Hey! That Tikals!

When I arrived at my game group last night, my copy of Last Night on Earth that someone had borrowed was sat on the table and I got all excited about playing again. But we ended up playing Tikal instead which was new to three out of the four people there. When the owner started explaining the rules, I was gripped by a sudden desire to not play this game at any cost and thought about pleading a sudden attack of diarrhea or perhaps just committing suicide to get out of playing.  But I figured that would be rude, so I toughed in out instead.

And in fairness the game was better than I was expecting from the sound of the rules. The end was particularly interesting. My good friend Graham won with 109 points, I came second with 108 and the game owner came third with 107! This always happens when I play games against Graham - he always wins, and I always come second.  I keep thinking I should probably ditch him and make friends with some high-school dropout that I could actually beat at games instead, but I get to laugh at his hairstyle every time I see him, so that's some recompense at least.

Graham also has an irritating habit of responding to anyone who says "you'll never do that" by doing it, usually right away. It's particularly acute in games and, true to form, as soon as someone said that it must be difficult to build and keep pyramids over about eight high and the game owner had agreed, Graham built a ten pyramid over the next couple of turns, and still got to keep it. 

See? See what a beast he is?

Anyway, I digress. I'm not sure what to make of Tikal. It seemed like it might have some fun game elements but the analysis paralysis problem with this isn't overstated - simple actions can easily take, oooh, forever.  That spoiled it rather for me in spite of the fact it has most of the elements that I usually look for in a good Euro - random draw, unpredictability, variety and some player interaction. However considering the game afterward I was struck by the fact that a lot of the game we played, at least, was determined by tile draw. If you get the chance to draw a big temple and can position it in such a manner that no-one but you can get there and guard it in the same turn it's a huge boon.  I could be wrong about this - it seems to have a lot of fans amongst the heavy analysis brigade at least - but I don't think it's a co-incidence that of the top two players one drew most of the best temples and the other (me) drew two out of the three volcanoes and so got to score first and an extra 20 AP over everyone else.

But you know what really bites? During the second scoring round I missed a chance to trade a treasure for an extra 2 points I could have had. I spotted it just after I'd finished the turn and so, naturally, asked if I could do a takeback and Graham said no. In fairness this is how we usually play - a bit like "touch move" in chess, once you've passed on the turn there's no going back. But after loosing by a single point, it grates. Badly. See what a beast the man is?