Friday, May 30, 2014

After Action Report – Board Game Night @ Comic Quest, May 29, 2014



I went to Board Game Night at Comic Quest on Thursday.  The night started slowly.  People really did not start showing up until about 30 minutes after the event was supposed to start.  We did end up getting a pretty good turnout.  There were 18 people at the event and four games were being played at any one time.  Event with the late start I was able to play two games.

The first game I played was called On the Underground.  On the Underground is a network development game.  The idea behind the game is the players are trying to help the passenger to move around London using the lines that they develop for the underground transportation system they have.  Depending on the number of players in the game each player receives the pieces that represent the lines that they can develop.  In a two player game each player gets four lines, in a three player game each player gets three lines and in a four or five player game each player gets two lines.


During each turn the player may add up to four lengths of track to the board.  They may start a new line or add to one of their existing lines in any combination as long as they are adding to one of the ends of their track.  The player may collect branch marker instead of laying track at a cost of one track per branch marker.  Branch markers are the only way that a player my add side track to their lines at a cost of two branch markers per branch in the line.

After the player places their track the passenger is them moved to up to two of four possible destinations.  Where the passenger goes is determined by a number of factors including trying not to have to walk and taking a few lines as possible to the destination.  The destinations available for the passenger to go to come from the destination cards.  Destination cards are divided into two colors, gold and white.  Four destination cards are face up during a player’s turn.  When the player has placed their track, the passenger moves to the most convenient gold destination then to the most convenient white destination from there.  If there are no cards of one of the colors showing the passenger moves to only one destination.

Points are scored by building track to certain train stations and termini as well as for connecting types of shopping areas on the board.  They are also scored when the passenger moves along one of their lines.  The game ends when there are no longer destination cards available to fill up the four face up destinations.

This is another one of those games that I had not played in a while that took from my collection to see if I could get on the table.  I succeeded in getting a couple of people interested and we started playing.  I focused my game on trying to place all of the track in my long line before I started working on another color.   The idea behind this was I was hoping to complete the largest loop possible to not only score some extra points but to also give myself the greatest opportunity for it to be used by the passenger.  The other players managed to block me from making a complete loop but I did manage to get all of the track out and connect a number of the similar shopping districts which still got me a good number of points.  After that I started to build out my second line where the passenger was going to be spending time based on the current destination possibilities and developed my third line in the other part of the board.  Doing this was able to accumulate a number of terminus and delivery points during the second half of the game.  I did manage to win the game only barely.

The other game I played 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 had a shaky first round in the game.  I was not able to pick up any of the bonus point cards and my building score was not enough to get me first place.  I made up for it in the second round my winning first place in building score and getting two of the building bonuses.  In the last round I missing the building bonus I was trying to get but I did manage to win the building scoring again.  This made ti so I won the game.

My stats for the event:

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