Alea Treasures #4: The Princes of Florence

Some time ago, an official expansion for The Princes of Florence appeared called The Princess and the Muse. It was released as a freebie PDF which you can still download from BGG. Not surprisingly, when the Treasure Chest appeared, it included this expansion in a better produced version.

I finally got a chance to play it a few weeks ago, and thus I can now offer up my fourth look at the Alea Expansions found in the Anniversary Treasure Chest.

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The Tao of Board Gaming III

The Tao of Board GamingKoans I-III can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming I (December, 2009). Koans IV-VI can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming II (April, 2010).

VII. The Tao Master Plays a Game

One day the Tao master joined his students in their game playing.

Though the students respected the master in all matters of Taoism, they thought themselves more proficient upon the playing field of games, and thus expected to better him here. And, if they were not entirely certain of their own gaming mastery, they were certain that their master’s kind and peaceful nature would keep him from truly seizing the advantage, as is required by a game winner.

So they played Dominion and were surprised when their master beset them with Curses and Ruins. They played Galaxy Trucker and were surprised when their master exactly equalled the blaster gun strength of pirates solely so that he could send them back at his students. They played Aeroplanes and were surprised when their master stomped their older airports to gain majorities in Europe, Africa, and the East alike. In all these games, their master was thoughtful but aggressive — and he won them all. Handily.

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Alea Treasures #3: Puerto Rico

Puerto RicoTo date, I’ve written about the Treasure Chest expansions for three of the Alea games: Louis XIV and San Juan (way back in 2010, when the Chest was a bit fresher) and Witch’s Brew (back in June).

I’ve since managed to get Puerto Rico back to the table, and with it the nobles expansion contained in the Treasure Chest. As such, I’m now ready to talk about what I think Treasure Chest adds to the game that was the one-time reigning Euro Champ.

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New to Me: Summer, 2012

Here’s my newest quarterly listing of games I’ve played recently that I’d never played before. As usual, this list tends to focus on brand-new games, but on occasion the odd older game shows up that I just hadn’t tried out before. This time around there was a little glut of games in the 2007-2008 range.

I’m happy to have seen a couple of terrific releases (Village and Small World: Realms) which made the Summer a great time to be gaming. Sadly, there were also two total failures in D-Day Dice and (very belatedly) World War 5.

Everything is arranged in approximate ranking of personal like, from most to least.

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