Yep, we are unfashionably late, but we played our games today...
Marcos/ maedac and I were even unfashionably later, but we managed to play our games before midnight which is fortunate as I was about to turn into a pumpkin...
Anyway, both were fairly epic games played via the iOS app. As a rule I'm not a huge fan of the iOS app as it cheats horrendously and never gives me the tiles I want (hopefully Jere will back me up on this). It almost never lets me start either, although it was slightly fairer this evening and at least let both Marcos and I start one game each.
Game 1: Dan (109) - Marcos (105)The first game (my away game) didn't go my way at all. Even when I was doing my best to trap everything, Marcos utilised a special ability of his to continue growing uncompleteable features to the point that they end up being worth a decent handful of points at the end of the game. So much so that I almost wanted to join back to them even after working so hard to kill them early on! In addition to this, my opponent made some great opportunities for himself with some unstoppable cloisters and fought hard for the farm. I was lucky to take it away from him with my 3rd farmer, but the battle was still being fought elsewhere in the game. With his final tile Marcos tied another smaller farm with me, but since these were points that I was counting on I suddenly became very nervous about which way the game was going to go. I knew it was going to be close, but a win by just 4 points meant I had become very nervous! This win for me could very easily have been a loss and even though I desperately wanted it, I felt bad for Marcos as he deserved it just as much as I did. Very well played sir!
Game 2: Dan (133) - Marcos (82)I got to place the first tile in the second game and was much more fortunate with the tiles I drew. Marcos was up to his old tricks again and ended up expanding a city I'd worked so hard to kill until it was eventually worth 10 points, but it had capacity to grow beyond even this until I eventually shut it down in a second place too! The outcome of this game was much more heavily influenced by the farms as the main farm where I outnumbered my opponent 3 - 1 was worth 27 points thanks to a few late cities that got added to it. I also had another 2 farmers on a 12-point farm which helped to bring my total up.
I do have some screenshots of the final scores, but they're on my iPad and I haven't worked out how to get them off yet. I guess I can probably email them to myself and then attach via laptop? I couldn't work out how to get a screenshot of the final landscape either, but this doesn't necessarily surprise because, like I said, the iOS app is evil and it hates me.
Many thanks for the games Marcos. I wish you the best of luck for the rest of the competition...