After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, December 5, 2013

I got back to California earlier in the week so I decided to go to Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks.   People must me getting ahead of things with their Christmas shopping because it was a full house.  There were 25 people at the event.  5 games were being played at any one time.

I was able to play one game during the event.  It was a game called Cornish Smuggler.

Cornish Smuggler’s theme is centered on the smuggling of goods into 18^th century Cornwell in order to avoid the high tariffs in England at the time.  The players need to set up a smuggling ring to be able to smuggle items into Cornwell and to the markets where they can sell the items all while avoiding the ever increasing attentions of the customs agents.

During the game the players take turns using influence and money to take actions.  The actions range from adding people to their smuggling ring, purchasing cargos in foreign ports, landing cargos in Cornwell, moving the cargos to market , and selling the cargos for money and reputation until all the players have passed.  Once all the players have passed their influence pool is rebuilt based on their reputation and the next round begins.  The game continues until all the cargos are purchased from the foreign markets or the customs agent’s get too strong.  At the end of that round each player’s influence and money is counted up and the person with the most wins.

My plan at the beginning of the game was to pick up as many units of cargo as possible and deliver them to port and sell them as quickly as possible.  Then take that cash and do it again until the game ended.

I started the game at one of the foreign ports and fro the first two actions I added two people to my network. One of them let me purchase the cargos at a discount.  I them used my next few actions to purchase three cargos.  This used up the rest of my money.  I did not worry about too much as I figured I would be getting more money during the next turn when started getting cargos to market.  I ran out of influence right before I could land product.  During the next turn I landed a cargo, but did not have enough influence to move it to the closest market because my smuggling ring was not big enough.  I used what little influence I had left to add a person to my smuggling ring to guarantee I would be able to deliver the cargo t market the next round.  I finally got my first cargo to the market in the third round.  My struggles continued as I ran out of influence again before I could deliver my second cargo.  In the fourth round of the game the customs agent end game requirement triggered rat the beginning of the round.  I was able to delivery my second cargo but did not have enough influence to get my final cargo from my first run into market. 

At this point in the game I figured I was doomed to being in last because the other players were doing much better than I was in getting moving around and doing things.  I did not realize while they were doing a lot more, it did was not as effective as my few movements were.  I did manage to bet third place out of five players in the game, which was much better than I thought that I would after a poor second round.

Since Cornish Smuggler took over two hours to play, I knew I would not be able to get another game in.  I left the event shortly after the end of the game.

My stats for the event:

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