After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, February 13, 2014

I went to Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks this week.  I was not sure what to expect in the way of attendance with Valentine’s Day being the next day and there being a holiday weekend as well.  I was pleasantly surprise that the turnout was approximately 30 people and 6 games were being played at any one time.

I played two games at the event.

The first was Sail to India.  Sail to India is a game of exploration.  The players are Portuguese nobles who are trying to find the best trade route to India from Lisbon.  During the trips they need to use trade goods to finance their expeditions, set up strongholds, churches, and markets, and explore new lands.  The players get two actions during their turn.  With these actions they can hire a worker, move a ship, establish a building, purchase a technology, or go to market.  All of the actions cost money except of going to market which is the only way to make money to pay for other things in the game.  The game ends when the second player has hired their last worker or India is discovered.  The person with the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

Since this was my second game I had a much better understanding of the mechanics at the start of the game so I decided I would try to develop a strategy around building churches that came up on the cards along the path to India.  Since they were worth two victory points each at the end of the game, and if I got the technology that make them worth an additional two points at the end of the game, I was have a reasonable chance of winning the game.

The game started out well enough I was able to get the money I need in trade to start the strategy going.  At some point in the game I missed a beat and I fell behind by a turn on getting churches but.  It may have been that the game ended more quickly that I expected because the game end condition was that the second played purchased the last of their workers.  I only ended up with two churches and in a distant third place.

The other game that I played was Smash Up.  Smash Up is a card game where players are given two sets of card from different B movie factions.  The players then shuffle the cards from these two factions together take a hand of five cards from the deck.  Each turn the players use one minion and one action from their hand then add two cards to their hand at the end of their turn.  The players may never end their turn with more than 10 cards in their hand.  They use their minions and actions to try to attack strongholds and other players in the game.  The idea being that they are the player that has the most points in minions attacking a stronghold when it is destroyed.  When a stronghold is destroyed points are given to the players based on who put the most minion points towards destroying the stronghold.  The first player to 15 points wins.

This was my first time playing Smash Up.  The factions I got were the Aliens and Dinosaurs.  I was playing against players who had the Elder Thing and Miskatonic University factions and the Steampunks and Bear Cavalry factions.

As the game progressed I felt that my factions were under powered compared to the other players in most cases my minions were of 3 power or less and my actions were very limited while the other players had more powerful minions on average and could do more than one action per turn.   As the realization dawned on me I figured that my only chance was to try to get in the money on every stronghold destruction that I could because I had very little chance of winning a conflict for a stronghold against either of my opponents.  This worked out for me fairly well.  I was able to come in second in the game because the other players were fighting each other for first place and as a result one would endd up in third place almost every time.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Sail to India	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	3.00
Smash Up	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Totals	2	-	1	1	-	-	-		-	2.50