After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ El Toro Public Library, June 8, 2013

The second Saturday Strategic & Adventure Game Association event at the El Toro Library drew 13 people.  There were 4 tables with active games at any given time.  This event is free and open to the public.  I encourage you to go to it if you are in the area.

I played four games this time.

The first game that I played was Airlines Europe.  One of the people that came to the event requested the game because he wanted to try it, so I brought my copy.

Airlines Europe is an economic game were the players collect stocks from the different airlines that are available in the game. The value of the stocks increase based on how well the routes of the airlines are developed by the players in the game.  The more development that occurs for an airline the more valuable the stock becomes.  The players gain victory points based on how much of a stock they own in the airlines and how valuable the stock is.  If the player owns the most stock in a certain airline they gain the most victory points based on the valuation, the player that owns the second most, gets the second most victory point.

Since this game has many similarities to Union Pacific, where I tend to focus on owning the most of one or two stocks and usually lose miserably, I decided to try a different strategy in Airlines Europe.  Instead of focusing on selecting from the face up stocks, I decided to only draw blind from the top of the stock deck.  I figured this would help me focus on diversifying my stock holdings so I would some points on many different stocks instead of many points on a few stocks.

The strategy seemed to work for the first half of the game, but I started to run into trouble in the second and third scoring rounds because I was not getting many victory points because I did not have the most stock in any single airline.  I did manage to come in third out of five players though.

Then I moved on to Seven Sisters.  Seven Sisters is an area control and hand management game.  The players are aristocrats that are trying to influence the seven daughters of the king to give them favors.  The sisters happen to be named after the seven deadly sins:  Wrath, Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Sloth, Pride, and Envy. 

Each of the sisters gives favors to the players based on their sin.  The player with the most influence over a sister gets the best effect of a favor, but they remove all of their influence from the sister, but in return they get a victory point.  The remaining players that attempted to influence the sister get less effect from the favor, but get to keep their influence on the sister the next round.

I did horribly in this game.  The cards I received never seem to work out for me to get influence over sister and I was not able to get enough influence cubes to be able to work with.  I came in last out of four players and the others managed a three way tie for first.

I them went on to play a couple of games from the Empire Builder series.

The first was Iron Dragon.  I have mentioned my dislike for this game in the past and the game still plagues me.

The setting for Iron Dragon is a fantasy world filled with things like dwarves, elves, and orcs, which is great if you are playing Dungeons & Dragons, but not my preference for a rail game.

The game started well enough for me with a number of strong deliveries in the early game, I was able to build up my track and get to my major cities.  Then I struggled to find lucrative loads along the track that I had developed even after discarding my hand a number of times in hopes of getting something that would even give me a decent payout.  I came in last.

The final game of the day for me was India Rails.  India Rails takes place in India.  The only added rule for this game is the ability for transporting pilgrims from one region to another for a minimal payment.  I believe that this feature was added to help offset a couple of major disasters that can destroy a player’s game if they do not have the cash to build back track and they do not want to sacrifice their current hand.

I had a good start to the game, but then I started getting marginal replacement cards and could not draw myself out of them.  Again I came in third I have what I need to win the game on board my train but did not have the chance to deliver it.

The results for this event are as follows:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Airlines Europe	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Seven Sisters	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Iron Dragon	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
India Rails	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	4	-	-	3	1	-	-	-	3.25