Half term this week with the role playing down stairs. Steve Perkins was here having been to Essen, bringing back the Chicago Express expansion for Mike and a Power Grid promo card for me. We also had the pleasure of Julian's company for the first time in while. We split into 2 groups of 4, with Andy, Donald, Julian and I playing Last Train to Wensleydale.
Ok, a train game by Martin Wallace, nothing new there then, but this is somewhat different. Whereas in most train games (and not just the Wallace ones), the object is to build up a network and maintain it to continually move goods throughout the game. In this game it is very much a case of build track, use it to get as many passengers and/or goods out of the locations it serves and then sell the track on to one of the 2 major companies (NER and Midland), ideally disposing of the track in the same turn that you built it. This run down is based on the 4 player game and there may be differences with different player numbers.
The game is played over 4 turns with 4 players (varies with number) and is divided into phases. In the first you use your investment cubes (you get 12 a turn and can carry 3 over between turns, if you don't use them all) to bid on 8 lots, which provide influence of 4 different types, that is Government, Train, NER (Green) and Midland (Red). Each player is allowed to win 2 lots and the bidding continues until each is unopposed in 2 of the lots, the auction has similarities with the province auction in Amun-Re but without the requirement to increase bids in triangular sequence and also without the prohibition on overbidding in the same lot you've just been outbid on.
Once the auction is over the player orders for track building (highest government influence) and train purchase/shipping (highest train influence) is determined and players then proceed to build track. This is done by placing wooden pieces across the boundaries between areas at the cost of 1 investment cube each (2 if either of the areas are valleys), in addition if you link to a town controlled by one of the companies, then you have to pay influence in that company and if an area contains a white nimby, then you have to pay government influence to remove them.
Next it is buying trains and shipping goods. Taking turns starting with whoever has most train influence, players can buy a train costing 1, 2 or 3 train influence points, the higher values have higher carrying capacities and the trains at the same cost vary in the split between goods capacity and passenger capacity. Alternatively a player can use a turn to remove a good or a passenger from the board, providing that the good is either Cheese in an area where he has track or stone in mountain area adjacent to a town where he has track. Passengers must be in an area which is linked to a company town corresponding to the colour of the passenger. In most cases there does not seem to be that much competition in this phase, although there will be some occasions when 2 players can conceivably claim the same good or passenger, in which case order does become significant. Following the completion of this phase, profit and loss is determined by subtracting the length of track owned from the value of goods/passengers collected and adjusting the track which runs from -10 to +5.
The final phase is takeovers, where each player may have some/all of his track taken over by one of the major companies, this requires that you can trace the track from a town to a town controlled by the company taking over and that you use influence with that company at the rate of 1 influence per 2 track pieces sold. Note we got this part wrong by allowing players to have takeovers by both companies each turn, we found part way through that you are limited to 1 takeover per turn, but decided to keep playing the same way for this game.
After 4 rounds the score is determined by adding the total number of goods/passengers collected + 2 for each set of 4 different goods/passengers – the number of owned links left on the board +/- the players position on the profit/loss track. In this game I started off well, but suffered on the middle turns, by keeping ownership of far too much track.
Looking back at the game, it certainly bears another play, having realised the vital importance of not keeping control of too much track. I have a bit of a worry about the random set up of goods and passengers, which certainly in this game seemed to give an advantage to the player going first, in this case, Donald, but this could be self adjusting with experience as if the first player is made to pay enough for his government influence, he will be short of investment cubes necessary to build track to take advantage of the position.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Donald | 22 |
2 | Andy | 19+ |
3 | Julian | 19 |
4 | Dave D | 13 |
On the other table the game was Peloponnes and 2 games were played, I don't know the game so have no comments.
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Steve H | 27 |
2 | Dave F | 24+ |
3 | Steve Pe | 24 |
4 | Mike | 21 |
Posn. | Player | Score |
1 | Mike | 27 |
2 | Dave F | 26 |
3 | Steve H | 24 |
4 | Steve Pe | 20 |
I don't share Dave's concern about the random goods distribution. It's not the distribution that changes but the availability - areas with cheese production always have cheese or nothing; likewise passengers and stone. I do, however, think that the board can have a large effect. If the West side up to Tebay has a heavy distribution of goods and passengers, then the first player can effectively block off the south-west approaches by laying track from the South. I don't think this would necessarily be an issue if the East had a high concentration of goods. There are a lot of options in laying track in the East, but crossing to the West, other than the flatlands up to Tebay, is quite expensive. In this way, I concede, the map is unbalanced.
ReplyDeleteMechanically, I think this is a beautifully engineered game. There is some fiddliness in the influence market, with counter-stacking having a big effect on the order of events, but I can't think of a way to do things better.
After one play, I know I will buy this. It's a fabulous, fabulous game. Other than the board (which is bloody ugly, by the way), I have no caveats. Excellent. Really.
As for Peloponnes, I have mixed feelings after two plays. It's quite a clean design, and the auction system which drives it is fairly forgiving of overbidding, but I thought the luck element in the random draw of tiles for auction, particularly in the early rounds, was quite high in both games (though that may of course be unusual). In Game #1 I got completely stuffed by lack of Wood lands around turns 3-4 when that was all I could buy and was staring last place in the face for the rest of the game, in Game #2 I got a great tile on turn 1 while others failed to get any, and this laucnhed me so quickly into acquiring luxury goods afterwards I felt very comfortable over, if not winning, then at least 2nd place barring absolute disasters. Still, when we knew the game, it rattled along in about 45 minutes so a luck element isn't as big an issue as in a 2 hours + game.
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