2018

Just a quick post to prove I made it through another year.

Had a great New years weekend get away at the Wife's cousins' place, and managed to play a couple of games of Settlers: Trails to Rails, although lost badly both times.  The countdown to 2018 was serenaded by my youngest losing her dinner, so good times there.

More substance forthcoming, when I have the chance.

Settlers of America: Trails to Rails

Not a picture from our game

Right before Christmas, we visited my wife's cousins for a couple days, and we played Settlers of America: Trails to Rails, and shockingly I won!  We played with the maximum of four players on the default map, and all players were seasoned Catan veterans.

Trails to Rails is an interesting variant of the regular Settlers of Catan, wherein you have a fixed USA map, and have to spread across it and build a rail network to win. It introduces gold, settlers, trains, resource depletion, and a few other changes to the basic game to make it more thematic (and challenging).  Aside from changing the victory requirements from abstract points gained in a few different ways to delivery of fixed numbers of goods, the game also removes victory points gained from cards, which reduces the number of ways to win the game; you must deliver the correct number of goods.

The reduction in victory routes is somewhat of a drawback, and another is that the game is somewhat slower (partly due to being a larger map) particularly in the middle section of the game where every turn is "more of the same".  It took over 3 hours to play our first game, and we figured that it would not have been much faster for a second run though.  Coupled with the 3-4 game players, it may mean that this games does not get at much rotation as it might otherwise.  It was fun though, and felt more "strategic" as the rail race aspect meant that we were looking across the map to see which western territories would be key.

We also got a game and a half of 7 Wonders in, one where I was trounced, and one where we had to pick the game up after the first round.  Still an interesting game, and we gave it to the cousins for Christmas, so I am sure to never win again...

Long Weekend

This past weekend was a long one here in the US, due to the Labor day holiday. Typically this would have meant some work on miniatures, or painting, or possibly work on the house, but the family and I went to Santa Cruz to visit some relatives of my wife.

While visiting, we did get three games of Settlers of Catan in. Two regular games, and one with the multi player expansion to allow for six players. There was talk of Cities and Knights, but we did not get around to it. In any case, I did not win, but I was not doing too poorly either. Settlers is a great game, but it can be a little frustrating if your initial placement does not work out as well as you planned, or if the dice turn on you... much like a wargame in that regard.

I also had the opportunity to drop in on the local game store, Game-a-Lot Hobby, which is a fairly even mix of RPGs, miniatures, and board games. I like to browse "local" stores, because they often have slightly different games than you read about online, and there are fewer surprises when you hold a box in your hand. They had the issues of White Dwarf that I did not get, and had an advance copy of the Castle Ravenloft board game, which seems pretty large. The cashier said that it was something like Descent, which she did not really like, but was willing to play again. The store also had a selection of Heavy Gear rules and miniatures, which was completely surprising, considering its comparative obscurity once they shifted to 1/144.

So that is how I spent my long weekend. How about you?