After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, May 30, 2013

Yesterday was Thursday, so it must have been time for Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks!

There were 25 people in attendance at this week’s event.  A variety of games were played at 6 different tables at any given time.

I played 2 different games this time playing one of them twice.

The first game that I played was Trajan.  Trajan is a resource management game set in Imperial Rome.  The players try to maximize their victory points by taking actions which include gaining votes in the senate, building monuments, visiting the markets, shipping, building residences, and conquering distant lands.

The interesting feature of Trajan is how the actions are governed.  Each player has a roundel with six spots in it representing the six actions they may take.  At the beginning of the game, the players put two cubes in each position in the roundel.  In order to be able to do an action, the players take the cubes from one position in the roundel and start placing them clockwise, one at a time, into the positions on the roundel starting with the one to the left of the position that the player took the cubes from.  The position that the last cube is placed in is the action that is taken that turn.  The cubes stay in their new position until they are moved again.

The number of cubes that are moved in a turn also pass time in the game.  The more cubes that are moved, the faster the time marker moves around the time chart.  If you want to delay the ending of the round, you do actions that move fewer cubes.  If you want to end the round quickly, you move more cubes to do your actions.

I did well through most of the game picking up enough opportunity points during the game to keep up and at times be in the lead.  Unfortunately, I had what boiled down to no end game scoring strategy and it did not help that I was unclear on the end game requirements of the shipping action.  I came in fourth out of four.

The second and third game I played was La Boca.

La Boca is an abstract game in which the players team up with another player and solve a three dimension puzzle using a set of 10 different shaped blocks (11 blocks in the case of the advanced game.).

The players are shown a challenge card.  On each side of the card is a different pattern.  The players then use the blocks to build the pattern so that both players solve their pattern correctly in two minutes or less.  The players gain victory point for the amount of time they spend solving the puzzle.  The less time you spend the more points you get.

The game ends when each of the players has teamed up with all of the other players.  In the case of a three player game, the players team up with everyone twice.

I really enjoy abstract games like La Boca.  I generally do not do well at them but I really do enjoy them.  La Boca was no exception to this.

We played La Boca twice.  The first time with the basic set of 10 blocks and the second time adding the 11^th dreaded red L block to play the advanced game.

The results of both games were the same.  I came in last without actually cratering the game and had fun doing it.

Here are my results for this event.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Trajan	1	-	-	-	1				4.00
La Boca	2	-	-	2	-	-	-		3.00
Totals	3	-	-	2	1	-	-	-	3.33

Game Review – Lunar Rails

Lunar Rails
Number of Players	2 - 6
Play Time	180 minutes
Ages	10 years and up

Lunar Rails is one of the games that use the Empire Builder system.  Unlike most of these games which are set in real world locations, such as North America, Europe and India to name a few, Lunar Rails is set in the fantasy setting of the moon.

People who consider themselves fans of the Empire Builder system generally stick their noses up at Lunar Rails and the other fantasy based games of the Empire Builder series as inferior to the games that are set in the real world.  I would argue that they are wrong that they Lunar Rails is an inferior game.  I would argue that the game requires a style of play that is different than most of the other games in the series.

The theme of Lunar Rails is that the players are running railroad companies that are setting up service between the cities on the moon of the future.  Game play is similar to all of the other Empire Builder style games.  The player start with a small amount of money to build their initial track based on a set of demand cards that they receive and they fulfill a demand on the demand cards they discard the card and get new card to replace it.  The player then uses the money they get for fulfilling the demand card to build more track, upgrade their locomotive so they go faster or carry more loads, or save it to meet victory conditions.

In most of the Empire Builder games you want to complete the locomotive upgrade and track building requirements as quickly as possible even at time running yourself out of money.  You cannot be as aggressive in Lunar Rails, as it has some disaster cards that can do a lot of damage to the players’ track compared to the other rail games.

All of the other rail games have rivers that can flood and take out the bridges that the players build over them.  They require the players to rebuild them if they want to cross the river again or maintain major city connectivity.  In order to rebuild a bridge it usually costs 3 – 4 dollars

Since the moon does not have rivers, the designers replaced this hazard with meteor strike.  A meteor strike can damage up to 4 lengths of track and can cost on up to 8 dollars to replace.  If you get stuck on the wrong side of a meteor strike with too little money, you are almost guaranteed to lose the game.

If you play Lunar Rails in a slow and steady manner instead of aggressively you will have a more positive outcome.

The other differences to the game are there are 4 stages of upgrades instead of two stages, but the cost of the upgrades in Lunar Rails is 10 dollars versus the 20 dollars of the real world games.  The other this is the board itself.

The board is divided into two circles, one representing the near side, on representing the far side.  There are points all around the circles that connect up the sides of the map and the players must use these points to connect their track between the sides.

Lunar Rails is a solid addition to the Empire Builder series.  The problems that the series has, like the learning curve on knowing where the cities and loads are and the best way to connect them up.  Even with these problems.  I like it because you need to play it differently than the other Empire Builder games.  I give it a B overall, but would recommend new players try to get someone who knows how to play the game to teach them some of the strategy and tactics in the game before they play their first game.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ El Toro Library, May 25, 2013

The Strategic & Adventure Game Association had good turn out this time.  There were 19 people in attendance throughout the day with a number of new people in the mix.  Many people were surprised that the turnout was so large with it being a holiday weekend with a convention going locally in Los Angeles.

I told them that generally the Strategicon events do not interfere with SAGA because they do not have events that most of the people that go to SAGA would be interested in and that they would prefer to go to an event that was free and had the games they wanted to play versus pay to go to an event that did not have the games they were looking to play.

This time it was all about crayon rail games for me.  For those that are not familiar with the term crayon rail games refer to Empire Builder and all of the various editions of the game.  As you may already know from my previous entries, 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 crayon rail I played was Lunar Rails.  This edition of the game takes place on the moon in the future when there are sprawling cities that need a way to get cargos from point to point so the players come in to help them with that.

Lunar Rails is the most unforgiving of the crayon rail 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.  Generally it will hit you when you do not have enough money to rebuild the track to be able to reach your destination.  We had this happen to someone in our game even though we warned them repeatedly.

I had a good start to the game.  I was able to build a solid set of track to start with.  I did not upgrade my train as quickly as I normally do in these games, which had me worried that I would fall behind, even though I my track building would not have been able to keep ahead of the speed of my train if I had spent the money upgrading.

It did not matter though.  I was able to keep myself in cards that I was able to deliver for decent amounts of money and manage to win the game.

The next game we played was Iron Dragon, which is my least favorite of the crayon rail games.  The setting for the game is a fantasy world in which the players run magical trains around the world.  I think that the creator of the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting, Eberron took the idea of mystical trains for that setting from this game.

What I do not like about this game extra features that it adds.  The first one of these is the Conductors, which allow the players discounts when building on the terrain they have an affinity for.  The other feature is ships, which allow you to ferry your train across bodies of water.  To me these features clutter the game and add to the length of it.

I had a horrible time of it in the game.  I started with a set of cards that were marginal enough that I probably should have pitched them and gotten a new set and the game went downhill from there.  I had not completed building to all of my cities by the time the game was won and came in last place.

The results for this event are below.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Lunar Rails	1	1	-	-	-	-	-		1.00
Iron Dragon	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Totals	2	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	2.50