I attended the Games Gathering event at Brookhurst Hobbies
on Saturday. The store was quite crowded
as they had three events going on at once.
Amidst the Magic and Pathfinder players there were five tables board
games being played with 25 players attending just for board games.
I was able to play three games at the event.
The games were all from the Empire Builder family. To review, 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 first one I played was Iron Dragon. 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. As usual I will not review the major
differences in this game from the others in the series as I have done so in
previous reports.
I was able to get a good start in this game with a start up
the east coast from Wikkidde to Bluefeld which is a good place to be in the
game. After I finish my first three
cards I two of the replacement cards I had were to a city out by Eaglehawk
which would pay out over 100 gold combined.
Even though going out to Eaglehawk is usually a blunder to the level of
getting into a game of wits with a Sicilian when death is on the line I decided
to throw caution to the wind and make the run.
It worked out for me. Even though
my return cards were marginal, after I got rid of those cards I got the set of
cards that paid me 150 gold and secured me a victory in the game.
The second game I played was Martian Rails. Martian Rails takes the science fiction and
fantasy elements from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and other authors and
brings them to the game. There are
canals with water and forest and jungle terrain on the board, cities are called
thing like Barsoom and Hinkston Creek, and you even have loads like
Roddenberries and Thoats.
With the cards I had I decided to try something different to
see if it would get me better results than I usually got in this game. The track I build was diagonal from northwest
to southeast through the Valles Marineris.
I hoped that this would give me the opportunity to take advantage of the
good in the valley for some decent pay outs.
Unfortunately things did not work out well for me and I ended the game
in a distant second.
The last game of the day was 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.
In this game I had a good start building from east to west
across the map. In doing so I was able to get the money I needed to upgrade my
train and start the next stage of building which was north to Delhi and point
farther. Once I finish those deliveries
I was doing pretty well on money so I decided to build to the major cities I
needed in the south and complete my track.
I did well through the rest of the game even though I was adding
improvements to my track until the end.
It did not help ad I ended up in second place missing the win by two
turns.
My stats for the event:
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