Tikal Head-To-Head

I just finished up a two-player game with Jason Maxwell on spielbyweb.com. We played with the auction rules and he killed me 169-153. It was the first time playing two player for both of us and the game has much different dynamics than the three and four-player version. Jason managed to score a basic monopoly on the treasures - getting a whopping six sets of three to my ONE. The treasures are much more important here than when there are other players. He got a lucky break and tripled up early and then used his powerful score to keep me out of the other tiles with treasures. The second thing I discovered is that unlike the multi-player games, guarding a temple early is not a benefit. The shear number of temples means that there is not as much fighting over them. Guarding temples early on gave me good points, but let Jason maneuver his men into better positions later in the game while I struggled to distribute my remaining pieces. I think a guard early may only be truly effective in two-player if the cost is one or two men, and its a 10 or 9 point temple. Which brings me to the last point - in two player games, you are much more likely to get all your men on the board. You have a lot more time and action points over the course of the game. Spending men to guard a temple is therefore expensive. You especially don't want to blow your 3-pt piece as he allows you to jump around swinging temple points easily to you in the scoring rounds.