Hi all, Jon here again. I've been nominated to bring you this half of the week’s debrief, so here goes!
They say the early bird catches the worm. Well, since Aaron and I arrived 20 minutes before the others, it was more like the early Exogorth catches the Falcon (kind of), as we played not Star Wars, but Star Realms; a 2-6 player spaceship combat deck-building game that can play in under half an hour. Ranked a very respectable 9 on Board Game Geek, and combining the fast-paced fun of deck-builders and the combat style of trading card games, Star Realms is all about trading to generate a streamlined deck to rain destruction on your opponents' authority (or hit points.) Each player starts with 8 "Trade 1" Scouts and 2 "Combat 1" Vipers. With these, they Trade to acquire ships or buildings of the 4 different factions from the centre Trade Row. Each faction has its own speciality; the Trade Fed. use a lot of Trade and protection, the Blobs are hyper aggressive, generating a lot of Combat (damage) and removing unwanted cards from the Trade Row, the Star Empire focus on card draw and forcing enemy discards, and the Machine Cult allows you to cull down your deck and erect strong defensive bulwarks. Each faction works well with themselves, and have powerful Ally abilities that reward good combo play. After a slow start of trading a few hits back and forth, the game quickly ramped up in pace, startlingly so! This being my first play, I had little idea what I was doing and so gathered a random assortment of factions to battle against Aaron's culled down fleet, and thanks to 2 fortunate hand draws (and lots of card draw!), victory was mine with 10 Authority left! By now the others had arrived (and were waiting for us to finish), so onwards...
For the main course of the evening, Chris introduced Sam, Aaron and me to Steam, the youngest sister of the trio of train-laying games from Martin Wallace. Beating out its siblings to rank 44 on Board Game Geek (Age of Steam, the eldest, comes in at 53, and Railways of the World, aka. Railroad Tycoon ranks 52), Steam is all about building railroads and delivering goods along an ever-changing network of tracks and stations. Each turn is divided into several phases; players take their income or decide loans, bid of turn order, choose their special actions for the round, lay track, move goods or upgrade their train, and pay upkeep on engines and loans. With so many decisions to make, and so many things that can mess with your carefully laid plans, timing is everything. Key to this are the Special Actions ranging from allowing you to lay track or move goods out of turn order, upgrading your engine size or a useless Village to a bustling City, adding more goods to the board and the more subtle "double-pass" in the next turn bid. Points are earned from moving up to 2 goods per turn through the greatest number of links (coloured Cities and neutral Villages) as possible, up to your engine size, until they reach a City of a matching colour...that is if they choose to do so. Points can also be used to reduce your debt or increase your income. Those who are able to manage their money with the most efficiency and get the jump on everyone else are going to be victorious. The game started with everyone in their own little sections, with us not really colliding until turn 3 or thereabouts. Chris jumped out to an early lead on the money side, getting out of debt and into income, closely followed by Aaron. Sam and I were lagging behind while Chris got a large network of track, and Aaron had several snaking pathways...and everyone was getting in my way! The first points weren't scored until turn 5 or later (out of 8 for a 4 player game), but by then the game had opened up: Aaron had realised he'd blocked himself in by going for too many short tracks, we'd prevented Sam from linking his together, forcing him deeper into debt, and I'd managed to get a gargantuan railroad from a reserve of Grey goods to the only Grey city on the board, and the engine to pull it along. The last turn was very tense for all, first turn order bids were 4 times higher than they had been throughout the game; everyone wanted their final turn to go to exactly plan! At the end, the final scores were calculated; points from goods moved with additional points form extra income and number of links under a player’s control, and penalties for any debts remaining. This brought us to Sam with 9 points, Chris with 34, and Aaron and myself with 35! Now, the rulebook is very specific...there are no draws!!! So, to the tiebreakers...Income level...still a draw! What tiebreaker to use? Biggest engine: I win. Most money: Aaron wins. Most efficient: I win. Most links: Aaron wins. In the end, we used the most official unofficial tiebreaker we could find, from a different variant of the game: the lowest value Special Action wins....giving Aaron victory on the night! Unofficially official however, in our variation, first player wins in second tiebreaker...I win. Either way, a great medium-weight Euro, constantly shifting and keeping you on your toes, so let's just call it a draw shall we?
And finally, Peter is back to tell you about the other group of the night where Emma, Neil, Peter #2 and I took Power Grid for another spin. With 3 new players learning the game, I was again victorious powering 17 cities while and Emma and Peter #2 managed 16 and Neil 15. 2 wins out of 2 plays is definitely enough to call this an official winning streak and with more plays over the Christmas period on the cards, you will wait with bated breath to find out if this can continue.
