After Action Report – Thursday Night Gaming @ Paradise Perk, April 10, 2014

On Thursday I went to Paradise Perks again for their Thursday Night Gaming event.  There were around 30 of us in attendance with 6 games being played at any one time.

I was able to play two games one of which I played twice.

The first 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.

I was playing in a teaching game again as half of the players were new to the game.  I kept to my strategy of buying tiles when I could as often as I could.  Unfortunately most of the tiles I was getting were from the low scoring tile colors.  This did not seem to hurt me too much in the first round as I was able to keep in a solid second place which had more to do with the six points I got for my wall than that I had great tiles.  Before the second scoring I was able to pick up a number of green tiles which helped my score so much that I ended the scoring round in first place.  During the last phase of the game I was not able to make much in the way of improvements on my Alhambra since we went into it with only eight tiles left in the bag.  I was low on money and the tiles got taken before I could replenish my funds.  I ended the game in third place.  Granted it was only five points behind the winner but it was still third place.

I then tried my luck at Trans Europa again and actually ended up playing it twice.  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.

In the first game I fought my urge to start on the eastern side of the board and focused my efforts on starting close to where most of my cards were figuring I would worry about the outlaying cities after I got my core cities in hopes that one of the other players in the game would build close to them.  In the first round it did not work out so well.  I started on the western side of the board but still managed to lose four points.  During the second and third rounds I started in southeastern Europe and in both rounds I managed to get to my cities first and as a result won the game.

The second game was different for me and as a result a treat.  I played head to head against a player with which I was evenly matched.  Instead of the normal two or three round the game normally takes our game took seven rounds.  In the first two rounds we each lost a point.  The other player won the first round which put me on the defensive.  During the second round I stumbled on to a building strategy that I used during the rest of the game.  Instead of building my east – west track as a priority, I found that building the north – south track first was providing me with a higher probability of a win.  This was based on my experience from the previous game as well as what I did up to that point during his game.  I made an effort during the rest of the game to connect vertically first then go after the cities on either side of the map.  This strategy turned out to be successful because during the next three rounds I was able to win the round and make my opponent lose a total of 11 points.  In the sixth round I managed to lose three points but ended the game in victory during the seventh round by taking the other players last point.

My stats for the event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Alhambra	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	3.00
Trans Europa	2	2	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	3	2	-	1	-	-	-		-	1.67