“The Wiki Page for
Physics Major redirects to Engineer”
A nice train game to
get us going.
Steam
Three player Steam-
Andy, myself and David, a new comer to the Isleworth Boardgamers. We played the
American side of the map as recommended for three players. Broadly speaking
Andy took the left-hand side of the map, I took the middle and David the
right-hand-side, although both me and David diversified into Andy’s ara, which
is a tribute to his skill in picking the best spot.
Andy took the correct
early Locomotive decision and both he and I rapidly increased our Locomotive to
size 6, with David being a little slower. I used the Engineer a few times to
make longer connections and we were all fighting over Urbanisation towards the
end as the cubes vanished from the map. I spent a couple of turns building a
long rail link to Ottowa which paid off in the short term in terms of juicy
deliveries but didn’t seem so smart later on.
In the final turn Andy
and me were very close and unfortunately my best deliveries used his track,
which contributed to his victory. Points are approximate.
Andy 55 Philip 52 David 50.
From trains to
robots...
Robo Rally (thanks
Jon)
And so it was that we
sat down with a much-loved copy of this game, with only Jon and Paul having not
played before. However, the rules are extremely simple, so even Jon and Paul
picked it up in no time.
The game began with
John and Jon shooting off across the board in search of the first checkpoint.
Soren and Paul were a little slower off the blocks, and Alex just seemed to be
deriving much pleasure from shooting James in the derriere. Thanks to some
handy conveyor-belt assistance, Jon was fast approaching his objective, but a
slight miscalculation combined with some none-too-subtle ramming from John,
sent him off the board and back to the start. By this time, Soren had got his
act together and was also approaching the first checkpoint, whilst Paul was still
in a world of his own, and James was still getting shot.
By the mid-game, John
and Soren were racing each other around the checkpoints, whilst Jon and Paul
had James in a laser sandwich on a conveyor-belt, forcing him to power down to
prevent total destruction. Paul then wandered off and dropped off the board in
the same place twice running. Nice. Alex finally decided that he would pursue
the actual goal of the game, as opposed to shooting James, but by this time it
was too late – Soren had raced around the checkpoints and claimed victory. John
had reached 2, and Alex 1, whilst Jon, Paul and James were still on the start
board, after having lost lives and being in varying states of disrepair.
Soren 3 checkpoints; John 2; Alex 1; Jon / Paul / James II – 0
Train engineers, robot
engineers, now urban engineers!
Sunrise City (thanks
Jon)
Jon joined the Sunrise
City veterans, Soren and John for a game to end the evening. The rules take a
little explaining, but Soren did a good job, and Jon felt a lot less clueless
than he did at the beginning of Power Struggle last week!
Soren and John were
doing a good job of hitting the star at the top of the score track, for lots of
bonus points, and were cleverly using the purple buildings to their advantage.
3 rounds pass
relatively quickly, and the thick tiles create a pleasing 3D cityscape at the
end. Soren had raced into an unassailable lead, and Jon was bringing up the
rear after having failed to score many bonuses during the game.
Verdict: really
interesting puzzle-like city-building game. Although attractive, the pastel
colours make it more difficult than it needs to be to instantly assess the
‘gameboard’ (purple/blue and yellow/green being particular culprits), but
overall a nice little game that deserves further outings.
Postscript: it appears
that Soren did have one rule wrong – the bonus for landing on the ‘10’ space is
indeed 2 stars, but you don’t then get another star for ‘wrapping around’ back
to ‘1’ again. I’m not sure that this would have affected the result, but it
would have been a lot closer. Well, that’s my excuse for losing so badly and
I’m sticking to it……
Soren 19; John 13; Jon 9
Another city, another
type of thrill...
Lords of Vegas (thanks
Paul).
After successfully
introducing James II to Lords of Vegas recently, and still dizzy from the many
unplanned circles that occurred in Robo Rally, it was time to run it by James'
partner in crime, Alex.
Alex picked up the
rules in no time. His starting lots were on the strip, which is good but means
they take a little longer to build on at the start as they're more expensive
and you get less cash at the start. All part of the balance of the game.
Unfortunately for him, the strip came out a couple of times before he was able
to build on this, so he wasn't able to take full advantage.
James II and Paul's
lots were dispersed in seemingly more random locations so to start with they
built sized one casinos.
Paul got a little
lucky and build a three sized gold gambling den earlier than normal, and then
got even luckier as this was drawn in quick succession, allowing him to take a
healthy lead.
A big brown casino
started to appear in the middle as a result of several disparate tiles being
joined, which had a bigger number of tiles owned by Paul and James II, but the
single die owned by Alex had the biggest number. As money was tight, it was
difficult for James II or Paul to fund a reorganise and reroll the dice, which
would have been in their favour.
A lot of gambling took
place between Alex and James II, with James II offsetting the bet at the bank
on almost all the times when he won, and not doing it when he lost. The perils
of Vegas.
Eventually James II
took over the seven tile casino, and Alex build a nine tile enterprise just
over the strip, but Paul had build a lead that was too big to claw back.
Paul: 44, Alex: 29, James II: 23
P.S “The Wiki Page for
Physics Major redirects to Engineer” is a quotation from “Every Major’s
Terrible”, which is a modern spoof on “A Modern Major-General”, which is found
in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of
Penzance. You can find the spoof at xkcd.com
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