After Action Report – Games Gathering @ Brookhurst Hobbies, September 7, 2013

At Games Gathering at Brookhurst Hobbies this month there were again a lot of people in attendance.  There were 25 - 30 people at the event with seven games being played at any given time.  Plus the Pathfinder group that normally plays outside was moved inside because of the high temperatures we are experiencing in Southern California

I played four games at the event, three from the Empire Builder family of games and Castle Panic.

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 India Rails.  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.

I had a good set of cards at the start of the game.  With those cards I was able to get the money to build out the track that I needed to complete the next few sets of cards that I got.  My demand cards kept working well with my track, but they were not getting me the amount of money I needed to finish the game on top.  I managed to take second but was only a turn behind the winner.

The next game up 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.  I have explained the major differences between this game and the others in the series enough in previous posts that I will not go into them here.

I had what appeared to be a great set of cards to begin with.  They would give me a great return on the track I would have to build, but wipe me out of cash.  Unfortunately, I did not take into account the some fines I would have to pay to get to my destination cities so it turned out I would be in trouble.  With that problem coming up, I had to modify my plans and my great set of card turned into a so-so set of cards, but with most of the track built, I was committed to the plan.  Even with this problem I started to get what I thought was a lot of cash, but that was only my imagination playing tricks on me.  I still had to build out the rest of my track.  When the game ended I was working on a great set of cards that would have gotten me close to victory if I had been able to complete them, but time ran out and I found myself in second place again.

For a change of pace, I played Castle Panic.  Castle Panic is a semi cooperative game where the players are working as a group to defend a castle from goblins, orcs, and trolls that are attacking it.  The player with the most kills it the winner from among the players.  If the castle falls, then all the players lose regardless of how many creatures are killed.

We were able to trade and use our card effectively during the game.  It did get close at one point.  Half of our walls were down and we lost two towers, but we managed to rebuild the walls and kill the remaining monsters without too much of a problem.  I was the one that defeated the most monsters by the end of the game.

The last game I played at the event was Martian Rails.  The game 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.

I started out with some decent cards that made me build track in the best area on the board which increased their value for me.  They did not leave me much cash to do anything beyond build the track I needed to barely complete later cards.  I finally generated enough cash to upgrade my train’s speed and the game started to really work for me and I was getting lots of cash and getting close to victory.  I was just one or two deliveries away from victory when my cards turned on me and I was going to have to discard my hand to trying to get cards that would work.  The game ended just before I was going to do that and I came in second in the game again.

Overall the event was fun.  The game space wound up being a bit too crowded for my taste so I left a little early.

My stats for the event are below.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
India Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Iron Dragon	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Thurn and Taxis	1	1	-	-	-	-			1.00
Martian Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Totals	4	1	3	-	-	-	-	-	1.75