Session Report for Friday, 06/02/2006

11 Players, 10 Games

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Loot

(Kevin K., Kevin L., Chris, August, Dave, Greg)

We had two Greg's here tonight. The Greg that played in Loot had joined us once before last year so I called the other Greg (Shelly's husband) Greg_2. That should clear things up!

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Ticket to Ride: Marklin

(Marshall, Ty, Dave, Shelly, Chris)

MarshallPhilips -

Marklin is the latest addition in the Ticket to Ride series and it is set in Germany and introduces some new rules. I'll assume you are familiar with basic Ticket to Ride so I'll hit the changes.

• First of all tickets are divided into two piles (long and short). When you draw tickets you can draw four in any combination from the two piles.

• The 10 point bonus at the end of the game now goes to the person who completed the most tickets instead of the longest train (more on that later)

• There are some 7 car links on the map worth 18 points

• There is a new wildcard called a +4 wild. It can only be used to complete links of four cars or greater. Unlike the normal wild (which is still in the game) you can pick up another card if you take a +4 wild.

• There is a new card called a Passenger card. This card lets you use an opponents track to move your passenger (more on this later)

• Now when you build track you have the option of placing a passenger on either city connected by the track you just laid. Each player has three passengers each of which may only be used once.

• You now have another option on your turn. If you have a passenger on the board you may choose to move him. You can move a passenger for free over as much of your track (must be continuous and you can't double back) as you want, if you want to use an opponents track you must use a passenger card. The reason to move a passenger is to pick up merchandise. Each city in the game starts with a stack of merchandise chips, every city your passenger passes through you get to pick up the top most merchandise chip and score those points. This can be a major source of points.

Obviously the passenger mechanic is the big change and its effect is huge. There are two ways in which passengers change the game, both make the game more strategic and deeper. First of all you have to understand that merchandise chips are stacked in decending value. This means that each passenger to go through a city lowers the value of the merchandise for the next passenger until all the merchandise is gone (cities start with either 1, 2, or 3 chips) so you want to move your passengers early. This creates a lot of tension and strategy as you want to get a quick continuous network set up that will let you get decent merchandise points. You also have to be careful of somebody else using your track with passenger cards. This discourages card hoarding which could be a problem in the original game.

Since the passengers encourage you to build a continuous network the 10 point bonus is no longer needed for that role and it is freed up to be given to the person with the most tickets. This is a nice touch that encourages more ticket drawing.

If the original Ticket to Ride was a light family game then Marklin is a medium weight gamers game. So far it's my favorite of the series (I really didn't like Europe and I would still consider the original to be the best for intorducing new players).

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Ra

(Kevin L., Kevin K., August, Greg, Greg2)

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Coloretto

(Kevin L., Kevin K., August, Greg, Scott)

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Rumis x3

(August, Kevin L., Shelly)

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China

(Marshall, Ty, Kevin K., Dave, Greg)

Remember to use those fortresses guys. Once again I was the only one to use mine and I belive that was the difference in the game (fortresses double points for province houses and roads so they can be quite powerful). See those black squares under the green house in Ch'in, the yellow house in zhao, and the red and blue houses in Chu? Those are fortresses.

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Power Grid

(Marshall, Dave, Kevin L., August, Ty)

This was probably are best and most intense game of Power Grid yet. Unlike our previous games the fuel market was brutal in this one. Kevin L. was unable to get the coal he needed for one of his plants on each of the last three turns. The oil and trash were nearly exhausted by game end also, only the nukes remained relatively cheap. We were trying to understand why the fuel was so tight in this game when previously it has always been loose. I think playing with only five players is the main explanation. Adding a sixth player adds more fuel to the game (because you read off of a different replentishment chart) but the sixth player forces more green plants into the game thus fuel tends to be more plentiful. Not so in a five player game, many of the green plants were avoided or not run as long and not as much fuel is added at the end of the turn. This resulted in high costs and ultimitely shortages.

Because we were paying more for fuel the game was smoothed out considerably and there wasn't a sprint to the finish. Steps two and three were nice and drawn out. August led for most of the game and he built deliberately up to 14 cities (15 ends it) without any major jumps. On the final turn I bought a coal plant in order to secure the last bit of coal and keep it out of Kevin's hands (if he could have gotten it he would have won), at the same time that boosted my capacity enough to overtake August. Overall it was a well played game, Dave and Ty did very well for their first time.

I picked up the expansion maps for Power Grid: France and Italy. That should keep the game fresh for awile, I'm looking forward to playing again.

-- MarshallPhilips - 04 Jun 2006
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