choo choo twams

[reverancepavane]

Finally got to play a traainm game with Adam, that being Ticket to Ride: Europe. Interesting, but nothing particularly enthusing to dedicated strategy gamers, as their is a paucity of strategic options (as is the case with most games extensively modelled on the real world). It would make a reasonable leisure game though. Oh, and I came second because I forgot that with only two carriages left, the other Great Satan couldn't invest in a three point track to win longest rail if I looped. Oh well. Live and learn, die and forget. [It was interesting that we were able to lap the last player though, so their is an extremely unbalanced dynamic in there.] We rounded it out with another game of In The Year of the Dragon, the Chinese disaster mitigation game. Quite fun, although it is one of those games that would be easily spoiled by a player that takes it too seriously and tries to calculate the optimum survival path, since the randomness is limited. Again, the events tended to clump, making the first half of the year extremely panic-ridden and the later half less so for most of us. Was involved in the race for initiative this time, rather unsuccessfully as it turned out (although it did mean I was able to get an option I wanted a couple of times without paying, but really, for the cost, I would have been better investing in highly capable advisors and staying at the back of the initiative order and using whatever options people didn't want). I came second, due to the absence of famines in the last half of the year. At least that's my excuse. I wonder when Agricola will make it out here. Should be soon. And then we can get to play peasant farmers trying to build a decent farm (or starve to death, more likely). I can't help thinking of After the Apocalypse, the old SPI game of post-nuclear war survival, which, as most of the simulation games of the time, was far more accurate than playable. I cheered once for being able to survive my first winter. [I was really lucky.] Speaking or accuracy, the SPI game World War III had rules for strategic nuclear warfare, which consisted of soaking the map in lighter fluid and applying a match. I miss SPI – something is missing with these modern Eurogames that focus on playability first.... Oh dear. I'm a grognard.