Tuesday Night Interlude

As we continued to recover from illnesses and injuries in late February, we took some time on a Tuesday evening to knock out a game of Elfenland.  Elfenland is a combination of planning and luck.  Each player takes the role of a young elf who sets out to explore the cities of the kingdom via various and strange modes of transportation (giant pigs, elfcycles, magic clouds, unicorns, dragons, troll carts, and rafts).  In each of the four rounds, players mark out which roads will be traveled by different forms of transportation; then any player who wishes to use a marked route must produce the matching card or cards.  Each player has a final destination city that is kept secret from the other players.

During the first round, Bob noted from the discussion around the table and from the initial placement of the markers that all the players seemed to be headed the same direction into the kingdom (north and then west).  Bob decided he would use his one obstacle tile to its fullest potential and hinder the first marked route out of the starter city while he took a raft down the river.  This may have been an ill advised move, since his first road marker also received an obstacle tile, Greg didn't bother taking that route, and both of the ladies took the obstacle in stride by creating new branch routes from Greg and Bob's transportation tiles.  The result?  In Round 1 Bob visiting a humble 4 cities, Greg and Jennifer visited an impressive 6 cities each, and Heather visited an unprecedented 7 cities even after traveling through an obstacle!

Other than the fact that it allows me to write something interesting such as the round began to see the dispersal of the fleet, Round 2 was boring.  Greg struggled slightly with matching up cards with tokens as he explored the southern kingdom on his westward journey; Jennifer, Heather, and Bob generally traveled westward in the northern part of the kingdom and visited, on average, a standard five cities each.

In Round 3, Heather was looking invincible.  She had cleaned up most of the north and west with her great start and was poised to shoot across the kingdom to finish her cleanup of the southern and eastern areas.  Hence, Jennifer and Greg made her life more difficult with two obstacle tiles.  Bob had some good draws and managed to sweep down the western edge of the kingdom and move back toward the middle.  Greg made his push toward the northwest.  Jennifer found herself in a mess this round; she had expected some help from others in placing transportation tiles on desert roads in the middle of the kingdom and she found herself stuck when her remaining tiles were poorly suited for desert travel.

Round 4 started with Greg in the northwest looking to finish up some scattered cities there; Jennifer, Bob, and Heather all needed to finish visiting cities in the south and east, but they weren't necessarily coming at them from the same direction.  Transportation tile placement for the round immediately started to overlap to the benefit of some and the detriment of others.  No one knew exactly where each player needed to end so leftover transportation tiles were thrown here and there as possible deterrents to others.

Jennifer traveled valiantly, but was not able to recover from her desert drawbacks in Round 3.  Heather, along with being hindered by the two obstacle tiles in Round 3, was thwarted by the transportation tiles thrown down by Jennifer and Bob in the final round.  Bob managed to slide nicely across the south and then up the eastern side to his destination city, bypassing only one city along the way.  Greg managed to clean up his spiderweb of cities in the northwest, also missing only one city; however, he made a mistake regarding which city was his final destination and handed the victory to Bob.  Greg boldly demonstrated one of his favorite rules for the group:  "There are no points for stupidity."

Written by Bob