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

I went to Thursday Night Gaming at Paradise Perks.  There were 25 – 30 people at the event and five games were being played at any one time. 

I knew that a number of the people who attend the event regularly were not going to there so I made sure that I brought three games that I had not played in a while and wanted to get more plays in on.  I was able to play two of them including one twice.  I had decided earlier this week that this year I wanted to see how many games I could get at least 10 plays in on.  I figure that this is the best way to really get the feel for a game.  In know that I cannot control the number of games that I get to play of games that I do not own so each week when I go to an event, I am trying to get at least on play in of a game that I own.  I will be changing the games that I bring with me to the events each week so that I do not become too much more repetitive when I am writing my after action reports even though it will make it more of a challenge to get to the 10 plays for the year.  This will also not deter me from trying new games as well. 

The three games that I brought to this event were Bazaar, Empire Builder, and Trans America and as I stated I was able to play two of the three.

I started the evening with Trans America.  Trans America is a game that is deceptively easy to learn but is very difficult to master.  In Trans America the players are required to connect up five different cities in different regions of the United States.  The players start building track from their starting post.  If they connect up to another player’s track, they can build off of that player’s track as well as their own.  In this way players wind up helping each other out while trying to achieve their own goals.

This was a teaching game for me.  During a teaching game I concentrate on making sure that the other players are getting an understanding of the game more than on winning.  I believe that it is more important to make sure that the players understand the game and my extension hopefully enjoying the game so that they become repeat players.

I managed to not lose too many points during each round but I was not able to win any particular round during this play of the game.  When I was placing my starting post I would make sure that I was close to three of my cities.  Unfortunately my fourth and fifth cities managed to be in different corners of the board so it became very difficult to get to both of them before someone else went out.  As a result I came in second out of the four players that were playing.

I then played Bazaar.  In Bazaar the players are gem traders trying to fulfill gem orders from demand cards in competition with the other players.  They do this by using two trading boards that represent the exchange rates for the market.  For example one red gem can be traded for two blue gems.  The players use the exchange to fulfill the demand cards as efficiently as possible to maximize their points.

It was again a teaching game.  I was able to get a early lead but then I started to stall out and the other players were catching up to me.  The four piles of demand cards were being depleted fairly evenly so that by the time that we went into the second stage of the game we were guaranteed to end the game with only one person taking a card, which is what happened and that player was able to get the win with me coming in second.

The last game of the evening for me was again Trans America.  There were three new players that wanted to try it out so I was teaching it again.  This time however I had a horrible start and ended up losing six points in the first round.  I followed this up by losing two more points in the second round.  I was in a very bad position going into the third round and fully expected the game to end after this round was over because two of the other players were in almost as bad a spot as I was.  Fortunately I was able to turn it round and got to all of my cities before the other players did.  This let me take second and escape the game with my dignity intact.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Trans America	2	-	2	-	-	-	-	-	-	2.00
Bazaar	1	-	1	-	-	-	-			2.00
Totals	3	-	3	-	-	-	-		-	2.00