Game Night – Wallenstein

Game night was at Jeff’s house tonight. Dan, George, Troy, Jeff and I played Wallenstein. Kieron hung out while we set up the game and played the first couple of turns. He was waiting for Leroy to show up. He never did. Kieron is learning Tichu and played through a couple of hands while he waited and then took off for home. I hate it when that happens!

It’s been a few months since we’ve played Wallenstein and we also had a new player. I played the standard 5 player set up and went over the rules with everyone. Unlike the last time we played, there were considerably fewer battles taking place this evening. The scoring was very tight for the top 2 positions (George and Jeff) with the rest of us clustered about 10 points behind. In my case, I had to put down a revolt during the winter season of the 1st year because I hadn’t stored enough grain. The country that revolted also had a palace. Needless to say, I was unable to quell the uprising and my country was devastated. Losing the country and a palace was a 3 point swing for me during the first year since I would have had the majority of palaces in that region and instead had to settle for a tie. Although I did better in the second year, I never truly recovered from that loss.

In fact Jeff lost a country and a building to a revolt at the end of the second year. The 2 points he lost from that revolt would have tied him with George. Jeff had built more palaces and would’ve won the tie-breaker. But, this evening, the farmers sided with George who walked away as the victor.

Everyone finds Wallenstein a relatively quick, enjoyable game to play. We should bring it out more often. The main drawback seems to be the set up time. With regular play, we could keep this one in the sub 2 hour range. I’m interested to see what, if anything, changes in the upcoming retheme of the game called Shogun.