After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ El Toro Public Library, February 22, 2014

I had a fun day at the Strategic & Adventure Game Association Event at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.  24 people were at the event and 5 games were being played at any one time throughout the day.

We also had Rob Huffman from the Huff-N-Stuff Podcast at the event.  He was in town and decided to come to the event.  If you get a chance you should check out his podcast at http://huffnstuffpodcasts.podomatic.com/

I was able to play two games from the Empire Builder family at the event.

For those that are unfamiliar with the Empire Builder games here is a brief description of how they are played.

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.

The unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games is the free form building of track that it allows.  The player uses special crayons that are included with the game to draw their track on the board.  Between games the marking from the previous game are erased from the game so that in the next play of the game the players start with a fresh board.

The first one I played was Russian Rails.  Russian Rails starts in the Soviet Union era and can extend to after the fall of communism.  The board includes the western half of the Soviet Union extending east to Alma- Ata in what is now Kazakhstan.  The game plays similarly to all of the other games in the Empire Builder family.  The game was the first to add bonus deliver cards in a big way to the game.  It also has a unique hazard card that causes the fall of communism which takes away 20% of all of the player money and adds a toll for people entering Russia from the other countries that used to make up the Soviet Union.

I was worried at the start of the game.  My beginning set of demand cards did not work well together so I discarded them on my first turn.  The replacement cards were much better than what I had but they were focused towards the western side of the board which is not where I usually start my game.  The cards would give me enough track and money left over to expand my rail network for the new cards I would get as the game went on so I kept them.  As the game progressed I was able to get some good synergy going between the cards that I was getting and the track that I had.  Unfortunately, it was not enough I was two and a half turns out from winning the game when one of the other players claimed the victory.

The other game I played was India Rails.  India Rails is the version of the game that takes place in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  The only added rule for this game is the ability for transporting pilgrims from one region to another for a minimal payment inside India.  I believe that this feature was added to help offset a couple of major disasters that can destroy a player’s game if they do not have the cash to build back track and they do not want to sacrifice their current hand.

In the India Rails game I had a great start.  Instead of being suckered into starting in Sri Lanka like I have been doing for the last year with less than optimal results, I had to demand cards with jute on them which made me start in Bangladesh and deliver in the central western and not western parts of the board.  With my first set of cards which included another delivery that I could make as well, I would be able to 120 million which would be able to get me most of the rest of the track I needed in the game plus both of my upgrades.  From there it was mostly smooth sailing.  I did have a couple of less than optimal runs and had to discard my hand twice but I had enough momentum in the game that I was able to win it with relative ease.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Russian Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	2.00
India Rails	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	2	1	1	-	-	-	-		-	1.50