I went to Board Game Night at Comic Quest on Thursday. There was a good crowd at the event. There approximately 20 people at the event
and up to five games being played at any one time.
I played four games that evening.
The first game I played was 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.
It has been a couple months since I last played Trans
America. I noticed that I have not
managed to find a winning strategy for this game yet. I not won a game of it and I am usually the
most experienced player at the table when I play it any more. In the first round I tried to place my starting
post directly between my farthest east and farthest west cities to see if it
would work. The idea was to build evenly
between the cities and pick up my other cities along the way. I did not get to all of my cities that round
and ended up losing four points.
In the second round I decided to place my starting post between
my blue and red cities. Since my yellow
city was directly between these two cities it seemed like a good idea. This time it did work out for me. I connected all of my cities first this
time. One of the players ran off the end
of the score track and ended the game. Unfortunately
did not stick the other player with enough points to give me the victory and I
ended up in second place out of three players.
The second game of the night was Streetcar. In Streetcar the players need to set up
trolley track in New The first one
to complete these two tasks wins the game.
In the first part of the game, the players need to build
their track. They start the game with
five track tiles. They place two track
tiles on to the board. They must connect
to existing track and may not dead end into the fixed locations on the board or
the edge of the board. After they have
placed their second tile they then draw back up to five tiles. During the tile placement turn a player may
upgrade a tile that has already placed with a new tile as long as the
connections that the existing tile had are maintained. The tile that is being replaced is taken by
the player that is doing the upgrade.
Upgrading a tile counts as one of the tile placements that a player
makes during their turn.
When the first tile is placed next to a fixed location, a
stop is placed on the track. When the
player is running their train along the track later in the game they must stop
their movement any time they go into a stop with one of these stop signs.
After a player has connected their fixed locations and their
two terminals with track the player may start to move their train along it. The player may move their train one more
space than the last train was moved but must stop their movement when they
reach one of the stops signs on the board.
The first player to reach their end terminal wins the game.
It had been years since I had played this game. I got my card with the fixed locations I
needed to go to. It seemed that it was
going to be an easy enough game. Then I
started to get my replacement tiles and I began to realize how much trouble I
was going to be in. I could not get
tiles that were remotely what I needed and as I tried to make do with what I
was getting and hope for better tiles it just kept getting worse. When I finally got everything connected and
had a drivable route I was the last player to start my streetcar out from the
terminal. I ended up in last place out
of three players.
The third game I played was 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.
I played this game last week and was successful in winning
it so I figured I would give it another try to see if it was a fluke. This time I decided to be less ambitious in
trying to enclose a space with my track and was successful in building an area
that had five stations inside it. I was
also able to connect two set of commercial products for another six
points. This became the anchor of my
track for the first half co the game but as the game progressed I found that I
was making more points with my two side lines than I was the initial track I
built. This was because one of the other
players built a line across the board and as a result got much of the cross
town traffic to go along that track.
However with the tack points I was able to get during the game, I was
able to get the win.
The last game of the evening was 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.
This time the game worked out for me. I was able to get my first set after the
second trade and there was no stopping me after that. I was able to consistently get a set every 3
or four turns and ended the game with five set.
I won this game by a pretty good margin.
I think it will be a while before I can repeat this performance.
As a side note this was the tenth time I played the game
this year and is the first game where I have reach 10 plays.
My stats for the event:
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