Airlines Europe - 22 August 2018

First play of Airlines Europe, the revised version (21 years later) of Airlines, which we played a few weeks back.

I'm pleased to say this lived up to expectations.  Same essential gameplay as Airlines but much clearer and less fiddly to play, and with vastly improved production values including the lovely little aeroplanes.

It's quite a short game (just over an hour with the three of us) and the first scoring round arrived much more quickly than we were expecting.  Good fun to play, some judgement in when to declare your interests in airlines, and some interaction in either grabbing the coat tails of other players' successful airlines or trying to take them over.

And in a further indicator of a well-designed game, the scores were incredibly close: Stuart 74, James 73 and David 71.

Russian Railroads - 2 August 2018

James brought his new birthday game - Russian Railroads over first a first play. This is definitely one of those games where the playing of the game is easier than the rule reading would suggest.

Players are building 3 Russian railways through placing different types of track, obtaining trains, developing engineering, building factories and recruiting engineers. As you develop the railway track, bonuses and opportunities are opened. For some bonuses the power of the trains is important. Recruiting engineers gives some in-game advantages and the most engineers earns an end-game bonus.

The game uses worker placement to decide actions, so awareness of what others want to do is needed to make sure you don't get blocked out.

In some ways the game reminded me of Tzolk'in where a number of different tracks offer many different ways of scoring points. In the same way as with that game, working out which of the many options to pursue is critical. Some options score early, some build for big points later.

David bought a lot of engineers and used them early to score bonus points and get an early lead.

James went all out on the Kiev line, helped by an early acquisition of a level 9 train. This line earns massive bonus points and for a while looked like an unbeatable combination as he caught up with David and then took the lead.

For this first game, Andy and James both balanced track building with industry and factories. This was a bit limited as the factories only really started appearing towards the end of the game, earning Andy some big points in the last couple of rounds.

At the end, David completed the Vladivostok line and was able to bring the high scoring white track into play with some double score markers. This combined with the most engineers bonus let him overtake James and win the game.

Scores: David 291, James 255, Andy 195.

Airlines - 26 July 2018

This is a classic from Alan R Moon, inventor of dozens of games including the Spiel des Jahres winner, and occasional Rivals game, Ticket To Ride.  James got it in a swap for Porto Nigra, a rather nice looking game but one that was always going to get overlooked in favour of others in the collection.

In Airlines, players are competing to become majority stockholders in several companies with the player owning the most valuable portfolio at the end being the winner.  Each turn, a player chooses between expanding an airline or playing stock from his hand. Expanding an airline adds to its routes on the board and increases its value but exposing your stock cards too early means that other players may not also expand that airline.  Scoring happens three times during the game and again at the end, but only stock played out counts, not what you are still holding in your hand, so timing your investments is key.  Clever game mechanism and pretty good player interaction as you keep an eye on the others' stock and try to takeover "their" companies.

This game was published in Germany in 1990.  And it has not aged well.  The artwork and production values of modern games is brilliant, and unsurprisingly Airlines really looks drab in comparison.

More significantly, keeping on top of which airline can expand routes in which region of the board is a bit of a challenge.  This is frustrating because otherwise it is a really good game.

Fortunately, the game was reimplemented as Airlines: Europe in 2011 and reading the rules, it looks (as one would hope) to have kept all the good bits of Airlines and got rid of the fiddly complicated bits.  And the counters are replaced by lovely little aeroplanes!  So I've bought a copy.

We had a full house for our game which was great.  Andy got a bit stuck with his initial cards and, after helping Stu earn plenty of points for his monopoly airline, only really got a good set of points in the final scoring.  Throughout the game, first place switched from James to David to Stuart in the three scoring rounds, but the gaps got a little wider at the very end.  Final scores: Stuart 84, David 79, James 69, Adrian 51, Andy 27.

The Castles of Burgundy - 18 July 2018

Another outing for The Castles of Burgundy - the third this year.  David established an early and strong lead but James reeled him in and overtook in the last few turns of the game.  Final scores: James 237, David 217, Andy 161.

Remember the Alamo - 14 July 2018

Stuart visited for a games day on Saturday and we played another Wild West game using the Legends of the Old West ruleset.  In the scenario, the wives and sweethearts of the Texian defenders killed at the Battle of the Alamo were hunting down the Mexican politician and general Antonio López de Santa Anna.

They had learned that he was holed up in a hacienda protected by a small number of Mexican soldiers.

The 3 feet by 3 feet playing area contained a hacienda, cantina, windpump and assorted scenery (cacti, rocks, well, stagecoach and barrels).  Stuart took the eight-strong Texan widow posse and entered at the bottom of the table.  James hid the General in one of the buildings, along with four soldiers with a further three arriving as reinforcements from the top of the table during the first few rounds.

The widows took up defensive positions around the stagecoach...

...out of range of the rifleman who climbed up the windpump tower...

...but within the sights of the rifleman who came out on the balcony.

Downstairs, a grenaderos opened the side door to get a bead on the Texan women but was swiftly gunned down - the first casualty.

There was then a long fistfight inside the building which the Mexican kept winning but failed to land the finishing blow.  Inevitably, he was knocked out cold the first time the widow won the combat.

The widows wouldn't get their revenge hiding behind the stagecoach so they started closing on the hacienda, taking several losses from the troops occupying the first floor.  But they eventually reached it, and started fighting up the staircase.

Having cleared out the cantina, they could also shoot across to the other building:

The widows had a lot of success in close combat, and the Mexican posse had lost half its strength by the tenth turn.  However, the battle continued for another five turns until James finally failed his "Head for the Hills" dice roll - the same turn that Stuart also had to make that check for the first time, but was successful.

At this point, we considered that the remaining Mexicans, including the General, had surrendered to their grisly fate, and so Stuart won the game.  But we were having fun playing so we let the General have a second chance.  With his faithful Capitan, Santa Anna climbed out of the window...

...and, pursued by the widows, managed to race off the board and escape.

Phalanxx - 5 July 2018

Another outing for a more recent game from Bernd Eisenstein (of Peloponnes fame).  A good mixture of dice placement, map expansion and conflict, and card collection.  James pipped David to first place at the last stage of end game scoring.  Final scores: James 63, David 60, Andy 35.

The Castles of Burgundy - 20 June 2018

Stuart had never played this before so David and James explained the rules, shared their insights and then were comprehensively thrashed, although closed the gap somewhat in the end of game scoring.  Final scores: Stuart 204, James 192, David 174.

Clever game this.  We haven't yet tried it with the alternate player mats where everyone's layout is different.  Not sure about that but we should give it a go to see whether it adds or subtracts from the game.