Because I'll be teaching an all-day class on this Saturday, I was able to take Tuesday off for the second freaking week in a row!  But unlike last week, I actually had a few gaming partners to help me use my extra time!  So, I'll get right into this special episode of the Hypermind BoardGamers review show...

Steam: Rails to Riches

As I mentioned a few days ago, I picked up Steam: Rails to Riches for Father's Day, and when Britt and Alton showed up Tuesday afternoon, it was the first thing to hit the table.  None of us had any significant experience with Steam's predecessors, so we decided to start with the Base Game version, which still has all of the board management elements of the Standard game, but is a lot more forgiving with the money management part of the game. 

Anyway, we played the northeast US/southeast Canada map.  Both Alton and Britt started on the western/southwest region, while I started in the east.  For the first few turns, we all made some simple connections and invested pretty equally in keeping our income from getting too negative.  Britt was the first of us to make the jump to investing his track points into victory points, but Alton was right behind him.  I delayed another turn or so, getting my income up to 10 before switching over to VP.

I feared that I had made a mistake.  Turn after turn, Alton and Britt kept up their 5-10 point lead over me, and since most of our rail network was already built, I didn't need all the money I was making.  Since my network was more isolated than theirs, however, one thing that I worked hard on was to consistently move goods that were close to them while leaving the goods at the heart of my empire alone.  This worked out really well, and in the last two turns, It was almost impossible for them to move anything without giving me at least a few points in the process. 

On the very last turn, we all remembered that completed links also scored a point each, so we all made a mad scramble to finish off at least one or two extra.  In the end, I completed a couple more links than either Britt or Alton, and along with the 5 points I made from my income of 10, I managed to push through my game-long VP deficit and take the win!

Time: 106 minutes
Score: Me 72, Alton 70, Britt 68
Ratings: Me 8, Alton 9, Britt 8

Overall, we all really enjoyed ourselves.  The game went on for a little longer than I expected with 3 players, but a lot of that was due to Britt getting caught in the throes of the dreaded analysis paralysis, and evem then, the game still didn't feel like it lasted that long.  There's plenty of stuff going on in the Base game, and I think that I'll be pretty content for a while with it before moving on to the Standard game.  I did make a couple of mistakes in the extra goods supply spaces (not filling all of them, but putting one too many cubes in each), but I don't think that it made a huge difference.  One way or another, I'm really looking forward to getting Steam to the table a lot more in the coming weeks.


Britt being paralyzed by analysis... or taking a poo.  I'm not sure which.
Agricola

This game was almost funny.  Alton's son Ian joined us, and it was only his second play of the game ever.  Heck, it'd been a while since I have played a multiplayer game, so I was pretty rusty as well.  Britt, however, plays regularly with his wife Carol, and he absolutely dominated the game.  He was the first to expand his house and his family, and he then used his action advantage to keep himself near the front of the turn order and keep me off of the Family Growth spaces for most of the rest of the game.  We all had a significant number of empty spaces, but Britt had the least, and along with his full 5-person family and a well-rounded farm, he won by 8 points over me.

I set up some good synergy early on, using the Net Fisherman and Fish Trap to feed my family for most of the game.  The Businessman helped me get out both a Clay Oven and the Cooking Corner from my hand, and while I did well with fields, grain, and veggies, the only animal I ever had was a lonely sheep.  I did expand the house to 4 rooms and renovated it into stone, so my family ended up playing the part of the well-to-do yet stuck-up people living on the hill who outwardly looked down their noses at Britt's family all crammed into a 3-room shack, but were ultimately left feeling empty and jealous inside as they witnessed the love and warmth they saw there.  That's the story I tell in my head, anyway.


A really bad picture of my really, really bad farm.Time: 75 minutes
Score: Britt 37, Me 29, Alton 14, Ian 10
Ratings: Britt 10, Me 9, Alton 9.5, Ian 9

Yeah, you read that right.  Alton only scored 14 and Ian had even less.  We laughed at that a lot.  But for whatever reason, this was just a brutal game for everyone (with the possible exception of Britt).  I really love Agricola, and I need to work harder to get it played more often as well.

Acquire

By this point, the rest of the regular group was starting to arrive.  Chris Ingersoll joined us and we pulled out the Game of the Month!, Acquire.  Despite running for slightly more than an hour, it felt like this game just flew by.  Early on, I feared that I had overextended myself, buying into too many different chains without having enough of any one in particular to claim any big majority payouts.  As things progressed, however, I managed to catch a few breaks in a merger or two that gave me a little more capital.  I also drew into several tiles that let me re-start companies, so I managed to claim bonuses for a couple of companies at least twice before finally converting their stock over to the larger chains.  In the end, I managed to take either first or second majority shareholder in three of the four safe companies to push me over the top for the win. 

