Sunday, January 26, 2014

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ El Toro Library, January 25, 2014



The Strategic and Adventure Game Association game day at the El Toro Library had the best attendance number it had had in a long time.  There were 26 people at the event and 7 games being played at any one time.  There were a number of new faces at the event and some people that had not been there in a while.  I hope this trend of higher attendance continues and we see as many people the next time.

I was able to play four games at the event.

The first was one of the Empire Builder games, British Rails.

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.

British takes place in England, Scotland and Wales and is played the same as other Empire Builder games.  There are no special rules in British Rails that set it apart from Empire Builder except that the players get 3 build turns at the beginning of the game in a standard game and 4 build turns in a fast game.

It had been six month since I had last played this game, but I knew that my best bet was to try to build from Manchester north into Scotland as early in the game as possible which fit my initial hand perfectly as I had two loads originating in one city that both went to the same city in Scotland.  After the initial trip I continued to get solid sets of cards and was able to win the game easily.

I followed British Rails with Australian Rails.  Australian Rails is one of the games in the Empire Builder family.  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.  In the case of Australian you need to connect 3 major cities plus the city of Perth on the opposite side of the continent from the other major cities.

I do not generally do well in this game.  This time I tried something that I had not done in a while to see if it would change my fortune this time.  Instead of trying to build my east to west track as early as possible in the game I started the game build north up the east coast of Australia.  The theory being that there are a larger variety of resources in the cities along the east coast.   As a result, you should be able to offset any extra expense building this track by having more options open to you.  It did work but not for me.  One the other players was able to get a very lucrative set of cards that required him to use my track, but made him over half the money he needed to win the.  He ran away with the game and won leaving me in third place.

The third game 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.  As usual I will not review the major differences in this game from the others in the series as I have done so in previous reports.

As usual with this game I had a solid start and was able to keep things going quite well for about two thirds of the game.  At that point the cards stopped working for me and as my momentum slowed the other players were able to catch up and beat me.  The scores were close.  I came in third place but there were only 3 points between me and the second place player.

The final game of the day was Organic Soup.  Organic Soup is a card game in which the players collect cards to create chemicals and chemical reactions.

The players start the game with a set of chemicals they can create, one simple, one complex, and one amino nucleic.  In addition there are basic chemicals available for creation on the table.  The players take turns either collecting carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen or oxygen atoms from 12 face up cards in the center of the table to create any chemical that is face up on the table or use atom from reaction is front of them to place a chemical in their hand down.  In addition when they are creating a new chemical they may steal unprotected atom from other players.  The game ends when there are no more atoms in the deck to place out or when a player creates the first amino nucleic acid.

As in my previous game I focused on the things that I would need to complete my amino nucleic and used them to finish a number of simple and complex reactions until I could get the last things I needed to complete my amino nucleic.  It took a while but I was able to finish my amino nucleic before the other players even though both of them were gunning for me because of my previous wins against them and won the game.

My stats for this event:

Game
No. of Plays
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
 Avg.
British Rails
1
      1
      -
      -
      -
      -
      -
      -
      -
  1.00
Australian Rails
1
      -
      -
      1
      -
      -
      -


  3.00
Iron Dragon
1
      -
      -
      1
      -
      -
      -
      -
      -
  3.00
Organic Soup
1
      1
      -
      -
      -
      -
      -


  1.00
Totals
4
      2
      -
      2
      -
      -
      -

      -
  2.00

If You Are Interested in These Games:



     

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