After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks, April 3, 2014

I went to Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perks again this week.  There were 35 people at the event with 8 games being played at any one time.

I switched out the games that I brought from my collection that I wanted to increase my number of plays on in an effort to get to 10 plays this year.  This month’s games are Airlines Europe, Alhambra, and Trans Europa.

I was able to play Alhambra and Trans Europa at this event.

The first one I played was Trans Europa.  Trans Europa is a game that is deceptively easy to learn but is very difficult to master.  In Trans Europa, the players are required to connect up five different cities in different regions of Europe.  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.  A round ends after the first player reaches their cities.  All of the other players reduce their scores, which start at 13 points, by the number of spaces they missed hitting their cities by.  The game ends when one of the players loses all 13 of their points.  The winner is the person who has the most points remaining.

When I play this game I have a tendency to start on the eastern side of the board.  It is usually where I can get 3 of the 5 cities grouped together.  Unfortunately many times it leaves me with 2 outlaying cities that are difficult for me to reach unless one of the other players is building on the far end of the board initially.  This is what I did in the first round of the game and it served me poorly.  I ended the round four spaces from my last city and lost four points.  Another player managed to do worse than I did and lost nine points however so all was not lost.

In the second round I decided to change it up I started the round in the south central area of the board in hopes that I would be able to cover my cities there and use other people to get me close to the cities I needed to get to in the east and the west.  This worked out for me only slightly better as I only lost 3 points in the round.  The round was also the end of the game because the player that lost 9 points in the first round managed to lose another six points taking him below zero.  I ended the game in third place out of four players.

The second game I played was Alhambra.  In Alhambra players are trying to build the best palace complex by acquiring buildings that enhance increase its value.  The more expensive the building the more versatility it has in the way of being able to build more additions to the complex.

At the beginning of the game the players start with a single fountain tile that all buildings that are build must have a path to or they may not be placed, and 20 – 28 coins to be able to purchase buildings with.  Coins come in denominations of 1 – 9 in one of four different currencies.  There are four different buildings that will be up for sale during each players turn, the currency that is used to purchase the building is dependent on where it is placed in the market. 

The player may perform one of three actions during their turn.  They can purchase a building, take more coins, or take a tile from their reserve / redesign their palace complex.  If they purchase a building for the exact amount during their turn they may take an additional action during their turn.

There are three scoring rounds during the game.  During each scoring round the player with the most of one of the types of building scores they points for that type of building.  In the first scoring round, only the player with the most buildings of a type gets the points.  In the second round the players that have the most and second most score points for the type of building.  In the third round the top three players get points.  In addition each player scores a point per segment for their longest wall.

The game consisted of mostly new players so I considered it a teach game for me.  For those who are new, in a teaching game I focus most of my effort in making sure that the players that are new to the game, which in this case were four of the six of us in the game, are understanding the mechanics of the game and trying to give them helpful pointers as to what to do as we play.

I started the game on a good roll.  I was able to get a tile each round before the first scoring round except for one.  Unfortunately none of these tiles game me a clear majority in any color and added to only having 3 wall segments did not give me a very good score.  I was in the middle of the pack but not near the lead.  This changed in the second scoring round.  I had clear majorities in two colors so I was able to jump into the lead.  My lead ended up being eroded by the final scoring round and I ended the game in a shared victory with one of the other players.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Trans Europa	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	3.00
Alhambra	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	2	1	-	1	-	-	-		-	2.00