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So if I told you we were going to play a game where you build post office routes across Bavaria, how exited would you be? Probably pretty excited because you would know that this had to be the game, Thurn & Taxis! (A little history…) Throughout the course of the 16th century, the Taxis dynasty was entrusted as the imperial courier of the Holy Roman Empire and in the Spanish Netherlands, Spain, and Burgundy. The Thurn-und-Taxis-Post was operated by the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis between 1806 and 1867. So now you know why a post office game in Bavaria (Germany) is called Thurn & Taxis.

This was an old favorite of ours, but we hadn’t played it in a long time. We also have a couple of the expansions for the game, but decided to stick with the basic game this time. In Thurn & Taxis you gain victory points by claiming postal routes. The VPs could be for special cities, or because of the length of your route, or because of the area you now deliver too. One interesting dynamic about route claiming is that you rarely get to claim every city along your route. This is because you can only claim one city in each region along the route or all cities in a single region along the route. So you must plan, as best you can, to get the most cities claimed during your turn.

Everyone played a good game, but for most of the time the luck of the cards was with Ben. He seemed to be able to score long routes with many cities all of the time. Everyone else did their best to keep up with him. I realized midway through the game that my strategy was doomed to failure—as evident by my victory point placement. Ben quickly got down to his last five city tokens. (You use the city tokens to mark the cities along your routes.) We thought the game would be over soon, but quickly discovered that Ben was having a hard time getting routes in cities he didn’t already have routes through. This gave the rest of us time to catch up.

On what would be the next to last round of the game, Own had a choice to make. He could take a huge chance for a huge reward or play it safe and get a lessor reward. The ever safe Owen chose the latter. This caused him to tie for second with Mike at 26 points. Had he taken the chance, he would have challenged Ben’s first place showing. Ben had 33 points. I had a respectable 24 points, but still came in last.

Chaos Steve

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