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This week we played Settlers of America: Trails to Rails. This is the second or third time we’ve played it. As the name implies, this game takes place in America and has the familiar hex layout on the board. Players use settlers to build towns that then produce goods. To win the game, each player must ship all of his goods to towns belonging to other players using his trains and rails. The game dynamics are very similar to the original Settlers. You use resource cards to buy settlers, rails, trains, and development cards. And these resource cards are generated by a dice roll and the proximity of your towns. Another use for resource cards is to move you settlers to new areas and to move your trains along the rails. This game also adds the dynamic of gold to the mix. Gold can be used to buy resource cards and to allow you to pay to use the tracks of the other players. You can also use it when trading.
I, personally, like this version of Settlers much better than the original. I suck at the original. Even if I should win, I don’t. The resource gods hate me. That’s one of things I really like about Settlers of America. You are getting lots of resource cards–mostly because you need lots of them to do all the things you need to do in the game. So instead of languishing a few turns waiting for the right cards to come along, you get to buy something on almost every turn. This makes the game much more enjoyable for me. They also incorporated the extraordinary build phase, from the 5-6 player game of the original Settlers, in to the normal play. With this, you feel like you are building something all of the time!
For most of the game all of us were pretty close in the running; the leader only having delivered a cube (or two) more than everyone else. When it came down to the end, Ben was leading but anyone could have won during the next couple of turns. Ben did end up winning, with Owen and Mike being close seconds, and me being a close third.
Chaos Steve