/pic2235441.jpg)
Even in the best of conditions — fully rested, with plenty of time to read and re-read rules — it's easy to miss one line in the rules that changes the essence of the game (as happened in my first playing of the game featured below). It's even easier to play like a clueless newbie because that's what you are: someone new to the game who doesn't know how best to play it, even when the rulebook provides a hand at the back to shove you in a certain direction.
On my second playing of El Gaucho, which debuts from Arve D. Fühler and Argentum Verlag in October 2014 at the Spiel convention mentioned above, I still felt like I was playing only two-thirds of the game as I wasn't using the action spaces much and instead taking the more obvious cattle-claiming actions most of the time. Only in retrospect did I realize that I was missing details about cattle evaluation and why you might or might not want to do certain things in the game. Getting the proper feel for a game and understanding it enough to review it — as opposed to merely forming an opinion about it — takes time, and all too often we've already roped that dogie and are headed back to the pampa to find the next catch...
:strip_icc()/pic2253607.jpg)
/pic2260704.jpg)
/pic2256737.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic2255787.jpg)
