After Action Report – Games Gathering @ Brookhurst Hobbies, August 2, 2014

I attended the Games Gathering at Brookhurst Hobbies on Saturday.  There were 18 people at the event with four games being played at any one time.

I was able to play two games at the event.  Both of them were from the Empire Builder family.

In the Empire Builder family of games the players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.  In order to win the game, the player must be the first to have track connecting a number of major cities on the board and have at least $250 million dollars.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association Game Day @ El Toro Public Library, June 14, 2014

I hosted the Strategic & Adventure Game Association game Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.  There were 18 people in attendance and up to five games were being played at once.

I decided that starting with this month’s event that I would institute a score keeping protocol for the group where we would start keeping track of the results of the games that were being played at the event with the idea of providing prizes at the end of the year for the best players.  This used to be done as part of the Orange County Board Gamers group until the organizers did not have time for it so I decided to institute it on a smaller scale.  The plan is to do this across the So Cal Game Connection meetup group which I and another event organizer started.  Participation is voluntary so any information I get from it will most likely be incomplete but I still think the exercise will still be worthwhile.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ The El Toro Public Library, April 12, 2014

The Strategic & Adventure Game Association game day at the El Toro Public Library had a lower attendance than normal.  It could have had something to do with taxes being due next week and there being some procrastinators like me out there or the nice weather.  Regardless of the cause there were 13 people at the event with three games being played at any one time.

I was able to play three games at the event.

The first was Empire Builder.  It is a game of rail building and goods transportation in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.  The players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association @ El Toro Library, January 25, 2014

The Strategic and Adventure Game Association game day at the El Toro Library had the best attendance number it had had in a long time.  There were 26 people at the event and 7 games being played at any one time.  There were a number of new faces at the event and some people that had not been there in a while.  I hope this trend of higher attendance continues and we see as many people the next time.

I was able to play four games at the event.

The first was one of the Empire Builder games, British Rails.

To review, in the Empire Builder family of games the players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.  In order to win the game, the player must be the first to have track connecting a number of major cities on the board and have at least $250 million dollars.

British takes place in England, Scotland and Wales and is played the same as other Empire Builder games.  There are no special rules in British Rails that set it apart from Empire Builder except that the players get 3 build turns at the beginning of the game in a standard game and 4 build turns in a fast game.

It had been six month since I had last played this game, but I knew that my best bet was to try to build from Manchester north into Scotland as early in the game as possible which fit my initial hand perfectly as I had two loads originating in one city that both went to the same city in Scotland.  After the initial trip I continued to get solid sets of cards and was able to win the game easily.

I followed British Rails with Australian Rails.  Australian Rails is one of the games in the Empire Builder family.  In the Empire Builder family of games the players own railroad companies that are competing to build rail lines and move freight from one city to another based on a set of demand cards that they have.  Once a demand on a demand card is completed the player discards it and draws a new one from the deck.  Included in the demand card deck are a number of disaster cards which include things like derailments and river floods which impede the player’s progress to victory.  In order to win the game, the player must be the first to have track connecting a number of major cities on the board and have at least $250 million dollars.  In the case of Australian you need to connect 3 major cities plus the city of Perth on the opposite side of the continent from the other major cities.

I do not generally do well in this game.  This time I tried something that I had not done in a while to see if it would change my fortune this time.  Instead of trying to build my east to west track as early as possible in the game I started the game build north up the east coast of Australia.  The theory being that there are a larger variety of resources in the cities along the east coast.   As a result, you should be able to offset any extra expense building this track by having more options open to you.  It did work but not for me.  One the other players was able to get a very lucrative set of cards that required him to use my track, but made him over half the money he needed to win the.  He ran away with the game and won leaving me in third place.

The third game was Iron Dragon.  The setting for Iron Dragon is a fantasy world filled with things like dwarves, elves, and orcs, which is great if you are playing Dungeons & Dragons, but not my preference for a rail game.  As usual I will not review the major differences in this game from the others in the series as I have done so in previous reports.

As usual with this game I had a solid start and was able to keep things going quite well for about two thirds of the game.  At that point the cards stopped working for me and as my momentum slowed the other players were able to catch up and beat me.  The scores were close.  I came in third place but there were only 3 points between me and the second place player.

The final game of the day was Organic Soup.  Organic Soup is a card game in which the players collect cards to create chemicals and chemical reactions.

The players start the game with a set of chemicals they can create, one simple, one complex, and one amino nucleic.  In addition there are basic chemicals available for creation on the table.  The players take turns either collecting carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen or oxygen atoms from 12 face up cards in the center of the table to create any chemical that is face up on the table or use atom from reaction is front of them to place a chemical in their hand down.  In addition when they are creating a new chemical they may steal unprotected atom from other players.  The game ends when there are no more atoms in the deck to place out or when a player creates the first amino nucleic acid.

