|
'Serenissima' by Dominique Ehrhard and Duccio Vitale - 08/09/00
Dicken has almost perfected the barely audible knock on the door. Its the sort of knock that evokes reactions like, "Was that a knock on the door that I just heard?". The technique is quickly developed if you have children of a certain age and with a pre-disposition to ruining pleasant social activities that take place in the evening. Paul and Liz are back in circulation and arrive shortly. They knock, and then, inexplicably, ring the door bell. They have no children as yet. Kendall and Dicken are already struggling to recall the game set-up. "10 sailors, 2 ships, 2000 ducats", says Paul as he removes his anorak. Paul stills plays 6th Edition Ancients.
Refreshments at games evenings can prove a diversion in themselves. The time when Dicken provided a large bag of prawn cocktail crisps, two months past their sell buy date is not easily forgotten. Today however, he has arrived bearing gifts - a bottle of beer (Worthington's White Shield) for each player. How very kind. Spiller is away celebrating his fifth wedding anniversary in Venice. Fitting then - but purely by accident - this evening's game should be 'Serenissima' ; trading and high dudgeon in the golden age of Venice. Kendall bought the game for Phil as a Christmas present a couple of years ago, but as Phil found it difficult to get Roger and co. enthused, it tends to be on permanent lone to Kendall in the South. It gets played on a fairly regular basis, which also suits Kendall as he has an enviable record of success at this one.
Paul is rejoicing in scraping a 2.2 for his most recent set of exams and speaks with relish about the drubbing his lecturers will receive for their pitiful teaching. He can't wait to get back. This may be his last social game until the New Year; until then he will have to content himself with long lonely hours of 'Ironsides' - some sort of nautical Second World War computer nonsense.Back to this evening's nautical niceties. When Phil first got the game he found it difficult to remember the colour coding for the different commodities; wood (brown), iron (grey), wine (red) etc. etc. Is that difficult? Anyway, he decided to write abbreviations on the board in black pen. For example; all the yellow circles have 'Go' written on them, which reminds him that this is Gold. Do other people do this sort of thing? What possesses someone to graffiti on a very pleasant game board just so they can be reminded that gold is yellow? It doesn't even matter. You could quite happily play the game collecting yellow 'bits', red bits, black bits etc. Tiles are drawn; Liz will play Genoa, Dicken gets Valencia, Kendall is the Doge and Paul is the evil Turk. This means that Dicken will spend the evening mugging Liz, whilst Paul and Kendall pretend to negotiate trade agreements.
Serenissima usually starts with a bang and a whimper. Someone sails a slow boat laden with goodies to a cosy port, only to find that a man-of-war steams in, butchers the crew and makes off with the loot. This is desperate news for the idiot salesman, but also tends to ham-string the boot-boy. Perhaps as a consequence, tonight's game sees the Mediterranean calm as a mill-pond for the first three turns. Things are getting so peaceful that Kendall sees fit to remind everyone of a House Rule: No more than 5 sailors to guard a port. If you don't play this then players never build forts, preferring to cram ever more sailors on-shore. Anyone attacking the port is mercilessly blown out of the water. It may be this timely reminder that prompts Dicken to seize Algier from Liz. "Too close to my home port" ; nobody believes him. Liz has had enough. She feels all at sea with the game. She wants to go home - actually to Dicken's home to have a chat with Carol. Dicken is shame-faced. Kendall remarks that she is playing no worse than Spiller would have - this fails to cheer her. Paul suggests ideas for her next move which, as usually happens with husband and wife type things, jump-starts Liz into doing something entirely different. This proves to be a continuation of her play so far - comfort shopping in the Western Med. Time for some action.
Kendall breaks open the White Shield, fills his ships with lusty sailors and heads off to St Jean d'Acre to have a few words with some Turkish milliners. Having bid the princely sum of 100 ducats (everyone else is being very tight-fisted) his turn follows Paul's, so there's little Paul can do to stop Kendall's assault. Besides which Kendall is clearly not winning. Dicken controls most of the ports in the Western Med, whilst Paul dominates the East. Paul suggests a cessation of hostilities in the East in order to concentrate forces on Dicken in the West. It's unlikely to come to anything, but it suits both parties to fain friendship. The four player game is only eight turns long, but a lot can happen in that time. This time the game goes into another lull.
Kendall has been given some Italian Tarralini by Franco, an Italian wine importer who happened to buy Sandi Kendall's chest freezer earlier in the evening. Spooky. The Tarralini looks like polystyrene packing extrudes, and tastes pretty similar. Its now patently obvious that Kendall is trying to fill the Venetian store-house, though this is generally agreed to be nigh on impossible. He is still short of Spice which are monopolised by Paul. Kendall sails into Alexandria whilst Paul goes to see a man about a dog. Returning, Paul divulges that he always feels paranoid when out of the room. Kendall is charmingly sympathetic and Paul sells him Spice for 100 ducats (he could have asked for 1000). Liz is unsure of her next move. Kendall and Paul urge her to sack Valencia, whilst Dicken suggests less provocative ideas. Liz takes up Dickens' offer of selling her Gold in Tunis. Dicken promptly sacks two of Liz's ports and the gloves are finally off. Liz and Paul hack into Dicken's empire, whilst Kendall sneaks his gains into Venice.
Going last in the final turn is usually an advantage, but no-one seems keen to spend ducats bidding for it. Kendall bids 100 ducats (again!) and can sit back and pick off the points as he wishes. Final scores Kendall 35 (including 10 points for a full capital), Liz 31 (who said she was only here for the beer), Paul 29, Dicken 25. Kendall also won the manager of the month for the fantasy cricket - but no-one's talking about that either.
Go to top of page
|
