After Cash Trap, we turned to the newest Klaus Teber game in the Catan Adventures series: Elasund. This game is about the growth of the first city of Catan and borrows certain of the characteristics from standard Settlers of Catan but does not have the resource trading aspect and is a bit more cut-throat in the way players are competing for victory points.
Our game started reasonably friendly. I challenged Nige for space to build a four square building on rows 11 and 12 and he decided not to turn it into a war, so I got my building reasonably easily. This was good for me as 11 was rolled on the dice much more than statistically justified. Nige then concentrated on getting the first church piece in place, which he achieved, but then I turned to adding church pieces. These are useful as the VPs gained from church building can’t be lost. Mark G was the wall king, building most of the cheap wall pieces. He also knocked over one of my early 2 space buildings, before competing with Nige for space on the far east of the board.
My gold production was flowing quite nicely during the middle of the game and I could have continued with church building. However, I spotted an opportunity to set myself up for a 6 square building that would also cover 3 windmills and catapult me to 10 VPs and the win. I managed to get my building permits in place before Nige spotted what I was doing. It then became a race between the two of us to get the few gold needed to build. Then, the gold dried up for both of us for two complete rounds! Amazing. Luckily though, the gold returned and I was just able to get in ahead of Nige to place my winning building.
Elasund is a really good game. Our first try got really tense at the end. There are plenty of routes to get VPs and some of these can mess with other players so there is a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing. Our game took about 90 minutes but this could come down with more plays. Should also play well with four.