As in my previous game I focused on the things that I would need to complete my amino nucleic and used them to finish a number of simple and complex reactions until I could get the last things I needed to complete my amino nucleic.  It took a while but I was able to finish my amino nucleic before the other players even though both of them were gunning for me because of my previous wins against them and won the game.

My stats for this event:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
British Rails	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.00
Australian Rails	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
Iron Dragon	1	-	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	3.00
Organic Soup	1	1	-	-	-	-	-			1.00
Totals	4	2	-	2	-	-	-		-	2.00

If You Are Interested in These Games:

     

Game Review – Australian Rails

Australian Rails
Number of Players	2 - 6
Play Time	120 Minutes
Ages	12 Years and up

In this review I am going to go back to the reoccurring Mayfair Empire Builder series that I consistently play and review another one of the game in the series.

Australian Rails like the other games in the Empire Builder series is a game about building an efficient and prosperous railroad network in a location on earth or a number of fantasy settings.  In the case of Australian Rails in the location of the game is Australia.

In Australian Rails the players are building the railroad networks in the populated eastern shores of the continent or around Perth in the west and eventually into the Outback to be able to connect the two sides of the country.  All the while they will need to deal with sand storms in the deserts, bridges getting washed out, forest fires and other disasters.

The basic rules for Australian Rails are like all of the other Empire Builder games.  It uses the unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games, the free form building of track.  The player uses special crayons that are included with the game to draw their track on the board.  Between games the marking from the previous game are erased from the game so that in the next play of the game the players start with a fresh board.

There is nothing surprising in the game plays of Australian Rails versus the other Empire Builder games.  The player gets three demand cards at the start of the game.  Each of the demand cards has three different load demands on them.  In order to complete the card, a player must deliver one of loads on a card to the city that needs the item.  Once the load is delivered the player discards the demand card and gets a new on in its place.  If the player does not like the demand cards they have they can opt to lose a turn and replace all of them.

A turn goes as follows.  The player moves their train along their track on the board, and then builds any additional track they need or upgrade their train before passing the turn.  At any city they go though during their turn the player my pick up or drop off any loads they have without the loss of movement.  The amount of movement the train can take depends on the size of train they have.  The starting train moves 9 spaces and can carry 2 loads.  The super freight, which is the best train can move 12 spaces and carry 3 loads.  During the build phase the player can spend up to 20 million yen to upgrade their train or build additional track.  Track costs are the same as other games in the series, 1 million for plains, 2 million for mountains, +1 million for a dry riverbed, and +2 million for a river crossing.  In addition there is a ferry to Tasmania that the player can opt to build for 8 million.   In order to win Australian Rails you must be the first to connect three of the four major cities in eastern Australian and Perth in the west and have 250 million yen. 

As with all the games in the Empire Builder series, Australian Rails can be slow for players that are new to the game, mostly because they are not familiar with the map and where the loads originate from.  Because of this, I always recommend that new players play with the fast start rules and fast trains to help speed the game along.  In the case of Australian Rails those fast start rules are the player starts with five demand cards and they must discard down to three by the end of the pre-build.  The train speeds are increased from 9 to 12 for Freight and Heavy Freight and 12 to 16 for Fast and Super Freight.   The Tax Card is ignored.

The unique rule to Australian Rails is that it is the only game in the Empire Builder series that allows players to start their track from anywhere other than a major city.  In this case that city is Darwin in the north.  I do not see the option used very often mostly because there are not very many cities around it and it does not count as major city for victory purposes.  In fact I do not remember ever seeing someone win the game while building to Darwin.

Australian Rails is one of the earlier additions to the Empire Builder family so it does not have any of the additional special rules that the later games such as special load cards like Martian and Russian Rails have.  It is a solid addition to the series.

There are two viable options to victory for the game.  You need to create an L with the base going up the east or west coast and the length of it stretching along the south coast.  Most people try to do the east coast option as it is easier to start to get to pay off, but the west coast option can lead to a faster victory provided you have the cards to support it.

I recommend Australian Rails to players who have played other games in the series.  It gives you a different place to build railroad networks that is not as narrow as Nippon Rails and there are a number of ways to victory.  As always if you are new to the Empire Builder series I recommend you try the game that corresponds to an area of the world where you are familiar with the geography when first learning the game.  That way you have one less hurdle to overcome when learning to play the game.

If You Are Interested In Purchasing This Game: