After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association, May 11, 2013

I attended the Strategic & Adventure Games Association (SAGA) on Saturday at the El Toro Public Library in Lake Forest, California.  This is an event that I host every 2^nd and 4^th Saturday from 10:00am to 4:45pm.  We had 17 people attend this time, which is a great for a 2^nd Saturday with a competing event on the same day.  At the peak there were 5 games being played at one time.

I played three games during the event and even got my first win since starting this blog, which is a moral victory for me in and of itself.

The first game of the day for me was Martian Rails.  This is another edition on the Empire Builder family of games.  The player owns a railroad company on Mars. (Isn’t it great that we set up railroad systems even when we go to Mars?) 

The game takes the science fiction and fantasy element 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.

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.

I had a good start to the game with strong pick-up and delivery options along my track.  I was slow to upgrade my train in favor of building additional track, but that was because I my train speed was keeping pace with my rail building.  I would have wasted movement if I had upgraded too early. 

By mid game I ran into some trouble.  I was not getting optimal cards for my position on the board and was allowing myself to get distracted with hosting duties.  As a result my game fell apart and I came in third out of three people.

The second game I played was Bazaar.  Bazaar it a 2 – 6 player game from Sid Sackson.  We played the most recent edition of the game.

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.

This was the game I won through a tie breaker, the tie breaker being the person that captured the fewest demand cards.  I was able to capture higher value cards than my opponent so I was able to get more points with fewer cards.

The last game I played was a teaching game of Stone Age.  We had a number of new players that were interested in trying Stone Age.  Stone Age is a worker placement resource management game.  The players take the roles of tribal leaders of a stone age tribe.  In order to gain victory point the players send out their workers to gather resources, perform tasks in the village or purchase huts for victory points with resources they previously acquires.

In a teaching game my primary goal during most of the game is to make sure that the new players learn and understand the rules to the game and that they have good experience with the game.  Trying to actually win the game is a secondary goal in the game.  In this case it showed.  By the time I started to look at scoring points for myself I was so far behind that my only chance to catch up was a hail mary play during the last round that if successful would have given me second place.  Unfortunately I failed to get the resources need to purchase the hut that would have given me thirty points and came in last.

These are the results for this event.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Martian Rails	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Bazaar	1	1	-	-	-	-	-		1.00
Stone Age	1	-	-	-	1				4.00
Totals	3	1	-	1	1	-	-	-	2.67