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Skirmish in Greece ...
This was the debut of Hellas at WBC. Hellas is one of the
latest two-player Kosmos games published by Rio Grande Games.
Seven people entered the single elimination tournament. forcing
me to provide the eighth plater for an all too brief event. Not
one of them had prior play experience. All had attended my teaching
session prior to the event.
Hellas is a combination tile placement and card game.
The cards are the basic game engine. If you have played before,
getting the right combination of attack and defense cards are
necessary for victory. Playing with seven newcomers yielded some
strange games. Newcomers, especially those of the wargaming persuasion,
think that conquest is the path to victory. However, after one
plays awhile one sees the advantages of exploration over war.
The championship game is a case in point. The two Dave's set
up basically in a three versus three setup. Both reinforced often
and attacked as frequently as possible. This usually results
in a very long game as you take one tile and then I take one
back in my turn. So the net gain is always zero. No one gets
any closer to victory by this helmet bashing. Eventually, David
Metzger realized that one had to get the right cards to sway
the battles and finally won the game and the wood - his fourth
of the week.
Jeff Cornett won the other semi-final game but due to other
tourney commitments dropped out, so the other semifinal game
of Dave Metzger and David Rohde became the defacto championship
game.
GM Vincent Frattali (at right)
demonstrates Hellas at the cafe Jay demo for the new event. David
Metzger (center) proved the quickest learner as he won the event
to claim his second grand slam (4 championships) in a row.
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Vincent Frattali [1st Year]
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