This Goose is Raw

Saturday night, and Tin Goose sat on the table awaiting the attentions of Andrew and Ian: the history of American's airways playing out over several decades, as players expand their networks, build their fleets and rid their reputation of the bureaucracy of Regional Management. 

Tin Goose's interesting aspect is that as Fleets become available, everyone bids on them. As the end goal is to be the richest polluting airborne industrialist, the bids both tempt and appall you: the last thing you want to be in the game is cash-poor, as someone - probably Ian - will play an Event card that costs you money you don't have. 

Over seven rounds everyone takes a single turn. This consists of playing a card, either to auction off a fleet (active player bids last) or prompt the event on it. Then you've three actions to spend: pushing up your income, expanding your network, taking Labor chips (in case of a shitty event) or serving the financially alluring (but action-heavy: it costs two actions) international destinations:

Everyone begins with five shitty cards that hamper your airline: Regional Management, Rural Stops, Hazards and so on. If you add a fleet to your airline (as opposed to upgrading an existing fleet) you get to shed one of these cards and get two new planes. But upgrading is also tempting, because improving your planes gets your hazards and oil consumption down: events won't hit you quite as badly.

The planes come with hazards and oil consumption, as well as tiny descriptions: "This fleet is prone to metal fatigue" Ian announced at the start of an auction, perhaps trying to keep prices low. "This one's a bit crashy" said Andrew. Timing of events is everything, and Ian did it well, forcing me to take a bond at the worst moment. I'd managed to establish a lot of overseas connections, but having two bonds was not good news. Ian only had one, and Andrew none at all. In the end, his shrewd frugality made the difference:

Andrew $289
Ian $283
Sam $236

I think we all liked Tin Goose. Outside of a modicum income-track management, it's an accessible set of rules and a deceptively interactive and screwy game. 

It was still early so although Andrew had an early start he suggested Raj, and we played three rounds with winner's reward. Ian won the first convincingly, as Andrew's enormous set of tiles gave him the sum total of one point:

Then I took the second and third rounds as Andrew briefly flirted with negative points!

It ended with some measure of Goosian revenge:

Sam 80
Ian 46
Andrew 12

And we moved swiftly on to the lesser-seen Tsuro, as the second part of Andrew's one-two request of short games to finish. 

It was so short  - Ian won, with me second - we even had time for a three: Dragon's Breath, where players take turns as 'Daddy Dragon' melting the top ring in a tower of ice:

As the ice melts, everyone gets to predict what colour gems will fall on this particular turn, and the player with the most gems wins. Andrew proved Best Dragon by a considerable margin:

Andrew 24

Sam 17

Ian 14

And then with his 5am alarm call looming, Andrew bade us goodnight and headed out the door. Ian and I still had a little gaming in us, though, so I introduced him to Paolo Mori's (of Ethnos fame) CAESAR! Seize Rome in 20 Minutes. Terrible pun, but an excellent game as it turns out, as Caesar and Pompey battle for control of the empire.

The board is a map, and the short-term goal is to control regions of it; the winner is the first player to get all twelve control markers on the board. Turn by turn, players lay influence tokens on the borders of regions: there's a number either side that denotes the influence you're playing into both regions. As soon as all influence markers are played to a particular region, the player with the most influence there gets to place their control marker on it, and a control marker on the border of any adjacent regions they might already control. 

There's a twist in those yellow tokens, though: the player who plays the last token to a region grabs them, even if they don't win the contest there. These are kind of manipulation-manifesting moments, as you get extra turns, extra tokens to choose from, flip an opponent's control marker face-down or - best of all - the Senate tokens let you place extra control markers. 

Ian took the first game with a convincing win: it was so fast we had a rematch, which I - as Pompey - snuck a much tighter victory in a close-fought finale. We'd packed a lot of games into three hours, so although it was only 10.15 (on a Saturday!) we called it a night. Thanks chaps!