After Action Report – Game Day @ El Toro Public Library, September 13, 2014

I hosted the Game Day at the El Toro Public Library on Saturday.  The turnout was high.  There were 26 people at the event and seven games were being played at any one time.

I played three games at the event.

The first game I played was Eurorails.  Eurorails is a Empire Builder game set in Europe from Kaliningrad in the east to the western shores including the United Kingdom and Ireland.  The goal in Eurorails is to collect $250 and for the player to have connected six of the seven major cities in the game.  In the current edition of the game the option of building the Chunnel between France and England is now available.  The cost is prohibitive and I would not recommend it unless there are four or more players in the game and a player is spending most of their time moving to and from England.

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.

Game Review – Thurn and Taxis

Thurn and Taxis
Number of Players	2 - 4
Play Time	60 minutes
Ages	10 years and up

This week I am reviewing another game that is a great option for players that are new to Euro games:  Thurn and Taxis

Thurn and Taxis is a network building game that uses set collection game mechanic.  Based on the the real Thurn and Taxis of the 16^th century, the theme of the game is about the development of postal routes in Germany and some cities in the surrounding countries.

Game play is relatively simple.  The players develop routes by collecting cards that represent the cities on the map from a tableau of six cards on the board.  The tableau is refreshed after a card is taken from it.  The player then places a card from their hand face up in front of them.  This card represents the route that they are trying to build.  Each turn after that they player must add a card to either side of the route to extend it.  The city card added to the route must be able to connect to the city in the route as shown on the map on the board.  If the player cannot a city to their route then they must discard the route and gain no points for it.  If after they have placed a card and the route is at least three cities long, the player wants to claim the route they may.

In order to claim a route the player places postal house on cities in their route.  The player has one of two options when placing their postal houses.  They may place postal houses in the cities in on region or they may place on postal house in a city in each region that their route covers.  Any city that the player places a postal house in must be one of the cities in their route.

In addition to the basic rules above there are special abilities that a player may use during their turn.  They may use only one of these special abilities during their turn.  The special abilities are:  take two city cards from the tableau, add two cards to their route, replace all of the cards in the tableau, and artificially extend their route by two cities.

Victory points are awarded in the game for completing four routes of increasing size from a minimum of three cities in length to a minimum of seven cities in length.  In addition to the basic victory points that are awarded for having postal houses in all of the cities in a region, a postal house in each of the regions on the board, and the first people to complete a five, six and seven city routes.  At the end of the game the players lose a victory point for each postal house they have left in their play area.  The person with the most victory points wins.

As I had mentioned at the beginning of the game, Turn and Taxis is a great game to use to introduce players to Euro games.  It plays well with any number of players and the game play is relatively quick after the first few turns where the players are getting used to the game.  The only time that a player can get into trouble in the game is if they do not manage the collection of their sets correctly.  You cannot count on a card being in the tableau when you get your next turn.  If you need to count on a card being there it is better to claim the route before ending your turn.  If you have to discard a route without claiming it, you will most likely lose the game.

If there is any drawback to the game it is that you can only play with up to 4 players.  Sometime it is good to have a game that plays five players especially when you need a introductory game.  This is not a bad thing it just removes it as an option in those situations.

Some one that is looking for a networking building game and is tired of all of Ticket to Ride being their only option should pick up Turn and Taxis.  It is a refreshing change of pace and is so long that you would be committing a whole night of gaming to it.

After Action Report – Games Gathering @ Brookhurst Hobbies, August 3, 2013

It was a full house today at Games Gathering at Brookhurst Hobbies this month.  There were 25 people at the even with seven games being played at any given time.

I played four games at the event, three from the Empire Builder family of games and Thurn and Taxis.

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 India Rails.  The only added rule for this game is the ability for transporting pilgrims from one region to another for a minimal payment inside India.  I believe that this feature was added to help offset a couple of major disasters that can destroy a player’s game if they do not have the cash to build back track and they do not want to sacrifice their current hand.

I had a decent set of cards at the start of the game.  With those cards I was able to get the money to build out about half the track that I need for the game.  Then I started to get mediocre cards that were giving me enough cash to continue on but not much other than that.  Instead of tossing like I should have, I kept fighting through them hoping the next card would be the solution to all of my problems.  Of course this was not the case.  By the time I worked my way to better cards, the damage had already been done and I lost the game.

The next game up 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.  I have explained the major differences between this game and the others in the series enough in previous posts that I will not go into them here.

I calculated that I had enough money from the starting cash and my first two deliveries to get to my third delivery in the first set of cards, which gave me a good position to start with.  Once I was done with that set of cards, I had enough money to keep going and build the track that I needed but nothing spectacular to make me comfortable.  Midway through the game is when disaster struck.  I had a set of cards that would have given me a good infusion of cash and gotten me the cash that I needed for a possible victory.  Unfortunately I did not count out the amount of cash I would actually need and discovered I did not have enough cash to build to the first stop after I spent three turns building track and almost all of my money.  I was then forced to discard my hand and work with what I could get to make enough money to complete the track to the major cities I needed to win.  By that time it was too late to get the cash that I needed to win the game and it too turned into a defeat.

We then played Thurn and Taxis to change things up a bit.

Thurn and Taxis was the winner of 2006 Spiel des Jahres, an award given to the best family game each year in Germany.  Some of the games that win this award can be real stinkers as far as I am concerned, but many like Turn and Taxis are actually quite good.

The theme for Thurn and Taxis is the players are trying to set up postal routes in Germany in the 15^th century.  The rules are simple.  The play chooses a city card from a tableau of six cards on the board and adds one to their set of cards in front of them that connects to the city on the previous card.  There are special abilities that a player can use once a turn.  They may choose two cards from the tableau, add two cards to their set, replace all of the cards in the tableau, and extend their route by two.

To earn points in the game, the players must build route that are progressively longer starting with three card and going to seven cards.  When a route is scored, the player put post offices on selected cities on the route to show the establishment of their post office in that city.  They may be placed all placed in one region or one in each region the route goes through.  The player gets bonus points for having established post offices in all the cities of a region, having post offices in all of the regions, and length of the route when completed.

One of the things that I try to do in Thurn and Taxis is build my routes as long as I can before scoring them instead of scoring them when they meet the minimum required length.  I do this to try to capture the length bonuses early in the game and perhaps a region bonus or two as well.  In this game this strategy served me well.  I was able to get the cards that I needed to complete a seven card route in the game as my first route.  Even though in only got me the three card scoring card, it got me the seven card route bonus and a region bonus chip.

During the rest of the game, I was able to complete a total of three seven card routes and a five card route.  With the bonuses that I got in completing the routes, I was able to win the game handily.

The last game I played at the event was Martian Rails.  The game takes the science fiction and fantasy elements from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury and other authors and brings them to the game.  There are canals with water and forest and jungle terrain on the board, cities are called thing like Barsoom and Hinkston Creek, and you even have loads like Roddenberries and Thoats.

In this game I actually started with mediocre cards and only kept them because it gave me an initial route that I liked.  I was able to work my cards well enough for the rest of the game, so that I was the closest I had been during the entire day to winning one of the Empire Builder games.  I had everything on board my train that I needed to win when the game ended in another loss for me.

Even though it was a hard day for me, it did not hurt my stats much as all of the games were two player but it can be disheartening to lose at games you like to play and Iron Dragon too.

Game	No. of Plays	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	Avg.
India Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Iron Dragon	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Thurn and Taxis	1	1	-	-	-	-			1.00
Martian Rails	1	-	1	-	-	-	-		2.00
Totals	4	1	3	-	-	-	-	-	1.75