After Action Report – Board Game Night @ Comic Quest, June 19, 2014

I had a fun but difficult night at Board Game Night at Comic Quest on Thursday.  I preformed very poorly at the games that I played which was a bummer after the great performance I had last Saturday.  There were 20 people at the event with five games being played at any one time.

I played three games at the event.

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 decided to play a wall strategy this time as I have usually done lately.  Unfortunately this time it got me into a little trouble this time.  Everything started out well and I got my score off to a good start in the first scoring round.  However I saw that I had build myself into a corner and had very few options for tiles that I could add to my palace because of the walls that I had already built.  The times that there were tiles that would work I had to pay more than the cost which prevented me from doing multiple actions during my turns which is very important.  While I was able to maintain my lead through the second scoring round, I was not able to do so during the final scoring because I just did not get the number of tiles I needed to win enough set points.  I ended up in second place in the game.

The next game I played was Hollywood Blockbuster.  Hollywood Blockbuster, also known as Dream Factory, is a game where the player each run a studio that are competing with the other studios to attract the talent they need to complete movies and win awards.  The players do this by bidding on talent from the talent pools that are available over a quarter.  There are six talent pools available per quarter.  The player who bids the most for a talent pool turns in their bid which is then split between the other players and added to their funds.  Twice during each quarter there are parties where each player gets to chose one available talent to add to one of their films.  Points are gained by the value of the talent placed in each completed film and by bonuses for the first films completed of each type, the best film for the first three quarters of the game and having the best film in each category, the best group of directors and the worst film of the game.  The person with the most points wins the game.

I played this game too conservatively.  I spent the entire game focused on maximizing my talent in the first set of films I was to complete that I was not able to get additional films by the time I had completed the original ones.  This resulted in me not getting too many bonus points plus the other players were able to complete more films than I was which extended their leads even further.  I ended the game in third place out of three players.

The last game of the event for me was Ticket to Ride Europe.  This was the second game in the Ticket to Ride family of games and is my preferred game in that family.  We used the 1912 tickets in the game and did not use the warehousing option.

In the Ticket to Ride games, the players are given a number of tickets that have a start and finish destination and a point value.  The players then attempt to connect these cities using sets of cards of single card to link up cities between these their destination cities.  If you succeed in connecting up the destination cities on your ticket by the end of the game, you get a number of points equal to the value on the ticket.  If you do not connect the destination, you lose the number of points equal to the value on the ticket. 

The thing that makes the game a challenge is that there are a limited number of links between cities.   Once a player claims on no other player can use that link.  The reason that I like Ticket to Ride Europe is that it has a game mechanism called stations that allows a player to use another player’s link as if it were his own for purpose of completing tickets which helps mitigate being cut off from your destination.

We had five players in this game which I believe is a first for me.  Fearing that the board was going to get too congested and that I would not be able to complete either of the long ticket that I was dealt at the beginning of the game I opted to discard them both and took four short tickets instead.  This turned out to be a mistake as I ended up building pretty much the same track I would have needed to complete one of my long tickets during the course of the game.  I did manage to complete five regular tickets but I knew that that would not be enough to get me the win and ended up in fourth place out of five players.

My stats for the event: