After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, October 17, 2013

Turn out for this event was back up to normal levels at 25 – 30 people attending.  It looks like whatever was preventing people from getting to the even in September is no longer an issue.  There were 6 games being played at any given time.

I was able to play two games this evening.

The first was Ticket to Ride.  The theme of the game is that the players are owners of train companies that are building rail lines in the United States.   The goal is to establish routes between the cities on the tickets that the players receive.  If the players connect the cities on a ticket they will receive bonus points at the end of the game based on the value on the ticket.  If they do not connect the cities on one of their tickets the player loses the number of points on the ticket.  Points are also scored for placing trains between two cities on the board more trains needed the more points are scored.

Game play is simple.  The players start out the game with five tickets that have destinations that they can connect of which they must keep at least three.  They will also receive four train cards. An additional five train cards are placed face up by the side of the board along with draw decks of train cards and tickets

The train cards are the core of the game.  They come in eight different colors and there is a ninth card type which is a wild card and can be used as any color.  These train cards are what are used to make the connections between the cities.  Each connection is represented by a number of spaces that are a single color.  If a player wished to claim a connection between two cities they must turn in the number of cards of that color.  They then place trains from their reserve on that connection.  After a connection is claimed no other player may use that connection.

The players choose one of three actions to take during their turn.  The first is that they may take train cards from the five cards that are face up or from the draw deck.  The second option is that they may claim a connection between two cities.  The third option is that they may take additional tickets.

The set of tickets I got at the beginning of the game had two cards that worked together and a third that I could make work.  The other two cards did not match up to anything so I kept only three of the five cards.  I started to worry when it started to get crowded around Boston and Montreal where two of my cards needed to go but got lucky because no one took the route that I had planned on taking.  I completed my first three tickets and still had about half my trains left so I took some more.  One of the tickets I drew I already had connected with my current track so I took it and another one that needed two links to complete. When I finished those I took another set of tickets and was lucky and got another one that only need two links to complete.  Once I finished up that ticket I only had five trains left so I started collecting cards to be able to play those trains out.  I only got rid of two more trains before the end of the game.  I completed a total of six tickets but event then it was only good enough to get me second place.

Then I played K2, a game which I played last week.  I wanted to see if I could redeem myself from my poor performance.    In K2 the players take the role of a team of two climbers trying to get to the top of K2.  The higher that a climber moves up the mountain, the more points the player scores.  The player must keep in mind the amount of oxygen that their climber has.  If the climber runs out of oxygen he dies and is reduced to giving the player only one victory point.

Movement and oxygen costs are on each space on the board.  The higher up the mountain the player goes the more each space costs to go.  The players are provided a deck of cards that are used to determine movement and oxygen.  The player uses two of these cards at a time to move their climbers and resupply them.  Play lasts over 18 rounds and the player who gets his climbers the farthest up the mountain wins.

At the start of the game it I kept getting movement cards.  After the third set of cards I knew I would have a lot of oxygen cards in the second half of my deck so I rushed one of my climbers to the 7000ft level of the mountain and constructed a tent.  This game I decided to go up the right side of the board instead of the left side.  At first glance it looks harder but since I had a bad experience going up the left side the last game I figured it could not hurt.  It worked out incredibly well for me.

In the second go through of the deck, the oxygen cards was more evenly dispersed through my deck so I was able to make a run to the very top of the mountain and rush back down to relative safety without losing my climber.  I then had some time to get my second climber up the mountain.  By the end of the game I was able to get the second climber up to the fist climber’s tent.

In the meantime my opponents both managed to lose climbers.  As a result I was able to win the game handily with twice as many points as my nearest competitor.

Here are my stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Ticket to Ride	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-		2.00
K2	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	2	1	1	-	-	-	-		-	1.50

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