I hosted the Strategic & Adventure Game Association’s
Game Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday. The turnout was lower than I expected based
on the RSVP’s that I had received at 14 people, but four games were being
played at any one time. It must have had
something to do with Mother’s Day being the following day.
I played four games throughout the day.
The first game that I played was Lunar Rails from the Empire
Builder family. For those that are
unfamiliar with the Empire Builder games here is a brief description of how
they are played.
The players own railroad companies that are competing to
build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of
demand cards that they have. Once a
demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one
from the deck. Included in the demand
card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments
and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.
The unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games is
the free form building of track that it allows.
The player uses special crayons that are included with the game to draw
their track on the board. Between games
the marking from the previous game are erased from the game so that in the next
play of the game the players start with a fresh board.
Lunar Rails takes place on the moon in the future when there
are sprawling cities that need a way to get cargoes from point to point so the
players come in to help them with that.
Lunar Rails is the most unforgiving of the Empire Builder
games. You have to be careful to keep
enough money on had because there are disasters that can knock out a chunk of
your track between you and where your next delivery. Add to that building track in Lunar Rails is
much more expensive in Lunar Rails than in any of the other games because there
is so much mountainous terrain. It makes
it a lot easier to crash and burn in this game than any of the other Empire
Builder games.
It had been almost a year since I played Lunar Rails last so
I was rusty on where the cities and goads were located which caused me to have
a slow start. Once I got my bearings I
decided on a polar route as it worked with my cards. I had a problem get the cash to start
upgrading my train so that cost me significantly as the game progressed. At the end of the game I was in second place
out of three players.
The second game I played was The Hanging Gardens. The theme in the Hanging Gardens is that the
players are architects in ancient Babylonia that are trying to design the best
monument in the city. As they complete
areas of their monuments, they are given rewards that are worth victory
points. The more of any type of tile a
player can get the more victory points the tile is worth.
It is a game that has tile placement and set collection
elements in it. The players take turns
adding tiles which are actually cards divided into six sections. 1 – 3 of the sections will have features on
them that the player needs to combine in groups of 3 or more sections. Once a player gets a large enough group of
tiles together, he can then earn tiles that score points depending on the
number of similar tiles he collects. The
larger the section the player can build before scoring it the more options the
player will have in scoring tiles. The
player must then block one of the spaces in the section they scored with a
temple. This space is blocked and cannot
be covered with a new card.
There were three players in the game this time when I played
it. Both of the other players were new
to the game so I was trying to help them out as much as I could. I started out the game slow spending time building
up a number of areas before going in and scoring them. The idea being is that when I started pulling
up temples from my board I would be able to score them again once I had a card
that would add to the old spot. Using
that strategy I was able to pick up a good number of tiles later in the game
and won the game.
The third game was another Empire Builder game called India
Rails. India Rails is the version of the
game that takes place in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The only added rule for this game is the
ability for transporting pilgrims from one region to another for a minimal
payment inside India. 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.
Instead of building out of Sri Lanka to defeat as I normally
do I decided to build my track west to east as I had two nice salt deliveries
very close to one another and a decent return demand card. Things were starting to roll well for me and
then I got hit by a disaster as I was delivering my second load that just
killed my forward momentum and lost me a turn and a load. I spent almost half the game trying to
recover from it and catch up to the other players. I did pretty good job of is as I was working
on the final cards that would have given me victory by the end of the game. As it stood however I end the game in third
place.
The last game of the day was Bazaar. In Bazaar the players are gem traders trying
to fulfill gem orders from demand cards in competition with the other
players. They do this by using two
trading boards that represent the exchange rates for the market. For example one red gem can be traded for two
blue gems. The players use the exchange
to fulfill the demand cards as efficiently as possible to maximize their
points.
I had a tough time throughout the game this time. I think that was because I was trying to out
clever myself when collecting gems and focused more on reducing the number of
gems I when I claimed a card as opposed to claiming cards as quickly as
possible. I ended the game in second
place out of two players.
My stats for the event:
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