After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, November 14, 2013

I went to the board game event at Paradise Perks like I do on most Thursday nights.  Attendance was lower than normal this week like it was last week.  There were 15 people at the event with 3 games being played at any one time.

This time marked the return of a player that gets many new games from Europe before they are published in the United States.  With his return, I was able to play two new games, one of which is not out in the United States yet.  (This is the person that owns the copy of Patchistory that I played earlier this month as well.

The first game I played was the one that will not be available for at least another month called Russian Rails.  Based on what I have read about the game thus far I wanted to give it a try.

Russian Railroads is a train themed worker placement game.  The goal in the game is to help industrialize Russia through building three train routes and building factories.  The person who can gain the most victory points to do this wins the game.

In Russian Railroad the players take turns placing workers on actions on the board.  These actions consist of building factories, upgrading trains, moving pieces up the rail or industrial track, and purchasing engineers.  Once all of the players have placed their workers, the round is over and everything is scored and the game moves on to the next round.  The game lasts eight rounds.

When we started the game we were advised that there were two viable strategies.  Players should focus on building out two rail lines or one rail line and factories.  This is one of only ways to guarantee completing two things.  Since completing any of these items was a good way to boost your score, I took the strategies under advisement and opted for focusing on railroads.  During the game I focused all of my efforts on maxing out two of my rail lines and expanding the other one just enough to take advantage of some of the bonuses it provided.  The other players all opted for the factory strategy.  I was worried the entire game because even though I was managing to keep close to most of the other players, I was still in last place most of the time.  In the last round, I was able to score enough points out of my main rail line by getting out the last upgrade and surged into second place.  The person that won the game was too far ahead of the rest of us for me to catch up.

I liked the game but I need to play it a couple more times to decide whether it is a worth buying game.  My concern is whether there is a rich get richer problem so that if someone can pull ahead early in the game there is no chance of catching them.  The other problem I see is that there may be too much advantage for experienced players of the game over new players to make the game enjoyable enough for players to play it again after they get beaten badly.

The other game I played was Expedition:  Famous Explorers.  This game is a updated version of the games Wildlife Adventure and Expedition.  In the game the players are given 10 locations on the board that they must guide one of three expeditions to.  If they are able to do that then they score a point for each location.  They also have explorers that they can place on 4 of the 10 places they have which get them and additional victory point if they get it.  In addition there are six face up locations that are available to anyone to take for one point each.

The players take turns guiding three different expeditions to the locations that they want explored by adding one leg to the expedition’s travels.  In addition there are tickets that allow the players to add an extra leg during their turn or adjust the travel of the expedition.  The game ends when one player had gotten to all 10 of their locations.

When I got my location cards I knew I was in trouble.  They were clumped in three different locations that were far apart from each other.  I knew that I would have to have some things go my way if I was to have a shot at winning.  I thought that they were when I was able to complete one cluster of four locations quickly.  Then things just got difficult.  I was fighting the other players to get the expeditions close to my other two clusters.   Unfortunately they were able to frustrate my efforts very well.  I was only able to clear four more locations before the end of the game.  To make matters worse, I was not able to retrieve one of my explorers.  I ended up in third place out of three players.

I do not know if I like this game.  I do want to play it again to see if I can improve on my poor showing in this session.

My stats for this event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Russian Railroads	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-		2.00
Expedition: Famous Explorers	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
Totals	2	-	1	1	-	-	-		-	2.50

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