Time: 64 minutes
Score: Me $43.2k, Britt $36.2k, Chris $33.2k, Ian $24.4k, Alton $23.0k
Ratings: Me 8.5, Britt 8.5, Chris 7.5, Ian 9, Alton 9

That makes me 3 for 3 in Acquire games!  And like I said, it really impressed me that I felt like I was able to turn an unfavorable situation into a win.  Maybe I wasn't really doing as poorly as I thought, but regardless, I feel like doing well was a direct result of the choices I made and the chances I took working out.  Until the last few turns, however, the game felt really tight to me.  There was no clear leader, and everyone seemed to be making good choices overall with their investments... so much so that it was hard to estimate who had the most of any particular stock.  Maybe I just haven't been screwed by the tiles yet, but I certainly haven't felt that the tile draw was a significant uncontrolable factor in the game.  Chris and others might disagree with me, however.

Still, I had a great time, and I'm glad that we've got another week with Acquire as GotM!

Top Race

We had 7 gamers present by this point, so we had some discussion about what to play next.  Instead of breaking up into seperate games, Alton volunteered to watch (he's pretty voyeristic like that sometimes) while the other six of us played Chip's copy of Top Race.  From the beginning, we decided to play a 3-race series, so only our money total at the end of all three races would count.

Things didn't do well for me at all.  Despite getting the car that I wanted (yellow) and having some great cards for it in the first race, the chaos of the 6-player game robbed me of any chance to put them to good use.  I came in second-to-last, and my overconfidence in betting on myself in two of the three wagering opportunities didn't help me out either.  The second and third races were similar, and I ended up dead last at the end of the series.  Britt's car finished well all three times, but on the strength of making really smart bets, Chip took the series with an even one million dollars!

Time: 75 minutes (for a 3-race series)
Score: Chip $1mil, Britt $920k, Chris $660k, Ian $640k, Steve $550k, Me $350k
Ratings: Chip 8.5, Britt 7.5, Chris 8, Ian 8, Steve 8.5, Me 8 

As I've said before, Top Race really impresses me.  While it certainly has some weaknesses in the randomness of the card draw and the chaos of having a lot of players, there are still a lot of opportunities for opportunistic hand management, wise betting, partnerships, and making good decisions about the car auctions.  If you take it for what it is, a light racing game designed more for excitement than for high-level tactical control, then you'll have fun with it.  And like I've said before, I think this would be the perfect game for race fans.  It's on my wishlist now mainly with the idea that I could introduce it to my Dad.

A Castle for All Seasons

It was about 9pm at this point, and a few players abandoned us.  Brad, Chip, and Chris joined me for a game of A Castle for All Seasons.  None of them were involved in the session last week, so I gave the rules teach and then got us started.  Wanting to play around with the game a little, I decided to pursue a pure money strategy.  I used my trader on the sand cart, chose the Bricklayer and the Messenger 2-3 times each, and claimed both helper spots at the market.  The biggest problem with my approach is that I had virtually no points prior to end-game scoring.  I wiffed on playing the Master Builder once, and only got 5 points from him the other time I played him.  And on the second time I chose the Bricklayer, all that was left to build were houses and towers, so I wasn't able to unload lots of resources to get a lot of money.  Instead, I picked up 5 clay slabs from the defense tower and traded in 17 talers for one of the Palas spots that would make me 20 points (netting 3, of course).

In the end, my strategy worked pretty well.  I scored 59 points and was only 5 points from the winner, which was Chip.  He used his Master Builder much more effectively, which proved to be the difference between the top three players.

Time: 43 minutes 
Score: Chip 64, Chris 63, Me 59, Brad 45
Ratings: Chip 7.5, Chris 8.5, Me 7.5, Brad 7


I certainly like A Castle for All Seasons, and I'm impressed with how competitive it seems to be.  But in the end, it also feels like it is left lacking a little in comparison to similar games like Pillars of the Earth, Stone Age, Mission:Red Planet, and others.  I like its quickness and the opportunity to develop different strategies, but I still have some nagging doubts about it overall.  I'm also holding out a lot of hope that it will be a nice 2-player game for Gwen and me, and I'll tell you about that when I get the chance to introduce her to it.

Space Alert

I was feeling really tired by this point, but I didn't want to give in and leave quite yet.  So I really shouldn't have agreed to play, let alone teach, a game as energetic as Space Alert.  Chip and I had played before but Alton and Robert were new, so we decided to compromise and start with the second training mission.  

Things went pretty well, and we survived pretty easily.  So then, we went ahead and started up one of the simulated missions.  Chip and I felt like we were pretty on top of things in leading the other two, and we felt really good throughout the action phase.  In the resolution phase, however, it sort of fell apart.  We mis-timed exactly when one of the threats was going to appear and then come into range, so it was no where near dead by the time we stopped shooting at it.  We almost survived, but because of the one last activation that the threats get just before the jump, it dealt enough damage to tear away the starboard side of our ship and kill us all.

Time: 15 and 25 minutes (for a training and simulated mission)
Score: Win on Training, Lose on Simulation
Ratings: Alton 7, Chip 8, Me 8, Robert 8

Like I said, I attribute most of our failure to the collective fatigue of everyone at the table.   I certainly wasn't thinking straight, and even in the midst of the excitement and chaos of the action phase, there seemed to be a distinct lack of energy at the table.  I really like this game, but I must remember to be more selective about when and where to pull it out in the future.

Other Game Played

Wasabi!
Time: 40 minutes
Score: Chip 33, Steve 28
Ratings: Chip 8.5, 8