After Action Report – Game Day @ The Duck Club, March 9, 2014

The Sunday event of my game weekend in March was Game Day over at the Duck Club.  This is a 10 hour event that takes place once a month in the local area.  The good things about the event are that it gets a lot of players and you have a lot of time to play games.   The bad thing about the event are that the acoustics in the room are so bad that one the event gets to about half the capacity it gets almost impossible to hear the people that are participating in the game your are playing.  Because of those poor acoustics, I can only stand to be at the event for 4 -5 hours before the background noise drives me away.  There were around 50 people at the event and 10 games were being played t any one time.

I was able to play three games at the event.

The first game I played was Ticket to Ride using the 1910 Mega Game deck.  The theme of the game is that the players are owners of train companies that are building rail lines in the United States.   The goal is to establish routes between the cities on the tickets that the players receive.  If the players connect the cities on a ticket they will receive bonus points at the end of the game based on the value on the ticket.  If they do not connect the cities on one of their tickets the player loses the number of points on the ticket.  Points are also scored for placing trains between two cities on the board more trains needed the more points are scored.

Game play is simple.  The players start out the game with three tickets that have destinations that they can connect of which they must keep at least two.  They will also receive four train cards. An additional five train cards are placed face up by the side of the board along with draw decks of train cards and tickets

The train cards are the core of the game.  They come in eight different colors and there is a ninth card type which is a wild card and can be used as any color.  These train cards are what are used to make the connections between the cities.  Each connection is represented by a number of spaces that are a single color.  If a player wished to claim a connection between two cities they must turn in the number of cards of that color.  They then place trains from their reserve on that connection.  After a connection is claimed no other player may use that connection.

The players choose one of three actions to take during their turn.  The first is that they may take train cards from the five cards that are face up or from the draw deck.  The second option is that they may claim a connection between two cities.  The third option is that they may take additional tickets.

The 1910 Mega Game Deck changes the standard ticket deck out with a deck of 181 tickets that includes every Ticket to Ride ticket that has been published.  It changes the number of tickets that a players get to five tickets of which they need to keep 3 or more and if a player takes more tickets during the game, they get to draw four tickets and the only need to keep one of them.

At the start of the game I kept only three of the tickets I was dealt.  They were San Francisco to Atlanta, San Francisco to Washington and Los Angeles to New York.  If I were able to complete these tickets I would get 58 points at the end of the game.  Since they would use the same track going across the country I was confident that I would be able to complete them.  It took me about half the game to make my way across the country and I was only cut of once which surprised me.  After I got to all my destination cities I picked up some more tickets one of which I had completed which the track that I had already built and one that should be relatively easy to complete.  Unfortunately, it was not as easy to get the train cards that I needed to complete the last ticket and that took me most of the rest of the game.   Once I completed it I kept collecting ticket cards in order to build the longest length of track that I could by the time the game ended because I did not think I could complete another ticket before the game ended. The 73 points I got for the tickets I completed and the bonus for completing the most tickets secured me the win in this game.

The second game of the day was Blueprints.  In Blueprints the players are trying to construct buildings based on a blueprint that they receive.  The building blocks are dice that the players take turns using from a pool of dice there are four different colors of dice representing four different building materials which score points based on how they are used in a building.  The players spend six rounds building their buildings which are then scored based on accuracy to their blueprint and what materials that they used in the building.  After the buildings are scored the players receive victory point cards based on who scored the most for their building and other bonuses based on things like height and what the number facings are on their dice.  Once the victory points are given out the next round begins and goes on until the end of the third round.  The player with the most victory points wins.

I adjusted my strategy slightly from my game of Blueprints from the day before.  When I built my first building of the game, I went off spec and built a 5 tall stone tower with one additional glass 6 to one side and won design bonus, the height bonus, and the have five of the same type of resource bonus.  This got me off to a good start.  The other two rounds of the game I follow my blueprints and was able to get second in the design bonus in the second round and win it again in the third round.  I was also able to win one additional bonus in each of those rounds as well and win the game.

The final game of the day for me was Russian Railroads.In Russian Railroad the players take turns placing workers on actions on the board.  These actions consist of building factories, upgrading trains, moving pieces up the rail or industrial track, and purchasing engineers.  Once all of the players have placed their workers, the round is over and everything is scored and the game moves on to the next round.  The game lasts seven rounds.

To review my discoveries about the game thus far, there are two good strategies to the game.  The first is to focus on building two of the rail lines trying to maximize the advantages you can get from them to gather as many points as possible.  The other is to focus on building factories and only build the track you need to gain bonuses to complete building a full set of factories.

I have also determined that there is importance in collecting some engineers especially if their abilities help you reach your goals.  There is also a 40 point bonus at the end of the game if you have the most engineers.  In order get engineers you must make sure that you go early in the turn order by using one of your workers to make sure you are the first player in the next turn.  The plus about using the worker in this way in Russian Railroads versus other worker placement games, is that you get to reuse the worker at the end of the round on another action.

I found myself pushed towards the factory strategy during this play of the game like I was the last time I played.  I did follow a similar pattern of maximizing the Moscow to Kiev and Moscow to St. Petersburg routed in order to get the extra worker and the bonuses.  I focused on getting engineers as well which was difficult because one of the players tried to keep a strangle hold on the cash coming into the game which I had to break in order to do it but I did manage to get four engineers and was able to get three of the four factories that give bonuses for the value of the engineers.  This along with the other players not playing the track building strategy very well gave the win in the game.

The day was a very good one for me especially compared to my results from Saturday.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Ticket to Ride	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.00
Blueprints	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.00
Russian Railroads	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	3	3	-	-	-	-	-		-	1.00