Wednesday 17 October 2012

Railways designed in crayon and string

Tonight is a special night, as the Gravediggaz featuring Tricky once sang. And if they'd sung it today, they would've been right because it was Tuesday. In other words: Games Night!

Joe hosted, and Sam and I were early arrivals. Adam arrived just after the three of us had started playing High Society and, knowing Adam's aversion to Reiner Knizia's counter-intuitive game of chance, we stopped.

Instead we chose String Railway, in honour of my impending departure for a fortnight in Japan (since the designer is Japanese). This game involves a board made up entirely of lengths of string, draped carefully over strategically-placed point-scoring stations. Anja turned up just in time to hear the rules and so the five of us jumped right in.


Since it was a first for all of us, there was a certain amount of hesitancy in our play. Some cards were explained as they appeared and strategies often needed to be adjusted as players were reminded of rules. In the end, Joe suffered from the old Instructor's Curse, whereby the person explaining the rules ends up in last.

1. Sam 34
2. Adam 27
3= Andrew 24
3= Anja 24
4. Joe 22

Steve arrived during the game, and ate chips while we finished off. So, with six of us, there was the usual stalemate over what to play next. Sam's new purchase, League of Six, was put on the table and taken off about three times before it was decided that he, me, Steve and Anja would play it. Joe and Adam chose Eurorails, a shiny-surfaced game where players drew their train tracks onto a map in crayon. Luckily, we were able to fit both games on to Joe's kitchen table.


League of Six is, ostensibly, about tax collecting. Each player uses a certain number of guards for the priviledge of taxing a particular city. Each city will give a combination of goods (used for getting points and bonus cards) guards (used for choosing a city), horses (used for player order) and more bonus cards (used at the end of the game for scoring).

It's an interesting game, which relies a lot on understanding what goods your neighbours are going for, because it's possible to force them to use those goods to your benefit. As such, going last is a real disadvantage.

Steve went last a lot. At the end of the game, he and Sam had put a lot of faith in the bonus cards to get them up the score track. In the end, those bonus cards weren't as powerful as we'd thought and they didn't not change the order that we finished in, but they did make it all a lot closer.

Anja 74
Andrew 67
Sam 66
Steve 62

By now Joe and Adam could see no end to their Eurorailing and so, like suddenly homesick students in the middle of an unremarkable European town, they decided to cut their losses and call it a day. They counted up the value of the cards in their hand and the amount they had in their reserve.

Joe 208
Adam 161

Sam left at this point, but Anja wasn't to be stopped. She suggested another quick game, and so No Thanks was brought to the table. This game of bluffing and bidding is always a winner. Steve tried to distract us by dropping his tokens into his lap, in a seedy attempt at getting us to focus on his groin and forget our strategy. Apart from that, the two games played out in the same way that No Thanks usually does.

Anja 16
Adam 36
Steve 38
Andrew 40
Joe 55


Adam 31
Andrew 34
Steve 43
Joe 48
Anja 50

I head to foreign shores with Adam having deposed me from first. And then Sam deposed me from second, too, just for good measure.








Points
Adam1 2 2 2 3 10
Sam3 1 1 5 1 11
Andrew2 4 2 3 1 12
Anja5 1 1 3 2 12
Joe 4 5 1 4 3 17
Steve 3 3 4 44 18

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for writing up, Andrew. And thanks everyone for coming along.
    Eurorails was ... unsatisfying. I was going to say disappointing but that might suggest I was writing it off, and I can't quite bring myself to do that to the old crayon-rails system.
    But it didn't feel like a tuesday night game. It's of another era - I believe these games first appeared in the 80s - and I think that shows in the duration and the somewhat laconic gameplay. There's very little interaction, you're just two people building your own networks, picking up goods and delivering them elsewhere. THey are effectively race-games, ie who can reach the £250m/7 major city win condition first, and my experience of playing Empire Express in the same series is that towards the end of the game, the tension builds as you try to close out your game before your opponent.

    Unfortunately we didn't reach that point last night, despite playing for a couple of hours; though I could see it on the far horizon. Adam was starting to catch me up, having upgraded to a 12 speed, 3 load loco, and I'd just drawn an event that slowed me down for a turn. But more of a rainy sunday, nothing-to-do sort of game rather than a games night; compared to the tense competition for routes and goods in Raliways or Age of Steam, it really does feel a bit staid. Still, thanks to Adam for playing.

    League of Six looked great, and [i]looked[/i] great too - was a shame to miss out. I know I could have jumped in and two others would have certainly found another game to play, but I have so many guilty 2-player games I felt compelled to take that route myself.

    String Railways I want to play again - feel like my instinct to hang back on those first couple of turns did for me - Sam and Adam both used their long routes early and waded in to the melee, and that seemed to pay off.

    ReplyDelete
  2. looked - my html skills need honing, clearly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great pics too Andrew - eight hands in that second one, out of a possible (but improbable unless you brought a tripod) twelve . . .

    ReplyDelete
  4. I liked League of Six a lot. As Andrew noted Steve and I were expecting more out of the multipliers - but I don't know why really,as their values are out there for all players to see. Stone Age conditioning perhaps.

    Liked String Railways too. In fact I just went and bought it!

    Thanks to all for a great night, have a good trip Andrew and see everyone else next week!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Have a great time in Japan! Say hi to Godzilla for me...

    ReplyDelete