Game Review – Circus Train

Circus Train
Number of Players	1 - 8
Play Time	90 Minutes
Ages	13 Years and up

Circus Train is one of the few Victory Point Games that I have tried.  Since they are headquartered near to where I am I decided that it was about time that I review one of their games.

The theme of Circus Train is the players are owners of circuses in the 1920s.  They are traveling the Northeast and Midwest o the United States by train trying to put on shows and hire additional talent to improve future shows.  Every time a player’s circus performs, the players score the show based on the demand of the show.  If the score is better than their previous best show, they will receive a bonus in their payment for the performance.  Victory points are scored at the end of each month for the top three performances and who has the most of a certain type of performer.

The players move around the board using a set of eight cards that allow movement and actions to be performed.  The players may only play a certain card once until all of eight of their cards are used.  They may then start reusing them.  The actions included on the train are moving a certain number of cities, performing, hiring talent, and paying performers.

Each turn 8 – 12 cities have demands for shows and act looking to be hired.  The number available depends on how late it is into the season whit more being available later in the season.  When the players get to the cities they must spend at least a turn there to perform the action necessary to complete the demand.  The later in the season the more money is earned for the performance, but the acts that are in demand are also more expensive to maintain.

While I like some of the concepts in the game, I found that the game did not meet my expectations.  The main problem as I see it is that it is has an inherent rich get richer engine in the game.  In other words if you get a good start in the game odds are that you will win the game.  There are a number of catch up mechanisms present in the game to help the other players out such as the player in last place can take an act from the player in the lead a number of times in the game, but they do not slow down the player in the lead by much and can actually help them.

The rule book is overly complicated and filled with a lot of text and there are lots of rules buried in the text that makes the game difficult to play out of the box.  The first time I was going to try the game, right out of the box I was hoping that I would be able to read over the rules in 5 – 10 minutes and be able to review them with the other players and start the game like many other Euros out there.  Unfortunately this was not the case and we had to put the game aside until somebody would have time to go over the rules or learn it elsewhere.  Once the rules were explained to me, I was baffled at how easy they were compared to the way that the rulebook made them out to be.

Circus Train is definitely not one of my favorite games.  It does have some potential and I would play it again to be sociable, but it would not be one of my first choices to play.  If you like rich get richer type games with overly complex rules then you should take a look at Circus Train because it may be right up your alley.

If You Are Interested in Purchasing This Game:

After Action Report – Game Day @ Brookhurst Hobbies, October 5, 2013

Game Day at Brookhurst Hobbies was lightly attended as most events over the last couple of weeks have been.  15 – 20 players attended the event with 3 – 4 games being played at any one time.  It was a windy day so the Pathfinder players that normally play their game outside were moved indoors so the game room was very crowded even though there were not as many board gamers there.

I was able to play two games at the event.

The first game that I played was Circus Train.  The theme of Circus Train is the players are owners of circuses in the 1920s.  They are traveling the Northeast and Midwest o the United States by train trying to put on shows and hire additional talent to improve future shows.  Every time a player’s circus performs, the players score the show based on the demand of the show.  If the score is better than their previous best show, they will receive a bonus in their payment for the performance.  Victory points are scored at the end of each month for the top three performances and who has the most of a certain type of performer.

The players move around the board using a set of eight cards that allow movement and actions to be performed.  The players may only play a certain card once until all of eight of their cards are used.  They may then start reusing them.

We were playing this game because one of my friends asked me to show him how to play his copy of the game after he found out that I had played it once.  Unfortunately the one time I had played was over a month ago and my recollection of the game was getting spotty.

I gave the players a haphazard explanation of the rules and we started to play.  I started isolated from the other players and was able to start out with a pretty good first performance, which got me into the lead early in the game.  The other player started to target me by stealing my performers when they could and my shows later in the game suffered, but I was still able to maintain my lead and was able to win the game.

The second game I played 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.

The unique feature of the Empire Builder family of games is the free form building of track that it allows.  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.

My game this time in Empire Builder was almost as rough as the last game I played.  I was not able to get a decent set of cards beyond the first set in the entire game.  I was able to get two good cards at best.  Ad this was even with discarding a number of times throughout the game.  Add to that getting hit by two derailments back to back and my fate was sealed.  I managed to come in third out of three people in the game.

My stats for the event are:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th	Avg.
Circus Train	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-		1.00
Empire Builder	1	-	-	1	-	-	-			3.00
Totals	2	1	-	1	-	-	-		-	2.00

If You Want to Get the Games Mentioned Here:

                    

Scorecard Review – August 2013

August is over so it is time for another scorecard review.

August

August was a very active month for me.

I played 24 games at 9 events in August for an average of 2.67 games per event which is up from the 1.8 games in July.  This is still not as high as the 3 games per event in April but it is a definite improvement over July.

My number of wins remained the same as July with 3 games won.  I came in second 8 times, third 6 times, fourth 4 times, fifth and sixth 1 time each.  These stats do not include the team win on Pandemic.  My average standing for August was back to 2.67, which is down again from July’s 2.33.

I played four games more than once:  Airlines Europe, Bazaar, Iron Dragon, and Martian Rails.

I played seven games for the first time in August:  A Dog’s Life, Circus Train, Kolejka, Nefarious, Star Trek: Catan, Tsuro, and Uchronia.

My stats for August are:

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
A Dog's Life	1	1	-	-	-	-			1.00
Airlines Europe	2	-	2	-	-	-			2.00
Bazaar	2	-	-	1	-	1	-		4.00
Circus Train	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
India Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Iron Dragon	2	-	1	1	-	-	-		2.50
King of Tokyo	1	-	-	-	-	-	1		6.00
Kolejka	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Martian Rails	2	-	1	1	-	-	-		2.50
Nefarious	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Pandemic	1	Played
Paris Connection	1	-	-	1	-	-	-		3.00
Saint Petersburg	1	-	-	-	1				4.00
Small World	1				1				4.00
Star Trek: Catan	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
The Hanging Gardens	1	1	-	-	-	-	-	-	1.00
Thurn and Taxis	1	1	-	-	-	-	-		1.00
Trans America	1	-	-	-	1	-	-		4.00
Tsuro	1	-	1	-	-	-	-	-	2.00
Uchronia	1	-	-	1	-	-			3.00
Totals	24	3	8	6	4	1	1	-	2.67

Year to Date

The total number of games I have played year to date is 78 games at 32 events for an average of 2.44 games per event.  This is up 0.09 from our last check in.

I have won 9 games year to date with my three wins in August but had a couple of fifth and sixth places added.  This brought my standing year to date to 2.77.  This is down 0.03 from our last check in.

Below are the stats for my most frequently played games year to date.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
Iron Dragon	6	1	2	2	1	-	-		2.50
India Rails	4	-	3	1	-	-	-		2.25
Martian Rails	4	-	2	2	-	-	-		2.50
Airlines Europe	3	-	2	1	-	-	-		2.33
Bazaar	3	1	-	1	-	1	-		3.00

Even with three victories in August my overall stats for the year did not improve.  This is due to a couple of catastrophic failures one in King of Tokyo and one in Bazaar.  If I can maintain a good win ratio and eliminate the catastrophes in September I still have a chance to improve my year to date stats.