July 6, 2007 - Hansa Changing Winds

I just finished losing four games of Hansa: Changing Winds on MaBiWeb to MBW Sirrus (Miguel Villaverde?), MBW Elminster, Paolo Porfiri, and Gary Libby in the tournament. Its more than official now, I hate this variant. I also hate playing Hansa two-players. Its terrible. The first player has such a huge advantage over the other - they can run around the board, grabbing goods and creating markets such that the second player will be hard pressed not to give the first player money when they go to buy goods - essentially, the rich get richer because they got to start. The other thing is the crazy scoring at the end. In a two player game, the extra scoring makes a huge difference. Ending the game alone is a 6 pt swing either direction. Maybe I just suck at this version and I hate it because of that, but I'm not really likely to keep playing to find out. After 10 games of this version, I'm ready to quit trying. I'd be willing to print the map to play as an alternate map and with the double cost move rule, but not the alternate scoring.