Close Camels in Samarkand

Cocktail hour came with camels, pretzel chips, and hummus as we broke out Samarkand: Routes to Riches (designers David V.H. Peters and Harry Wu, artist Jo Hartwig, publisher Queen Games).  I really like this game of Middle East merchant families and camel caravans.  Both Kathy and I have come to appreciate the scoring focus on expanding trading routes to products whose cards we hold and especially on forming trade relationships between families in which we have an interest.

Close-up of Kathy's Arabian daughter-in-law, with my white Chinese camels in the background

I found myself controlling the eastern half of the board with the Sindh, Chinese, and Persian families, while Kathy dominated the west with the Levant, Tigris, Byzant, and Arabian families.  Our game wasn't as interactive as some of our previous ones have been.  I established a couple of trading relationships between my Persians and her families (largely to keep her from getting the point advantage of doing it first).  Otherwise, each tended to leave the other to his or her own devices.  I think I was too worried about conserving the finances of the families into which I married, so I didn't expand their trade routes as rapidly as I might have.  Kathy also married into a fourth family and exploited that many more opportunities to establish relationships between families.  She controlled the initiative on ending the game and won by the close score of 62 to 57.