I hosted the Strategic and Adventure Game Association Game
Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.
With everyone now on summer break and there being less than a week until
the 4th of July holiday I was not certain what the attendance would
be like. Usually in the summer months
fewer people go to the events. We did
see more people at the event than we had two weeks ago. There were 18 people at the event and up to
five games were being played at any one time.
I played two games at the event. Both of them were from the Empire Builder family
of games. 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 game I played was Russian Rails. Russian Rails starts in the Soviet Union era
and can extend to after the fall of communism.
The board includes the western half of the Soviet Union extending east
to Alma- Ata in what is now Kazakhstan.
The game plays similarly to all of the other games in the Empire Builder
family. The game was the first to add
bonus deliver cards in a big way to the game.
It also has a unique hazard card that causes the fall of communism which
takes away 20% of all of the player money and adds a toll for people entering
Russia from the other countries that used to make up the Soviet Union.
I had a good set of starting card. I had two deliveries that were in the same
area with the loads coming from cities that were next to each other in the
Caucuses and the third card was for a load from one of the second city I was
delivering to back to one of the cities that I had my initial pick up. Since I did not need as much track to
complete these cards as I would normally need to complete my first three cards,
I was able to upgrade my train using my starting money. The risk I ran using these cards was that
there was not much in the way of loads in the central part of Russia and the
track I was developing was in this area.
Fortunately for most of the game I was able to get the cards I need to
finance the development of my track. I
ended up relying on my central Russian track heavily. It did not give me enough cash coming in to
win the game and I ended up in second place out of four players.
The other game that 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 really botched up in this game. I took the risk of starting in Kola and
moving through the Underground to central part of the map. I then proceeded to miscount the starting
funds I would need to be able to deliver two loads at the start and get my
economic engine going. I then got hit by
a lose one turn and one load card before I could delivery my first load which
put me even further behind the curve on generating the cash I needed to expand. I spent most of the rest of the game
wallowing around trying to get the money I needed to build track so I could
deliver better loads. I was finally starting
to get going and the game ended with me in a distant fourth place out of four
players.
My stats for the event:
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