by diceman56
Just to say that today, after many months of gentle persuasion, I have managed to get my wife to play a game.I chose 'fresco' but even though I have the modules I didn't add them in for todays session.
The first impression was a little worrying due to only explaining for barely 30 seconds, she said "this sounds all too confusing". I carried on by saying that we would play move by move and explain things in a story. So explaining that we were painters and had staff etc.....well you know the rest, we proceeded to play.
Scoring was up and down to start with, then my wife took a quarter of a boards lead only to lose it by putting two painters to work on the fresco with the wrong types of paint, thereby wasting a move.
I then took a lead of some 35 points and after the last move which was triggered by the last remaining 6 tiles covering the fresco we totalled up the final holding of coins.
Amazingly although my wife was 35 points behind, she had 71 talers and that meant that she scored 35 points which meant that we were both level on 126 points. (I had also counted my coins by this time).
I exclaimed "what an incredible game, and the score means that we draw). Suddenly I recalled the rule that stated 'no two people can share the same space on the scoring track and you can choose whether you want to go to the space in front or behind', well my wife smuggly slid the piece one space ahead with a major grin all over her face. Final score:
Steve 126......... Zoe 127
I was so glad that it was close and that she won. I said "Do you feel that you could like this game given one or two more goes at it?", She said "What do you mean? I loved it first time!"
It really was worth waiting for her to play after all these months, as I think we all need a 'chill out' time in these days of constant pressure. Something to take us out of the real world for a few hours. Today was such a day, and thank you 'Fresco' for being accessible and so easy a game to introduce to a newbie to gaming. I don't want to frighten her off with the modules, but I do think that these would present no problem to her in playing, and increase the enjoyment.