of tokens on it at the start.
Randomly placed 'works of art' are distributed amongst locations around a Venice-like cityscape, in groups of 3, 2 and 1. These objet d'art are bid for in a series of auctions that simultaneously decide the location of the next auction, via the movement of a cardboard gondolier. This is a neat mechanism that, allied to the process of selling the art collections as they are completed, at predetermined prices, creates an interesting strategic game.
The criticism that we all leveled at 'Canaletto' is that the final auction leads to a bout of calculation to determine who might be the winner given one or two possible end bids. This not only slows things down considerably but also replaces any spontaneous play with somewhat turgid deliberation.
However, we played 'Canaletto' twice back to back with Dicken and Spiller greatly enjoying Kendall's plummet into debt, that he referred to as somehow 'accidental' ! His bemused expression on discovering just how difficult it would be to escape from debt ( twice the amount owed ) was a treat to behold. Kendall later attempted to persuade Dicken and Spiller of the merits of going into debt, as opening up a wide range of options for the latter stages of the game - try telling that to the guy in charge of 'The Dome'.
'Canaletto' plays in around 40-45 minutes and although the theme is as flimsy as a Ragnar's protestation that he doesn't like alcohol, it is enjoyable and will definitely be played again a number of times.
While Dicken got out the pieces for 'Carcassonne', produced by Rio Grande Games, Kendall regaled us with cautionary tales of his bathroom exploits from earlier in the day. Before you all rush to complain to some Internet censorship organisation I should point out that he was referring to renovating his bathroom and not to anything untoward.
'Carcassonne' is a game, produced to aesthetically pleasing levels, where players lay tiles picked 'blind', trying to build cities, roads and monastries while also 'farming' the intervening land in order to serve the needs of the cities.
Points are scored when a player has placed a wooden 'man' on to an 'element' of the tile that he/she is currently playing and then someone completes that 'element', either a city, road or by completely surrounding a monastery with tiles.
'Knights' go on to city elements of tiles, 'Thieves' onto road elements, 'Monks' onto monastery tiles and 'Farmers' onto the open land. All 'men' except Farmers go back to the players when scoring occurs (to be re-used). Farmers stay on until the very end and the player with a majority of Farmers serving a city gets 4 points per city.
Now, the beauty of this game lies in the balancing of how and when you place the 'men' with the random type of tile that you pick to place. Kendall the 'curved road tile' King cursed his luck up and down Spiller's living room as he announced that he had picked up 8 such tiles in the game. Dicken and Spiller who actually tied the game, calmly point out that there are enough options for tile placement and that the fault lies with Kendall's decision making process. This sage snippet of wisdom calms Kendall in the manner of music soothing the savage beast and he lets it lie.
This is the third time that we have played 'Carcassonne' in a couple of weeks and we conclude that it's an excellent little game. It takes about 30-40 minutes to play and for a short game it's got a substantial feel to it. Dicken has played with his wife .......... steady ......... and Carol also enjoyed the game.
Conversation now reigns with Spiller disclosing that his wife, Christina, has a 'Red Letter Day' tomorrow, courtesy of her employers. She will have a personal shopper and £250 to spend on clothes - brilliant!. Kendall announces that if he had £250 to spend on clothes then he wouldn't have to buy clothes again for a decade. They say '.. clothes maketh the man..' don't they?
Kendall also informs us that his brother, Phil ( a fellow Ragnar ) received thirteen pairs of socks for Christmas - this must be a record - wher's Norris Mc Whirter when you need him?
Dicken and Kendall leave Spiller to clear up the debris and roll home discussing the merits of top class strikers over makeshift ones viz a viz spending budgets in Fantasy Football - sad eh?
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