Harrowed Halls

Evil Mike was off on holiday so Mike Byrd stepped in for him for our night of gaming. Way to step up Mike and spend an evening goofing off with us!

This time we played Rails of New England. A train game which is a lot more about managing your businesses than actually shipping goods to places. With Evil Mike playing, this game took us two nights to complete. With the Mike stand-in playing, we got it <nearly> done in one night.

We learned a lot during this game. Things like “Never sit next to Mike when he has a hand full of screw-your-neighbor cards.”  Also that if you start in Vermont, you better not stay in Vermont. Get the heck out of there! Quick! Mike had Vermont. He stayed.

Speaking of screw-your-neighbor cards, guess who every one of those cards were played against? Me. It’s not like I had a cash reserve akin to Ft. Knox’s gold supply. (I did.) It’s not like I was earning money hand-over-fist. (I was.) And still everyone picked on me. I should point out that my good friend Owen never played a card against me. Good man, that Owen.

Speaking of Owen, he was earning tons of money as well, but the commerce gods decided to throw him a curve ball in the form of a fires/floods/snow…I forget which. It completely shut Owen down for a turn late in the game. Otherwise he may have pulled off one of his “come from behind” victories that’s he’s so famous for. But it was not to be.

You win the game by having the most money. I had $323 Gazillion. Owen came in second with $267. Ben third with $194 and Mr. Vermont came in last with $77.

And so continues my train game winning streak! (“Two” is a streak.)

Tonight we’re playing Constantinopolis with Latin tiles. No way will I do well in that game.

Chaos Steve

This week we finally got back to our Thanksgiving Rails of New England game. We were about halfway through when we stopped last time.

Mike and Owen quickly became the kings of the Depression. Whenever the economic indicator turned to Depression, they earned tons of cash. I wasn’t doing too badly, but my big money came during times of Prosperity. Unfortunately so did Mike’s. But back on the fortunately-side,  we had several Prosperity turns in a row just before the game ended.

Ben did pause the game a few times to let us know about a rule or two he had forgotten to mention. One such rule was explained to us on the very last turn of the game! And this rule we would have probably been used throughout the entire game! Oh well.

Owen and Ben, mostly Owen, were hit by a few events that cost them revenue. One turn it cost poor Owen $40. That doesn’t sound like much, but that was probably more than half his earnings that round. Neither Mike nor I were affected by events the entire game. (Go us!)

It became clear as the turns quickly dwindled that you had to be careful what you spent money on. You wanted actions that would give you a positive cash flow by the end of the game. This was made slightly more difficult because the game could end at any time certain conditions were met. This could cause the game to end sooner that you might have planned for.

At the end of our game, it was hard to tell who was in the lead. Unfortunately for Ben it wasn’t too hard to tell who wasn’t in the lead. I wanted the game to end before we hit another Depression turn where Mike and Owen would earn big money. Mike almost ended the game for me which would have cost him money, yet gain him very little. (I would have been very happy.) He came to his senses though and let me end the game—which cost me a little money to do, but I had to do it. Darn Depression.

Here’s what our scores looked like at the end of the game.

We determined two things from the score. 1) Ben over bought on depots, thus costing him money. 2) Never, Ever, take out a loan!!  We didn’t learn of the -20 penalty until Ben enlightened us during scoring. Ben strikes again!

I think if Owen had not run into some hard times with the events, he would have been the hands down winner. As it was, he still did well, coming in second.

Chaos Steve

Last week on Thanksgiving eve we started a game of Rails of New England. The name implies that it’s a train game. While it does have tracks and train depots it is really more a business management game where location is key. Players build businesses in various cities to generate money. Each round the game has an economic condition (Prosperity, Normal, & Depression) which affects how much money is generated. Building depots on the cities where your business are helps “connect” them. Connected cities earn you more money. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the key to winning the game is money. There are also special actions, state subsidies, and special routes that players may claim during the game. Most of these generate even more money. Money, money, money.

In a couple hours we got about half way through the game. (This includes going over the rules.) Like many games we play, the rules and bits of this game make it appear complicated. It’s really not. Once you get a few simple concepts down, you’re soon on your way to building a business and railroad empire.

We stopped the game on a high note—a year of prosperity where we all earned lots of money. We’ll pick the game back up where we left off in about two weeks. Until then we’ll be planning and strategizing our next moves.

Who am I kidding? When we get back together, we’ll spend the first 30 minutes remembering how to play the game. Then it’s all luck and bickering for the rest of the evening.

Chaos Steve