After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association@ El Toro Public Library, March 8, 2014

On Saturday I started my weekend of gaming at the Strategic & Adventure Gaming Association event at the El Toro Public Library.  There were 23 people at the event and five games were being played at any one time.

I was able to play three games at the event.

The first two games I played were from the Empire Builder family of games.  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 China Rails, which is set in of all places China.  The goal is China Rails is to connect the four major cities on the board and have a ferry connection to Taiwan.  All four major cities are on the eastern half of the board, but if a player wants the highest possible chance for victory they need to build to the western part of the board to be able to get to the commodities with the highest pay out.

It has been quite a while since I played China Rails.  My first set of cards ideally set up for a south to north run on the east coast.  I figured I could start out doing that run to get my city requirement for the end game early while I was building up the cash that I needed to build out to the west when I got the cards to do it.  Unfortunately two other players started to build up the north east and it was impossible for me to get to one of my destination cities without renting one of them when I got there.  It took me longer than expected to get them money and cards I needed to justify building out to the west, but I did it and it would have but me into range to get the money I needed to win the game.  Things were going well and then disaster struck.  As I was dropping off my first load of three in the area at Urumqi , I drew a derailment card that affected me.  With that I lost a third of the cargo any reasonable chance of catching up.  As I made my way back east with a couple of loads that would make up for the loss, the game ended with me in fourth place out of four.

The second game 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 able to start the game in a good position.  I had a good starting set of cards that provided me the capital I needed and track in the right place on the board.  After that the game went sideways and not just for me.  All of us that were playing were having a tough time in the game.  With every single one of us going through an extended period of changing out our hands to try to get sets that would work for our track.  It was so bad that we actually when through the entire demand deck and had to reshuffle the cards, which almost never happens.  I was able to get to the point where I had the loads on board that I needed to win the game and was on my way to deliver them when the game ended.  I ended the game in third place.

The third 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.

The first time I played the game I did poorly.  So I tried to remember the lessons I learned from the first time I played and not make the same mistakes.  My general strategy was to try to get one of the bonus cards each round so that even if I did not win the building points I would still get something each round and keep in contention for the victory.  This worked out for me in the first two round of the game.  In both of those rounds I did not get any design points for my build but I did get bonuses for having a straight on the dice in the first round and five the same color dice in the second round.  In the final round I decided to not follow the blueprint I was given and build a tall tower with dice of the same color in order to try to get the bonus for tall building and five of the same color dice.  I actually won the building competition, but did not get either of the bonuses because other players got them by using the preferred building materials for that round.  I ended the game in third place out of four players.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
China Rails	1	-	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	4.00
Russian Rails	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	3.00
Blueprints	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
Totals	3	-	-	2	1	-	-		-	3.33