After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, May 2, 2013

Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks was a good night of gaming, but a win is still eluding me.

For those who are not familiar with this event.  It is a tabletop game event that takes place every Thursday at Paradise Perks in Irvine, California.  I generally runs from 7pm to 11pm.  This week there were around 30 people attending and 6 to 8 games being played at any point.

I played two games this evening, City of Iron and The Great Heartland Hauling Co.

In City of Iron, the players take the role of factions in a city state that are trying to build it into a great nation.  They do this through developing buildings in the city, founding colonies, and conquering neighboring towns.

In order to do this, players need to develop two decks of experts that will allow them to do the things that will help them achieve their goals.  The two decks are divided into civilian and military experts.  The player will focus on getting experts for the deck that enhances their faction’s abilities.

City of Iron is a 2 – 4 player game.  We had three players in our game.  We opted for the advanced rules of the game which introduces special abilities for the factions.  I had a decent start but lost focus on what it was that would get me cash and victory point very quickly.  Money was very tight for me throughout the game and I was not able to effectively use my actions many turns because of this.  I was able to get back on track toward the end of the game, but I was still only able to take second place.

The second game was The Great Heartland Hauling Co.  I played this last week but this time we added in an expansion that adds in bonus cards.

For those of you that are not familiar with The Great Heartland Hauling Co, it is a 2 to 4 player game, the players take the role of truckers in the Heartland of the United States moving loads from one point to another using a hand of cards to pick up loads, move their truck, and drop off loads to score victory points.  One of the elements that makes the game interesting is that it has a modular board so that the pickup and destination point are not the same every time.

The bonus cards do things like increase a players hand limit, allow them to move diagonally once during a movement phase (this can be handy in allowing you to move around obstacles in the advanced game), and turn corn into fuel, among other things.

I did poorly in the game.  I was able to drop off my first loads fairly quickly and pick up the GPS, which I used effectively to avoid road blocks and tolls.  Then I hit a point where I could not get a fuel card, so my victory points started to be consumed by movement.  When the dust settled, I wound up last of four players.

Here are my stats for this event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
City of Iron	1	-	1	-	-				2.00
The Great Heartland Hauling Co.	1	-	-	-	1				4.00
Totals	2	-	1	-	1	-	-	-	3.00