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

I went to the Games Gathering at Brookhurst Hobbies this Saturday.  I was concerned about going to the event because it was raining and I figured that there was not going to be a good turnout.  Most southern Californians do not know how to handle any weather other than sunny days.  When there is a slight change in the weather they drive like they received some sort of brain damage and are hitting themselves in the face repeatedly as they drive down the road.  Most smart people stay at home to avoid these people.  I needed my game fix so I decided to brave the roads and hope that others would do the same.

I was pleasantly surprised with the number of people that showed up.  There were 30 people at the event and six games being played at any one time.

I played one game at the event.  It was another new one for me called Wildcatters.

The theme of Wildcatters is the players are oil barons setting up their oil empires throughout the world.  This ranges from drilling wells and making them produce, to transporting the oil to the refineries to be refined for use.

The players start the game by seeding the board with 3 drilling rigs, 2 trains, an oil tanker and a refinery based on 8 region cards that they are dealt.  They also star the game with 20 shares of stock and $10 Once this is done, the players then start taking their turns.  They start the turn by receiving $10 in cash.  During their turn, the player may purchase and place additional infrastructure items, open a well, transport oil and transport oil to the refineries.  The player can only do these actions in a single oil producing region or any non producing region.  The location is determined by taking one of eight region cards that are face up during their turn.  Other players my piggyback on some of these actions by giving the player that initiated the action some shares in their company.  If a refinery is full at the end of a player’s turn, the oil is placed in that region’s market. 

Points are scored in the game by having the most shares in each of the companies, and providing the most oil in a region during the first scoring round.  During the final scoring round the players get points for the same thing they got them for in the first round plus having the most money and bonus points for controlling wildcatter wells, and three or more refineries.

I started the game uncertain of where I should focus my efforts.  The region cards I got at the beginning of the game were very well distributed.  I did have two cards for three regions so I decided to put one well and transport connection into two regions, a well and refinery into another region and transportation into another region I did not control.  I spent the first part of the game expanding in the southwest Asian region where I had my refinery and then expanding into western Russia after starting my wells and completing my infrastructure there..  I had a poor showing in the first scoring round so I decided to set up a refinery in Europe and feed oil into there so I could control that region and continued trying to accumulate other player’s stock as well.  By the time the final scoring round came about, I had improved my position enough to move from last place to third place.

I hope that I can play this game again.  There are a number of things that I would do differently and I would like to try to actually start the game with a strategy in mind.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Wildcatters	1	-	-	1	-	-			3.00
Totals	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	3.00