Nige had managed to acquire a cheap copy of Leo Colovini's Doge on E-Bay this week, so he was, naturally, keen to try it out. When I played it in 2000, when it first came out, I thought it was a pretty good game. Having played it again, I still like it although anyone who doesn't enjoy blind-bidding games will probably not have fun with it.

The basic idea of the game is that there are several regions in Venice into which players are trying to erect places. To build a palace, a player has to have built a number of houses in that region - the number of houses increasing as more palaces are built. Players have a set of influence markers which, at the beginning of each turn, they secretly distribute among three regions. Once this has been done, each region is evaluated in a pre-determined order and the players with the most and second-most influence in the region get to build houses there and (in the case of the player with the highest influence) possibly enlist the help of advisers in evaluating other regions later on. Once all the regions have been evaluated, players recover their influence markers and another round takes place. As soon as a player has 6 palaces all in different regions or 7 palaces in at least five different regions or 8 in at least 4 regions, he is able to claim the victory.

Our game played pretty quickly. I managed to foil Nige's plans in one region where we both had the same plan, which gave me a good advantage and I built on it to assure myself of the victory. Nige, of course, was gutted by this which made the triumph even more sweet.