Scorecard Review – October 2014

October is one of my favorite months.  Not only is it the month when Halloween is but I usually get a lot of gaming is as well.  Unfortunately I was sick on Halloween and that made me late with this review.

October

In October I played 30 games at 10 events for an average of 3 games per event.  I was able to achieve my goal of player an average of three games per event.  I achieved that goal by playing games that were lighter than I normally do.

Scorecard Review – September 2014

In September I was able to get the number of games I played higher but I did not perform as well as I normally do.

September

In September I was able to play 25 games at 8 events for an average of 3.13 games per event.  I was able to achieve my goal of player an average of three games per event.  I was able to do this by playing more filler games in particular No Thanks.

Scorecard Review – August 2014

In August I was able to go to all of the events that I regularly attend.  However it seems like I am still struggling to get the total number of games played per event that I was able to earlier in the year.

August

In August I was able to play 23 games at 8 events for an average of 2.88 games per event.  I missed my goal of three games per event again this month.

After Action Report – Game Day @ The Guild House, August 16, 2014

I hosted So Cal Game Connection’s first exclusive event at a new game store called The Guild House in Bellflower.  I did not know what to expect going into the event as far attendance was concern.  So Cal Game Connection is a new and at this point relatively small Meetup group created by a friend of mine and me with the goal of having events for all tabletop gaming not just board games like many other Meetups in our area do.  We also wanted to have more of a voice for event hosts over what happens in the Meetup unlike most of the other Meetups in the area.

The Guild House is a nice sized space with a game area with eight tables set up for gaming including three that are specifically designed for miniatures play.  The owners of the store were good hosts and very friendly.

Scorecard Review – July 2014

July was another light month for me.  I missed two events because I was at Anime Expo early in the month.  I have still not been playing as many games as I had been.

July

In July I was able to play 17 games at 6 events for an average of 2.83 games per event.  I missed my goal of three games per event for the first time since March.

I won 5 games in July which was which was one less game than I won in June.  I came in second 4 times, third 4 times, fourth 3 times and sixth 1 time.  My average standing from July was 2.53 compared to the 2.11 I had in June.

I played 3 games more than once in July:  Empire Builder, Eurorails, and No Thanks.

I played 1 game for the first time in July:  Strozzi

My stats for July were:

Year to Date

I have played 148 games at 52 events for an average of 2.85 games per event.  The average number of games I have played per event remains the same as June

I have won 45 games year to date.  My current standing for the year is 2.30 which worsened 0.02 from the end of June.

My stats for the five games I have played the most this year to date are:

Lifetime

Since I started tracking my game plays in April 2013, I have played 296 games at 121 events for an average of 2.45 games per event.

I have won 76 games and have a lifetime standing of 2.39.

The five games I have played the most are:

I played Trans Europa for the tenth time in 2014 in July as I had expected.  This makes two games that I have played 10 time or more in 2014.  I expect that Empire Builder will join them in August.

There was no news on the event front in July but I expect that there will be in August.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association Game Day @ The El Toro Public Library, July 26, 2014

I hosted the Strategic & Adventure Game Association Game Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.  Unlike the game night at Comic Quest the turnout did not seem to be affected by Comic Con.  We had 21 people at the event with five games being played at any one time.

I played three games at the event.  Two of them were from the Empire Builder family.

The first game I played 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.

Scorecard Review – June 2014

June was a light month for me.  I missed two events that I normally would have attended and played fewer games at those events.

June

In June I was able to play 18 games at 6 events for an average of 3 games per event.  I was able to hit my goal of an average of 3 games per event again even though I played only two games per event at the last two events of the month.

After Action Report – Strategic & Adventure Game Association Game Day @ El Toro Public Library, June 28, 2014

I hosted the Strategic and Adventure Game Association Game Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.  With everyone now on summer break and there being less than a week until the 4^th of July holiday I was not certain what the attendance would be like.  Usually in the summer months fewer people go to the events.  We did see more people at the event than we had two weeks ago.  There were 18 people at the event and up to five games were being played at any one time.

I played two games at the event.  Both of them were from the Empire Builder family of games.  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.

The first game I played was Russian Rails.  Russian Rails starts in the Soviet Union era and can extend to after the fall of communism.  The board includes the western half of the Soviet Union extending east to Alma- Ata in what is now Kazakhstan.  The game plays similarly to all of the other games in the Empire Builder family.  The game was the first to add bonus deliver cards in a big way to the game.  It also has a unique hazard card that causes the fall of communism which takes away 20% of all of the player money and adds a toll for people entering Russia from the other countries that used to make up the Soviet Union.