They say the early bird catches the worm. Well, since Aaron and I arrived 20 minutes before the others, it was more like the early Exogorth catches the Falcon (kind of), as we played not Star Wars, but Star Realms; a 2-6 player spaceship combat deck-building game that can play in under half an hour. Ranked a very respectable 9 on Board Game Geek, and combining the fast-paced fun of deck-builders and the combat style of trading card games, Star Realms is all about trading to generate a streamlined deck to rain destruction on your opponents' authority (or hit points.) Each player starts with 8 "Trade 1" Scouts and 2 "Combat 1" Vipers. With these, they Trade to acquire ships or buildings of the 4 different factions from the centre Trade Row. Each faction has its own speciality; the Trade Fed. use a lot of Trade and protection, the Blobs are hyper aggressive, generating a lot of Combat (damage) and removing unwanted cards from the Trade Row, the Star Empire focus on card draw and forcing enemy discards, and the Machine Cult allows you to cull down your deck and erect strong defensive bulwarks. Each faction works well with themselves, and have powerful Ally abilities that reward good combo play. After a slow start of trading a few hits back and forth, the game quickly ramped up in pace, startlingly so! This being my first play, I had little idea what I was doing and so gathered a random assortment of factions to battle against Aaron's culled down fleet, and thanks to 2 fortunate hand draws (and lots of card draw!), victory was mine with 10 Authority left! By now the others had arrived (and were waiting for us to finish), so onwards...
For the main course of the evening, Chris introduced Sam, Aaron and me to Steam, the youngest sister of the trio of train-laying games from Martin Wallace. Beating out its siblings to rank 44 on Board Game Geek (Age of Steam, the eldest, comes in at 53, and Railways of the World, aka. Railroad Tycoon ranks 52), Steam is all about building railroads and delivering goods along an ever-changing network of tracks and stations. Each turn is divided into several phases; players take their income or decide loans, bid of turn order, choose their special actions for the round, lay track, move goods or upgrade their train, and pay upkeep on engines and loans. With so many decisions to make, and so many things that can mess with your carefully laid plans, timing is everything. Key to this are the Special Actions ranging from allowing you to lay track or move goods out of turn order, upgrading your engine size or a useless Village to a bustling City, adding more goods to the board and the more subtle "double-pass" in the next turn bid. Points are earned from moving up to 2 goods per turn through the greatest number of links (coloured Cities and neutral Villages) as possible, up to your engine size, until they reach a City of a matching colour...that is if they choose to do so. Points can also be used to reduce your debt or increase your income. Those who are able to manage their money with the most efficiency and get the jump on everyone else are going to be victorious. The game started with everyone in their own little sections, with us not really colliding until turn 3 or thereabouts. Chris jumped out to an early lead on the money side, getting out of debt and into income, closely followed by Aaron. Sam and I were lagging behind while Chris got a large network of track, and Aaron had several snaking pathways...and everyone was getting in my way! The first points weren't scored until turn 5 or later (out of 8 for a 4 player game), but by then the game had opened up: Aaron had realised he'd blocked himself in by going for too many short tracks, we'd prevented Sam from linking his together, forcing him deeper into debt, and I'd managed to get a gargantuan railroad from a reserve of Grey goods to the only Grey city on the board, and the engine to pull it along. The last turn was very tense for all, first turn order bids were 4 times higher than they had been throughout the game; everyone wanted their final turn to go to exactly plan! At the end, the final scores were calculated; points from goods moved with additional points form extra income and number of links under a player’s control, and penalties for any debts remaining. This brought us to Sam with 9 points, Chris with 34, and Aaron and myself with 35! Now, the rulebook is very specific...there are no draws!!! So, to the tiebreakers...Income level...still a draw! What tiebreaker to use? Biggest engine: I win. Most money: Aaron wins. Most efficient: I win. Most links: Aaron wins. In the end, we used the most official unofficial tiebreaker we could find, from a different variant of the game: the lowest value Special Action wins....giving Aaron victory on the night! Unofficially official however, in our variation, first player wins in second tiebreaker...I win. Either way, a great medium-weight Euro, constantly shifting and keeping you on your toes, so let's just call it a draw shall we?
And finally, Peter is back to tell you about the other group of the night where Emma, Neil, Peter #2 and I took Power Grid for another spin. With 3 new players learning the game, I was again victorious powering 17 cities while and Emma and Peter #2 managed 16 and Neil 15. 2 wins out of 2 plays is definitely enough to call this an official winning streak and with more plays over the Christmas period on the cards, you will wait with bated breath to find out if this can continue.