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
|
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