After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, August 8, 2013

Attendance was light at Paradise Perks’ Thursday Night Gaming.  Only 15 – 20 people attended the event and there were 4 games being played at one time.

I played two games this time which is an improvement over the last few weeks.

Uchronia was the first game I played.  It is another card game that is brought to us by the makers of Bilblios.  It unfortunately is nothing like Biblios and is closer in game play to Glory to Rome than anything else.  The theme of the game is the players are patriarch of the noble houses of the fictitious city of Uchronia.  They are trying to win over the people of Uchronia by building great works in the city.

The cards are used for multiple purposes.  They are used for their actions, as resource, and as enhancement bonuses to actions depending on where they are in the play area.  In addition there is a deck of building cards that the players are to build to gain victory points.  The five actions that are possible with the cards are collecting resources from the general pool, taking resources from the player’s hand, stealing resources from the other players, making a card an activity card, and construction of a building.  The player who has the most victory points after victory conditions are met wins.

I did not do well in this game at all.  I think it may have something to do with my play Glory to Rome poorly in the past translating over to this game.  My position as the last player may have contributed as well.  Early in the game I was not able to get construction cards.  Without construction cards you are not able to build the buildings that make up the majority of the victory points to win.  Unfortunately I was able to get them. I was able to build up the resources that I needed to build buildings that I wanted so every time I got a construction card I was using it toward construction instead of toward building up my ability to add multiple resourced to the buildings I was constructing.  By the time I figured this out we were at the end of the game and I was so far behind that all I could do was play kingmaker at the end of the game by stripping the leader of two of his monopolies.  This made the game a shared victory between him and the other player in the game.  I came in last.

The other game I played was called Kolejka.  Kolejka is a game about standing in line.  The players send their families out to stand in line at the five different stores on the board in order to try to get the limited resources they need on the family shopping list.  The first player to complete their shopping list wins the game.

Game play is simple.  The players take turns putting out the pawns that they have that are not in line and moving pawns from one line to another.  The three store deliveries are made.  This means that not all of the stores that the pawns are standing in line at will get resources. After the resources are revealed, the players have three rounds to move their pawns on the board using their action cards.  After the final movement of pawns is made the resources are distributed.  This is repeated until one of the players completes their shopping list.

I started out the game well.  I focused on getting in line for the items I needed the fewest of in order to try to complete them first so I would be able to focus my effort on the items I needed to get more of later in the game.  I was doing quite well.  During most of the game it looked like I would win the game, but defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.  One of the other players finished his list first on the same round I would have gone out. To make matters worse, I was not collecting any extra resources and wound up in a tie with the other player in number of items collected on my list and was edged out of second place on the tie breaker of number of extra resources.

The two third places do not help my stats for the month as you can see below.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Uchronia	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Kolejka	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	2	-	-	2	-	-	-	-	3.00