I hosted the Strategic & Adventure Game Association Game
Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.
I did not know what to expect for attendance since it was a holiday
weekend and we were competing with a gaming convention in Los Angeles. I was pleasantly surprised that we got 16
people at the event and there were four games being played at any one time.
I played four games at the event three of which were from
the Empire Builder family.
The first game I played 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.
It seems that at this point Bazaar has become my go to short
game. This was the first time I ever
played a six player game. I did much
better than I have in the last few outings.
I managed to figure out how to trade in the market to be able to get the
colors I wanted without much in the way of leftover gems. I was able to collect three set cards but it
was not enough to get a win. In the end
I ended up coming in second.
The rest of the day was spent playing games in the Empire
Builder family. In the Empire Builder
family of games 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. In order to win the game, the player must be
the first to have track connecting a number of major cities on the board and
have at least $250 million dollars.
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.
The first of these games I played was Eurorails. Eurorails is set in Europe from Kaliningrad
in the east to the western shores including the United Kingdom and
Ireland. The goal in Eurorails is to
collect $250 and for the player to have connected six of the seven major cities
in the game. In the current edition of
the game the option of building the Chunnel between France and England is now
available. The cost is prohibitive and I
would not recommend it unless there are four or more players in the game and a
player is spending most of their time moving to and from England.
Eurorails is a game that I do not get to play very
often. This is only the second time I
have gotten to play it in the last year.
I decided to start the game in the south. I had nice cards going from the Balkins to
Spain. I first delivered a card from Switzerland to Beograd and then I gathered
the items I needed to go to Spain and proceeded there. I did not have enough money to complete the
track I needed but the other players had already built into the area so I was
able to rent to get to my destination city. Unfortunately this was the biggest moment
of brilliance I had in the game. From
there on I was behind the rest of the players in the game and was not able to
recover and ended up last out of four players.
The next game was China Rails. Set in China, the goal is China Rails is to
connect the four major cities on the board and have a ferry connection to
Taiwan. All four major cities are on the
eastern half of the board, but if a player wants the highest possible chance
for victory they need to build to the western part of the board to be able to
get to the commodities with the highest pay out.
Again I had was I thought was a strong start to the game I
had two deliveries from the east coast to the same city that was two thirds of
the way across the board. Building that
track should have set me up from the rest of the game. I was in the unfortunate position of getting
marginal cards for the rest of the game.
I would only have one good card or two okay cards that would take me
across the board. This took me from a
point where I was in the lead in the game to third place out of three players.
The last game of the day was Empire Builder. Empire Builder is a game of rail building and
goods transportation in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. 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.
I had a pretty good start in this one then I decided to try
something that I had not done before to see if it would work. I decided that I wanted Los Angeles would be
the major city I did not build to in this game which meant I had to connect to
both Mexico City and Seattle. Common
wisdom says that you should not do this you should choose one or the other city
to connect to and leave the other one out because you will be building more
track than you need to. I wanted to see
if I were to get the average cards in the game if the pay outs could offset the
expense. It turns out that this did not
work for me very well. I do not know if
it was because a particularly bad distribution of cards or that is just does
not work. I will have to try it again to
make sure it does not work. In any event
I game in third out of three players.
My stats for the game:
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