I am back in Orange County so I went to my regular Thursday
event this week at Paradise Perks. After
a two week absence (One week was when I was the Las Vegas, the other was going
to the Comic Quest event) it was great to be back.
The event started a little late but it was great to see some
familiar faces. I was able to get
updates from Railcon where among other things there was some excitement about
the Ticket to Ride World Championships.
There were 20 -25 people in attendance at the Paradise Perks
event with an average of 5 games being played at a time.
The only game I played at the event was Rialto. Rialto is an area control game that uses set
building to get things done. The theme
is that the players are powerful noble houses in Venice who are trying to exert
their control over the city by owning and influencing things, like the Doge,
money, buildings, bridges, gondolas, and councilmen.
The game take six turns and is set up in three phases. The first phase the player collects the cards
for his hand. The second phase the player
plays the cards from the hand they collected gaining additional power over the
items they use their cards for. The third
phase the player activates victory point buildings.
The player gain victory points for the for having control of
areas at the end of the game, in order to get control they need to place the
most councilmen during each turn in the active area in the city. If they do not add councilmen in the area during
the turn it is active, they will not be able to go back to add them later in
the game.
The players can also get victory points for buildings as
well. Each of the buildings has special
powers based on when they can be activated in the game. Building that can be activated in the hand
creation phase add cards to a player’s draw and allows them to keep more cards
in their hand going into the second phase.
Buildings that can be activated in the second phase affect cards. Buildings in the third phase add victory
points of Doge Influence.
I started out the game focused on gaining Doge
influence. I figured that got me the
best options for getting the cards that I wanted in later turns. I spent two turns pushing myself as far
forward on the Doge Influence track as a could almost to the exclusion of
everything else and the following two turns moving it forward slightly. This
gave me control of the first player of the turn for five turns of the
game. I focused other efforts on
building buildings during the second and third turn. The fourth and fifth turn I actually placed councilmen
on the board. The sixth turn I focused
on a major building effort to get victory point buildings and was able to
active them for a number of victory points at the end the turn. Most of my victory points in the end of the
game came from buildings. Unfortunately
it did not propel me to victory. I did
manage to come in third after being in last place most of the game.
The rest of the evening was spent chatting with people about
what was going on while I was gone, my impressions of the Las Vegas board
gaming scene, and how conventions went for people.
My stats for the event were not a great start to the month,
but are below:
|
Game
|
No. of Plays
|
1st
|
2nd
|
3rd
|
4th
|
5th
|
6th
|
7th
|
Avg.
|
|
Rialto
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
|
|
3.00
|
|
Totals
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
1
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
-
|
3.00
|
2014
marks the 10th Anniversary of the original release of Alan R. Moon’s
Ticket to Ride board game. To celebrate, Days of Wonder is hosting a
year long series of worldwide tournaments to crown a new Ticket to Ride
World Champion. Over 20 different countries will participate to
determine National Champions, with each being invited to Paris for the
World Championship event in September of 2014.
